Flashpost: Unusual But Not Unprecedented - Questioning Judicial Authority

Whenever you take a constitutional law course, be it in undergrad or law school it is likely that you will read Worcester v. Georgia (1852). This pre-Civil War case is fascinating because it is an instance where John Marshall (yes, that John Marshall) says that Indigenous people, specifically the Cherokees, were an independent political community so Georgia's law did not apply to them.This meant that the person who was then being detained for not following Georgia's law had to be released. Georgia's governor's response to the Court was basically like - who is going to stop me?

What does this mean? Well the enforcement of the judicial holding then fell to the current President of the United States, Andrew Jackson - who essentially was like - "What Supreme Court?" He refused to intervene and so the decision went unenforced. Contrast that with Cooper v. Aaron (1958), where similarly the Justice department released a decision: you might have heard of it - Brown v. Board of Education, but Arkansas' governor was like we aren't going to enforce that desegregation nonsense. And again the Court was like, well you have too in Cooper v. Aaron. And again, we were at a crossroad - where it fell to the President to both be bound by and enforce the judiciary's decision. This time, President Eisenhower dispatched the military to enforce the decision.

Can you guess which president's photo hangs in the current white house?

The most recent attacks on the judiciary are troubling, not just because it is unusual (unusual but not unprecedented as Jackson shows), but because it comes at a time where America's famed "checks and balances" are being stretched very thin. What we know from history is that these stretches do not operate in a vacuum. Attacking the institutions, even if you claim to do so to make them better, disrupts the delicately orchestrated balance the Constitution purportedly creates.

TLDR: It is not unprecedented for the President to ignore the judiciary, but when it happens you best believe it will test the very limits of our constitutional democracy.