No. 38 of 108
July 21, 2025
About 337 lawsuits have been brought against the Administration in the last seven months. Of those, the Courts have ruled against the Administration in 137 cases. When a judge rules against a party, the court has oversight of the outcome of the implementation of the order. The Administration has been accused by various judges of defying or frustrating the orders of the court in fifty-seven (about 35 percent of the) cases. In each case, the defied order is repeatedly defied. The previous record of defiance was held by President Biden, in ten cases throughout his term. In a departure from the norm of judges and former judges not speaking beyond their formal filings, more than two dozen highly respected retired judges appointed under presidents of both parties have formed the Article III Coalition, drawing organized attention to the stressors on the judicial system beyond individual cases. (Article III of the Constitution establishes the judicial system.) While warning of the unprecedented pressures and breaking of norms, the group believes we are not yet in a constitutional crisis.
What is a constitutional crisis? Should we be worried? When is “there” there, and what can we do about it? We should be maka‘ala, paying attention with eyes wide open, that soooo many folx and institutions have been thinking and debating how close our country may be to a constitutional crisis. In its simplest political science definition (versus legally determinative definition), a constitutional crisis exists when a conflict in a function of government cannot be resolved by the constitution of that government. That soooo many folx are thinking and debating how close we may be is worthy of pause. The constitution is just human-made rules agreed to over a long time and in many spaces, and works by agreement, adherence, respect, and belief in its frame as fundamental to how this civil society will conduct itself. It is a living document that, by design, changes glacially. In a rapidly changing environment, civil society holds onto such frameworks as one may a gyroscope, determining what is up, and what is down, what is to one side, and what is to another side, if one is spinning clock-wise, or counter to. The experts will argue, mostly because it is an unimaginable thing to determine that there is a constitutional crisis. In the meantime, let us agree that there is enormous strain and some among us would break the constitution without qualms. May we live its time-tested principles, and the emergent ones of a more interdependent civil society, nonetheless, defiantly in agreement, adherence, and respect.