The judiciary is simply doing its job as part of our Constitutional system. The issue here is the extent of Presidential power. Most here applauded the Courts when they refused to allow President Obama to grant blanket amnesty to the so-called "dreamers". Well, the door swings both ways. I respected the Courts when they reined in Obama, and I will respect the Courts if and when they do the same damn thing to President Trump. Our President is not a dictator - he has enumerated powers and it's the Court's job enforce the Constitutional limitations on such powers.
Your argument ignores the critical question of which side is actually
right on those issues. I understand "you win some, you lose some". I thought Kennedy and Roberts were both wrong on the two ObamaCare decisions, but that wasn't judicial overreach. It's their job to interpret statutes, and at least their rulings could be trumped by Congress and the President if they so chose.
This decision, though, actually takes a power expressly granted to the Congress by the Constitution, with a partial, express delegation by Congress to the President on certain issues, and now assigns it the Judiciary. It's a
perversion of separation of powers.
Let's step back, too, and recognize that no court has yet decided the issue on the merits.
But that
doesn't matter. That's the real evil of this decision. The President's action was a temporary, short-term measure to determine if security was sufficient. A TRO/temporary injunction actually destroys that, regardless of how the Supreme Court subsequently rules. You cannot get back the period of time during which dangerous people may be entering the country. That effects of Ninth Circuit's decision cannot be cured by a subsequent Supreme Court ruling.
That's exactly why the courts have previously exercised
complete deference on matters of immigration, because Congress' power over immigration is plenary and hence
should not be subject to judicial oversight, period.
All they've done so far is address a temporary stay to prevent folks from being harmed while the legality of the "travel ban" (actually a travel moratorium) is being decided. Courts do that all the time, as well they should.
No. Courts never,
ever have done that with respect to
immigration, and for very good reasons . Prior to this case, the power had uniformly been considered plenary because judicial review is insufficient to protect the national interest, and the Supreme Court has recognized that the judiciary lacks sufficient expertise in the area of national security. There is also the issue of lack of standing.
Look, suppose the President had very reliable information that terrorists with a biological weapon were going to enter the U.S. on a Yemeni passport sometimes within the next week, and so freezes all immigration of any kind by Yemenis. And some district court judge somewhere issues an order saying "eh, I don't think that's fair. I'm going to overrule that." Having a circuit court or the Supreme Court overrule that decision a few days later does not cure that flawed ruling because it is entirely possible that such a person entered the country during the period of the TRO.
Now you may say "well, that's not the situation here", but that's irrelevant. By granting to the judiciary the power to rule on these issues
at all, you are granting to them the power to issue TRO's under
every set of facts, and its only on appeal that it might get straightened out.
There were hundreds if not thousands of "little folks" caught up in the hastily-conceived and executed travel ban - folks who had valid visas or even green cards, who had played by the rules and acted in good faith reliance on those rules, and who were without warning turned away and forced to return from where they came.
So
what? You're arguing that the policy is mean-spirited and works a hardship -- which is a completely different question from whether it is
unconstitutional.
And do you even understand what the court ordered? It didn't just permit those already in transit to complete their trip, nor was it limited just to green card recipients being able to return home -- the Administration had already said they could. The court actually required the granting of
new visas and continued granting of refugee status to people still sitting at home in their own countries. The whole issue of "people being stuck" is utter B.S. when you examine the scope of the Court's order. The decision is absolutely breathtaking in scope.
That's injustice and real harm, by most folks' standards, and that's why courts exist, to prevent such injustice and temper such harm.
Oh good grief. No, that's not why they exist. They exist to interpret the law,
even if the law is unjust, harmful, or mean.
