The Guardian on the Supreme Court
Recall that once the ban came into force, and would-be arrivals started being detained at or deported from US airports, several federal judges rapidly issued court orders demanding a “stay” or halt to the proceedings. In the normal run of things, the instant such a legal ruling was issued, the policy would come to a stop. Because the law is paramount, the court’s word should have been decisive
But that’s not how it played out last weekend. Even after the judges had spoken, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff continued to enforce Trump’s executive order. CBP officers kept lawyers from speaking to detainees, even after a court judgement had said they could.
When elected congressmen and women called and asked for information, the CBP put the phone down on them. And, even after the court rulings, the White House insisted that the executive order still stood
The significance of this is enormous. It means that the executive – in the form of both the White House and the Customs and Border Protection agency – was refusing to bow to the judiciary. That position was perhaps articulated best by the CBP officer who, when asked by two members of Congress who exactly he was reporting to, answered, “Donald J Trump”.
This is not how a country governed by the rule of law – rather than the rule of men – operates. In authoritarian societies, in a dictatorship, you might expect a border guard to say he obeys the orders of the supreme leader rather than the courts, but that is not what the US constitution demands.
It is why the implementation of the refugee ban was not just morally repugnant – witness press secretary Sean Spicer’s defence of the detention of a five-year-old child – but also chilling. And it is why many commentators were raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/01/neil-gorsuch-us-supreme-court-constitution