Courts

ABA Defends Rule Of Law Against Entitled Billionaire And Yale Law Grad Who Didn’t Do His Con Law Readings

If they were in school we could just fail them and carry on with our lives!

By Chris Williams on February 12, 2025

What is the major difference between a president and a king? Presidents just come from wealth or the right family, while kings come from wealth and the right family. Jokes aside — the main difference is that presidents are subject to the rule of law. The assumption since the Founding has been that the checks and balances of our three branches coupled with the rule of law would be the two anchors that would prevent presidents from becoming the kings that we fought a war’s worth of independence over. You know what happens when you make assumptions; Trump gets elected for a second time!

During the first Trump presidency it wasn’t uncommon to see headlines like “Trump Attacks on the Rule Of Law Reach a New Level.” Not to be outdone by himself, one of his first acts under his second term undermined the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. And he isn’t the only one undermining the two anchors — JD Vance took to X to show that he doesn’t have an even basic understanding of how judicial review works:

I’ll take signs that JD Vance slept through the war powers module of Con Law for $400, Alex! When a person is this loud and wrong, you can usually depend on someone to step up and call out the stupidity. Unfortunately, we are living in one of the shithole-ier timelines and legally illiterate folks are coming out of the woodwork to support Trump & Co.

Lawless here is of course the suit-and-tie version of saying “If the judge’s decision hurts my feefees it doesn’t count.” It isn’t “lawless” if the Supreme Court rules that an abuse of power was abusive. It goes further, actually — the Judiciary, after Marbury v. Madison, has to be the adjudicator that delineates which acts of Congress or the Executive aren’t constitutional or, put positively — abusive. Because if they didn’t, who would? The branches themselves? It isn’t a perfect solution, but knowing that quis custodiet ipsos custodes is answered 2/3rds of the way by judicial review is better than having an unaccounted for triumvirate Congress, Executive, and Judiciary.

At a time like this, we need strong advocates of judicial review and the rule of law to speak out against the Executive soft launching their plans to ignore them. And while Chief Justice Roberts has been asleep at the helm, the American Bar Association took the time to set the record straight on questions of judicial review. From the ABA:

The American Bar Association condemns recent remarks of high-ranking officials of the administration that appear to question the legitimacy of judicial review and demand impeachment of a judge merely because the court did not agree with the government’s position. These comments pose serious risks to our constitutional framework that separates power among three co-equal branches.
…
These bold assertions, designed to intimidate judges by threatening removal if they do not rule the government’s way, cross the line. They create a risk to the physical security of judges and have no place in our society. There have also been suggestions that the executive branch should consider disobeying court orders. These statements threaten the very foundation of our constitutional system. 

I’m usually pretty big on sharing a bit from the source material and carrying on with my own thoughts, but right now feels like one of those “Damn it, we’re living through the interesting times that gets put in a history book” moments. Take a moment to read the full condemnation. And also take a moment to see for yourself what the ABA is speaking out against. As great as the response is, the ABA is doing a bit of sneak dissing throughout the condemnation. These are trying, turbulent times and it is expected that such a publication would write carefully so as to not upset their readers. We are not one of those publications. Some of the sneak dissing took shots at our Dunce in Chief Elon Musk. We’ve often covered Musk getting pissy over judges not ruling his way or bankrolling Texas because he didn’t like that Delaware held him accountable, but this unelected bureaucrat muddling his way through trying to explain that we need to get rid of unelected bureaucrats (presumably judges) sets the stage for why the ABA’s message is so important to hear:

Out of good faith, it is worth mentioning that people have discussed the risk to democracy that judges can pose — you can find a bunch of writing about what’s come to be known as the counter-majoritarian problem. But the push back that the Trump administration has been getting from judges — take the judicial orders stopping Trump from getting rid of birthright citizenship via executive order — is not a counter-majoritarian or a bureaucracy issue. It’s an issue with not being allowed to run rampant. That’s why it is important for the ABA, lawyers, and anyone else interested in the rule of law to nip these tantrums in the bud before they grow into entitlements to ignore the law.

ABA Condemns Remarks Questioning Legitimacy Of Courts And Judicial Review [American Bar]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.