Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Supreme Court Upholds Trump's Travel Ban

As I long suspected and as this blog's legal expert predicted :" However, as it stands, the courts have basically taken the position that Presidents can freely use Section 212(f) as they see fit, so it is unlikely that Trump will lose this battle on the merits in the long run." the Supreme Court upheld Trump's travel ban. So that is that. 

WASHINGTON — President Trump acted lawfully in imposing limits on travel from several predominantly Muslim nations, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s conservatives in the majority. The court’s decision, a major statement on presidential power, marked the conclusion of a long-running dispute over Mr. Trump’s authority to make good on his campaign promises to secure the nation’s borders. 

Just a week after he took office, Mr. Trump issued his first travel ban, causing chaos at the nation’s airports and starting a cascade of lawsuits and appeals. The first ban, drafted in haste, was promptly blocked by courts around the nation. A second version, issued two months later, fared little better, although the Supreme Court allowed part of it go into effect last June when it agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeals from court decisions blocking it. But the Supreme Court dismissed those appeals in October after the second ban expired.
LINK

The Supreme Court may have gotten this wrong, though I don't think they did. I am no lawyer or legal expert. But to paraphrase a saying the Court is not supreme because it is always right; it's supreme because it's final. If Congress wishes to do so it can write a law to remove such authority from the current President and all future ones. We should remember that Trump, like Obama before him, will not be the United State's last President.