Judicial activism always undermines the rule of law. Rarely, however, does it also endanger national security. Yet the federal judges who have blocked President Trump’s executive orders on immigration have done just that.
The lawlessness of the courts in question has been exposed by a group of five dissenting judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As these judges so ably observe, the federal district courts that ruled against the President’s policy simply ignored binding precedents—of both the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court—recognizing the legal authority of the President to act as he did. Moreover, these judges achieved their aim by deploying an utterly novel application of the First Amendment, holding that an executive order that does not even mention religion somehow violates the Establishment Clause.