Judicial Independence: The Fortress Threatened from Within

[...]we are in a week in which a judge with an apparently impeccable record and background has been confirmed this morning as an associate justice of the Supreme Court,1 although at the cost of taking perhaps one more step toward turning the United States Senate into a high-class edition of the Hous...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The University of Memphis law review 2017-01, Vol.47 (4), p.1223-1233
Main Author: Mukasey, Michael B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Executive orders
Federal court decisions
Judges & magistrates
Judiciary
Politics
Presidents
Tenure
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Summary:[...]we are in a week in which a judge with an apparently impeccable record and background has been confirmed this morning as an associate justice of the Supreme Court,1 although at the cost of taking perhaps one more step toward turning the United States Senate into a high-class edition of the House of Representatives, where the majority rules and the minority can be rendered virtually invisible.[...]we are not, as you know, in ordinary times, and particularly with respect to the current president.Because currently fashionable thought in some circumstances regards everything he does as the act of someone who cannot be regarded as a president.Because although he was duly elected, his taking of a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution is not to be taken seriously because he has not shown he is the sort of person who understands what a solemn obligation actually is.Despite the recitation in the second edition of that order9 of the reason why each of these countries presented a legitimate cause for concern, and despite an explicit statute10 that grants the president authority to exclude any alien or group of aliens so long as he avers that it is in the national interest to do so, a few district judges have held that the order in question violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by disfavoring a particular religion-the Muslim faith-in contrast to others.11 Interestingly, the cited support for this conclusion, in each case, does not lie in the effect of the order, which after all does not apply to most Muslim countries.
ISSN:1080-8582