Judge J. Michael Luttig writes:

Judge Boasberg doesn’t want to assume the role of president; the president wants to assume the role of judge.

At a hearing on Friday, in a further development in this showdown between the president and the judiciary, Judge Boasberg expressed skepticism about the administration’s use of a wartime statute to deport immigrants without a hearing to challenge whether they were gang members, as the government has asserted. “The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” he said.

He also said he planned to “get to the bottom” of whether the Trump administration had violated his temporary order against the deportations.

Mr. Trump seems supremely confident, though deludedly so, that he can win this war against the federal judiciary, just as he was deludedly confident that he could win the war he instigated against America’s democracy after the 2020 election.

The very thought of having to submit to his nemesis, the federal judiciary, must be anguishing for Mr. Trump, who only last month proclaimed, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” But the judiciary will never surrender its constitutional role to interpret the Constitution, no matter how often Mr. Trump and his allies call for the impeachment of judges who have ruled against him. As Chief Justice John Marshall explained almost 225 years ago in the seminal case of Marbury v. Madison, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

If Mr. Trump continues to attempt to usurp the authority of the courts, the battle will be joined, and it will be up to the Supreme Court, Congress and the American people to step forward and say: Enough. As the Declaration of Independence said, referring to King George III of Britain, “A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” [Continue reading…]