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The Supreme Court Was Never Supposed to Matter This Much - Steve Kennedy @ Balls and Strikes
Balls and StrikesOver the past few months, legal commentators have railed against the evils of “black-robed tyrants” and unaccountable “judicial insurrectionists” who are “upend[ing] the popular agenda of a sitting president” and executing a “judicial coup.” There is no justification, one argued, for a system in which “crazy judges” can “block and freeze each and every executive action.”
You could be forgiven for mistaking the speakers for liberal pundits decrying the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative supermajority for overturning federal abortion rights, student loan relief, environmental protections, immigration policies, and so on. But no, now that President Donald Trump is in the White House, it is Republicans calling out federal judges for putting temporary restraining orders and nationwide injunctions on blatantly unconstitutional executive orders and “Department of Government Efficiency” actions. For conservatives, things have gotten so bad that the Court weighed in in Trump v. CASA to limit district courts’ power to stymie the president’s authoritarian agenda.
Never mind that conservative courts spent the last four years overturning policies supported by large majorities of Americans. Never mind that conservative activists have ready-made judge-shopping venues that allow them to fast-track pet projects to the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court. Never mind that conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, love to remind us that judges have lifetime appointments in order to protect their jobs when they do what the law supposedly calls for. Nope, all of that is fine, but what is intolerable is that when an Elon Musk flunky decides that a random civil servant needs to be fired, or when Donald Trump voids sections of the Constitution or unambiguous federal statutes by executive order, they might have to wait a little while for courts to decide whether the law has any meaning anymore.
Republicans were all too willing to embrace this kind of judicial power when it advanced their interests. During the Biden administration, when Democrats held the White House and one or both chambers of Congress, conservatives endorsed a maximalist version of juristocracy that allowed unelected Supreme Court justices to overturn policies they deemed inconsistent with this nation’s “history and tradition.” Conservative lower court judges competed with one another to crank out the most MAGA takes, and gleefully handed out nationwide injunctions in hopes of getting a promotion from a future Trump administration.
You could be forgiven for mistaking the speakers for liberal pundits decrying the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative supermajority for overturning federal abortion rights, student loan relief, environmental protections, immigration policies, and so on. But no, now that President Donald Trump is in the White House, it is Republicans calling out federal judges for putting temporary restraining orders and nationwide injunctions on blatantly unconstitutional executive orders and “Department of Government Efficiency” actions. For conservatives, things have gotten so bad that the Court weighed in in Trump v. CASA to limit district courts’ power to stymie the president’s authoritarian agenda.
Never mind that conservative courts spent the last four years overturning policies supported by large majorities of Americans. Never mind that conservative activists have ready-made judge-shopping venues that allow them to fast-track pet projects to the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court. Never mind that conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, love to remind us that judges have lifetime appointments in order to protect their jobs when they do what the law supposedly calls for. Nope, all of that is fine, but what is intolerable is that when an Elon Musk flunky decides that a random civil servant needs to be fired, or when Donald Trump voids sections of the Constitution or unambiguous federal statutes by executive order, they might have to wait a little while for courts to decide whether the law has any meaning anymore.
Republicans were all too willing to embrace this kind of judicial power when it advanced their interests. During the Biden administration, when Democrats held the White House and one or both chambers of Congress, conservatives endorsed a maximalist version of juristocracy that allowed unelected Supreme Court justices to overturn policies they deemed inconsistent with this nation’s “history and tradition.” Conservative lower court judges competed with one another to crank out the most MAGA takes, and gleefully handed out nationwide injunctions in hopes of getting a promotion from a future Trump administration.
You're never going to believe this, but Republicans' passion for the unitary executive theory correlates strongly with whether a Republican president is in the White House
— Balls & Strikes (@ballsandstrikes.org) 2025-07-23T11:45:05.956Z