Last week, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland man whom immigration officials deported to a Salvadoran megaprison 32 days ago. But the justices pointedly stopped short of requiring the administration to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return, in light of the “deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” They did so despite the fact that lawyers for the government have conceded that it had no legal basis to deport Abrego Garcia; in court, they have characterized his disappearance as an “administrative error,” as if shipping a man who has not been accused of a crime to an overseas gulag is the equivalent of neglecting to attach an itemized receipt to an expense report.
I think you made that mistake of ending your sentence too quickly. Maybe you meant to say it would not have an impact on Trump’s actions over the next week or two. But in general, quite obviously it would have a huge impact.
That’s not to say that democracy would prevail. Nobody knows that. But the impact would have been real. And if you disagree with me, then why are we here in the first place? I think we’re here because we all know that the ruling would have a gigantic impact. It would have clarified the fact that Mr. Orange has effected a coup d’etat. That’s different from saying that he would be stopped, of course, but if you think there’s no possible way to make the situation better than why are you bothering to write here in the first place.
I don’t think it’s impossible to make the situation better. I think he’s dismantling the rule of law. For the entirety of the post industrial revolution era, we’ve been governed by words written down, but that was not the case of most of history. Before that, might governed. If you could do something and nobody could physically stop you, then you got your was. Trump is trying to take us back to that.