Trump And Vance Aren’t Defying The Constitution, They’re Following It
Democrats and pundits have exaggerated Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks into a ‘constitutional crisis.’
Under the Constitution, “the President is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion.” For his decisions, “he is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience.” His choices cannot be questioned in court because “the subjects are political. They respect the nation, not individual rights, and being entrusted to the executive, the decision of the executive is conclusive.”
Who penned these outrageous words? Democrats and many pundits might answer Vice President J.D. Vance. Over the weekend, Vance provoked an onslaught of criticism for suggesting that federal district judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
But the usual suspects would be wrong. The right answer is John Marshall, the greatest chief justice in Supreme Court history. And he did not squirrel this view away in a private journal. Instead, Marshall publicly explained that courts could not review presidential decisions on “political” subjects “entrusted to the executive” in a Supreme Court opinion.
Constitutionalism
Epstein & Yoo: Amicus Brief in Supreme Court of Maryland
Civitas Senior Research Fellows Richard Epstein and John Yoo, alongside the Mountain States Legal Foundation, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Maryland.
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The American Revolutions of 1776
America's founding was animated by both the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion — a philosophical and practical achievement worth understanding and attempting to recover today.
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Civitas Conversations: Is the Court Appeasing the Trump Administration?
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States Should Protect Religious Liberty Like It Is 1993
We encourage elected officials to get to work in their laboratories and start inventing or adopting new ways to better protect what many of our Founding Fathers called “the sacred rights of conscience.”
