There is a widespread perception - reinforced by a number of high-profile Supreme Court decisions - that the judiciary has been largely ineffective in curbing the second Trump Administration's many illegal actions. In an insightful recent post, Georgetown law Professor Steve Vladeck (one of the nation's leading experts on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary), explains that courts have actually had more impact than many think:
There is, alas, plenty of Supreme Court-related news…. But I wanted to use this week's "Long Read" to tell a slightly different story—about cases that aren't making headlines, for instance, the ongoing litigation challenging President Trump's executive order purporting to limit birthright citizenship. That order remains on hold—thanks to a series of rulings by lower courts after the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling on June 27. These lower-court rulings have flown under the radar—at least largely because the government has not sought emergency relief from the courts of appeals or the Supreme Court, nor has it refused to comply with them. For now, it is "taking the L."
That's an important story unto itself—not just in the birthright citizenship cases, but more generally. For all of the attention that is (understandably) being paid to the unprecedented number of cases the Trump administration is rushing to the Supreme Court (we're up to 28), and to the Court's (troubling) behavior in those cases, they represent only a small subset of the broader universe of legal challenges to Trump administration behavior. In the majority of cases in which the government is losing in the lower courts, it is (1) not seeking emergency or expedited intervention from above; and (2) otherwise complying with the adverse rulings while the cases move (very slowly) ahead.
Because this reality doesn't make for quite as attractive headlines, it's one to which too many folks are largely oblivious. That's a problem worth fixing—not only because it's important to tell both sides of the litigation story, but because including these cases paints a more complicated (and, in my view, far less nihilistic) picture of the role of the courts—and of the law, more generally—as a check on the Trump administration.
