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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Constitutionalism
Published on
Feb 12, 2025
Contributors
John Yoo
Robert Delahunty
"The United States Capitol Rotunda" by Joshua Sukoff (Unsplash)

Trump And Vance Aren’t Defying The Constitution, They’re Following It

Contributors
John Yoo
John Yoo
Senior Research Fellow
John Yoo
Robert Delahunty
Robert Delahunty
Robert Delahunty
Summary
Democrats and pundits have exaggerated Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks into a ‘constitutional crisis.’
Summary
Democrats and pundits have exaggerated Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks into a ‘constitutional crisis.’
Listen to this article

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.

Continue reading at The Federalist

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