‘Murky’law could muck up Trump’s plan
Legal challenges to President Trump’s planned national-emergency declaration to build a border wall are likely to come fast and furious — but legal experts caution the law is “murky” on the extent of his powers.
Trump on Thursday announced that he plans to declare a national emergency, even as he indicated he would sign a bipartisan agreement keeping the government open but only providing part of the money he wants for his long-promised wall. Trump’s declaration and other executive orders would seek to shift money around in the budget to fund it.
Democrats immediately vowed to take the president to court, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer saying, “House Democrats will challenge this irresponsible declaration.”
“It’ll get to the Supreme Court, but what happens from there is impossible to predict,” civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz said. “It all depends on how do you define ‘emergency.’ ”
Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman said the Constitution is intentionally “murky” on what constitutes a national emergency and what powers the president has during one.
“A lot of these laws are not super clear and that gives a lot of space to the president,” Feldman said.
Former President Abraham Lincoln suspended suspected Confederate spies’ habeas corpus rights during the Civil War, and former President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the mass internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II. The Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s detention of Japanese-Americans, but the courts shot down former President Harry Truman’s attempt a few years later during the Korean War to seize a steel mill whose workers were on strike.
“He has to listen to what the courts order,” Feldman said of Trump.
Boston University presidential historian Thomas Whalen said the power of the executive branch has been increasing for decades, and “Trump is extending that to a logical conclusion.” He said if Trump didn’t follow a court’s order, “That would be a Constitutional crisis and an impeachable offense.”