2 weeks Ago
A federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s request that it halt the next steps Judge Paula Xinis is seeking to take in the case concerning a migrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, with a strident warning about the rule of law and the possibility the dispute presented an “incipient crisis.” The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in its seven-page ruling Thursday that the Trump administration’s assertions in the case “should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” The unanimous ruling was written by Judge Harvie Wilkinson, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan.
In it, he was extremely critical of the administration’s effort to undo some of Xinis’ recent orders in the case, sounding alarm bells about how its maneuverings in the matter have resulted in the two branches “grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.” “The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply,” Wilkinson wrote. “The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions.
The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.” The appeals court used the order to weigh in on the broader atmosphere around President Trump’s conflict with the judiciary. “The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort at mutual respect.
The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive’s respect for the courts,” the 4th Circuit said. “Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.” The court’s rejection of the Justice Department’s bid for emergency intervention sets the stage for the dispute to return to the Supreme Court, one week after the justices left most of the Xinis’ order that the government facilitate the migrants return.
The order, nonetheless, ended with a note of optimism. “It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well,” the 4th Circuit said. “We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.
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