Debates Between Government Branches Go Way Back
The judicial branch serves as a vital check on executive and legislative authority. This instrumental role has come into sharp focus during Donald Trump’s presidency. Courts have repeatedly challenged his policies, prompting forceful responses from Trump that have fueled debates over judicial independence.
The judiciary has intervened in several high-profile Trump initiatives. During his first administration in 2017, federal courts halted Trump’s executive order banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries, citing violations of constitutional protections. The president fired back, labeling one judge a “so-called judge” and questioning the judiciary’s legitimacy.
Another significant clash occurred in 2018 when courts blocked Trump’s attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors from deportation. He appealed these decisions, criticized judges as biased, and pursued a broader strategy of appointing conservative jurists—such as Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—to reshape the judiciary.
Democrats, meanwhile, decried Trump’s various actions as assaults on the judicial branch’s supposed history of impartiality, ironically ignoring that they themselves had attempted to unravel the court’s apolitical nature through what Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called “court expansion.”
Democratic Party leaders like Senator Adam Schiff have continued to assert that Trump’s attacks on judicial rulings and his efforts to influence the courts mark an “unprecedented” breach of democratic norms. They point to his public denunciations and judicial appointments as threats to the separation of powers, suggesting a level of executive overreach unseen in prior administrations.
This view, however, does not fully account for the historical context of executive-judicial friction, which has flared up at key moments since the nation’s founding.
During the drafting of the Constitution, Anti-Federalists expressed alarm that an overly strong judiciary might usurp the authority of the people or other branches. The Anti-Federalist author Brutus contended that the true danger of the judiciary was that “there is no power above them, to control any of their decisions…. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven.” In an 1815 letter to William Torrence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that judicial supremacy was a power not given to the court in the Constitution, and that the judiciary had no right to supersede the executive’s Article II powers.
Federalists, in contrast, defended judicial review as a necessary safeguard against tyranny.
This foundational debate established a recurring tension in American governance.
The debate reemerged under President Andrew Jackson. In 1832, Jackson vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, despite the Supreme Court’s previous decision in McCulloch v. Maryland upholding the bank’s constitutionality. He argued that the president could independently interpret the Constitution, famously stating in his veto message, “The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the president is independent of both.”
That same year, in Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled Georgia lacked authority over Cherokee lands, yet Jackson defied the decision, declaring, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Pointing to Federalist 78, which claimed the court has “neither FORCE nor WILL,” Jackson felt justified.
His stance underscored a bold challenge to judicial supremacy, continuing a controversy that resonates with the contemporary disputes in our current political climate. It is clear, then, that Trump’s confrontations with the judiciary, while striking, are not without precedent.
Since the beginning of his second term, the Trump administration has continued to echo earlier episodes in American history. Trump’s March 16th Truth Social attack on Judge James Boasberg over a deportation ruling, followed by continued flights despite a court order, and Vice President JD Vance’s February 9th X post questioning judicial supremacy amid defiance of a Rhode Island funding order, suggest a similar dismissal of judicial authority.
Viewed in this light, Trump’s actions represent a continuation of a long-standing struggle over the balance of power rather than a wholly novel disruption. Trump’s confrontations with the judiciary continue a centuries-old debate over the balance of power in American governance that shows no signs of abating.