In this week’s segment of Cline on the Constitution, I decided to pause in my review of voting rights cases to consider the President’s recent actions concerning our Southern Border.

The President’s declaration of an emergency and his orders to transfer funds to construct barriers on the Southern Border has generated extensive commentary on the legality of his actions as well as whether they are constitutionally permitted.  

How will the President’s orders fair in the Courts?  

As has become routine anytime this President seeks to exercise his Executive Powers there has been a rush to the microphones and threats launch a battery of new lawsuits. California’s own Attorney General couldn’t wait.  Instead of addressing the significant uptick of crime in our state, he consistently spends most of his time and huge sums of taxpayer dollars suing the federal government on behalf of non-citizens.  

The usual shoving and pushing to get in front of T.V. cameras, aside there are two questions from a Constitutional perspective about emergency orders.  First, does the President have authority to issue such an order.? The declaration is not the big thing, the orders made pursuant to the declaration are the issue. Second, and I think ultimately this is the most important, do federal district court judges have the authority to prohibit the actions before they are taken?

Article II provides that “The Executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”  It was placed there to correct a weakness in the original Articles of Confederation.  The constitution also specifies that the President “Shall take care that the laws be Faithfully Executed.”  Taken together that is a very broad delegation of power.

The Supreme Court has recognized that in order to carry out the duties of his office the President has certain inherent powers.  Executive orders are deemednecessary tools to execute the functions of the office.  

In fact, they have the force of law if placed in the Federal Register.  

There are limits. Executive orders may not impinge on the functions of the other branches of government, on the constitutional rights of citizens nor on the powers reserved to the States. 

The most potential for conflict arises in the context of a National Emergency; those times when a President concludes an Executive Action is necessary to defend the country from an “existential” threat.  One of the most famous (or infamous if you will) was President Roosevelt’s executive order requiring the internment of citizens of Japanese decent in internment camps during World War II.  

During the Civil War, President Lincoln made wide use of Executive orders and regularly trampled individual liberties both in the South and the North. He justified his actions under what he maintained were broad presidential powers to put down an insurrection. Significantly, when his unconstitutional order to suspend habeas corpus was quashed by a court he adroitlyasked, “Is it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the constitution?”   

Though sometimes the language, tactics and lawlessness used by the radical left in this country at times take on the characteristics of an insurrection, we are not there.  At least not yet. 

But the question Lincoln asked encapsulates the dilemma facing the leaders of our country in times of great peril.

The Supreme Court’s approach to such questions of is to employ a formula from the Youngstown Steel case decided in the 1950s. During the Korean War President Truman seized steel mills whose production had been crippled by a strike.  The Steel was necessary, he argued, to support the war effort in Korea.  Congress had passed a resolution opposing his expected seizure of the mills.  

In a concurring the opinion overturning the seizure, Justice Jackson (who had been a lead prosecutor during the Nuremberg Trials in Germany), wrote that the legality of a President’s actions is at the highest when he acts in accordance with powers granted him by the Congress or expressly by the Constitution.  On the other hand “his power is at its lowest ebb”; when he acts against the express or implied will of Congress. 

In 1976, the Congress granted the President the power to declare an emergency and the power has been used numerous times by President from both parties.  

Significantly the Congress left it up to the President to determine what the definition of an Emergency is in a particular case.  If, the President is acting in accordance with that legislation he would seem to be on solid ground.  His position may have been stronger had he acted before agreeing to allow Congress to negotiate, however.   Ironically,  his waiting may have undermined his argument that an emergency required him to act.  

The second question concerns how the matter will be handled by the Federal Courts. 

As the President himself has stated, everyone expects some federal district court judge somewhere will grant a universal injunction stopping the Executive action unless and until it can be brought before the Supreme court.

There is a rather obvious problem.  We have over 600 federal district court judges in the country.  Is it now necessary to get pre-approval for any executive action by all 600?  Not exactly how the framers envisioned the judicial role.  

In Trump vs. Hawaii decided last year and which upheld the President’s “Travel Ban” Justice Thomas, in a brilliant concurring opinion, called on his fellow justices to put an end to the practice of lower federal court’s issuing universal injunctions. 

“These injunctions”, he wrote, “are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the executive branch.”

He went on to review the history of a court’s power to issue extraordinary writs that came down to us from the old equity courts of England. The matters were debated in the Federalists and Anti-Federalists’ papers ending with the conclusion of Hamilton that the “constraints” of their duty to only decide the cases that came before them obviated the danger the courts would grab too much power. 

Justice Thomas pointed out that universal injunctions not only do not comply with the principles set out by the framers, but only emerged for the first time in the 1960s.  (where have we seen that before?!) and “dramatically increasing in popularity only recently.”  

In those years, he said, “some jurists began to conceive of the judicial role in terms of resolving general questions of legality, instead of addressing those questions only insofar as they are necessary to resolve individual cases and controversies.”  Which is, by the way, jurisdictional.  Under the Constitution the courts are only allowed to decide cases and controversies before them, not general questions of policy. Universal injunctions, the Justice opined, “appear to conflict with the original understanding of the judicial role.” 

After considering the various arguments made in their support, he concluded there is no constitutional authority for the use of universal injunctions. “But these arguments do not explain how these injunctions are consistent with the historical limits on equity and judicial power.  That at best “boil down to a policy judgement” about how powers ought to be allocated among our three branches of government.” But the people already made that choice when they ratified the constitution.”  

He concluded “In sum, universal injunctions are legally and historically dubious.  If federal courts continue to issue them, this Court is duty bound to adjudicate their authority to do so.”

In the final analysis, whether the caravans of illegals being organized and directed toward our Southern Border constitute an “emergency” may not be the most important question for the court to decide.  Instead it may be constraining the unconstitutional expansion of power by the federal courts. That may be the most important emergency of all. 

For more writings by Phil Cline, visit philcline.com