The Radical Legal Theories That Could Fuel a Constitutional Crisis
The New York Times
An increasingly influential group of conservative scholars has some drastic ideas about the president’s power.
On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance laid out his version of the relationship between the presidency and the courts. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the limits of the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote, in a post on X.
Mr. Vance’s post was “as wrong as it is reckless,” responded 17 attorneys general from 17 states in a joint statement. “No one is above the law.”
Was Mr. Vance demanding that presidents be allowed to make their own rules, regardless of what the courts say? Everything depends on what he meant by the word “legitimate.” Who gets to decide the limit of the executive’s power?
The Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted for more than 200 years, offers a clear answer: judges.
“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases arising under this Constitution,” says the Constitution itself, in Article III, which establishes the federal court system and its powers.
And that is exactly what the federal judiciary is trying to do now.
