Jack Goldsmith assesses the impact of recent US Supreme Court decisions involving the limits of executive power.
About a year ago the Trump administration appeared to have defied legal restraints on the presidency to the point of a “constitutional crisis.” And in the eyes of many, the Supreme Court was primarily responsible.
From the beginning, Trump 2.0 engaged in an avalanche of controversial actions, many unlawful, all fueled by the elimination of internal lawyerly friction. …
… That left the third branch of government, the federal judiciary. This is the branch, as Hamilton memorably wrote, that possesses “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment,” and thus “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
The seemingly weakest of the three branches appeared at points last year unable to effectively control Trump. The administration assaulted lower federal courts with unmatched vitriol and disrespect. In some cases it ignored or skirted judicial orders. The Supreme Court, to many, appeared not just to tolerate these moves but to fuel them by ruling in most interim order applications in support of the administration’s broad claims of executive power.
From the beginning the Court was, to put it gently, in an awkward spot. Its conservative majority had long believed, as it had made plain during the Obama and Biden administrations, that Article II demanded a broad unitary executive. Trump pushed this position much further than any prior president and thus clarified its potentially destructive consequences. …
… One can disagree with many of the Supreme Court decisions since Jan. 20, 2025. And one can disagree about which lines are important not to cross. But the fact is that the Court’s strategy has preserved and possibly enhanced its authority vis-à-vis the president and has resulted in the successful enforcement of significant legal constraints on the presidency, all in the face of a nearly unprecedented set of challenges.
