Partisan Ideology and the Judiciary

It seems that "liberal" judges are no more likely to rule against the Trump Administration than "conservative" judges.

With all the talk of "Radical Left Lunatics" and "Crooked Judges" in the federal judiciary, all of whom "should be IMPEACHED!!!," [see  note ** at end], it's worth taking a look at some interesting analyses by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica of the relationship between "judicial ideology"** and the outcomes in the many cases challenging Trump Administration policies.

The bottom line:

Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative).…

Judicial ideology doesn't predict ruling outcomes [in these cases]. This isn't commonly the case—ideology is typically a moderate to strong predictor of case outcomes, making this ideological consensus particularly noteworthy. The pattern diverges from what Maya Sen and I found during Trump's first term, when judge ideology strongly predicted case outcomes. What changed? [emphasis added]

It's an important point. A judge's ideology is, usually, a "moderate to strong predictor" of case outcomes - but not here, not in the cases challenging Administration actions on constitutional or statutory grounds. [As noted before, there is a very useful compilation of these cases - now numbering around 155! - available here].

I'm sure that this fact will have no bearing whatsoever on the campaign by the folks calling the shots at the White House and on Capitol Hill in their attacks on the federal judiciary.

Bonica suggests that "what changed" between Trump's first term and today is that "today's cases pose more fundamental constitutional violations uniting judges across partisan divides," and that strikes me as, broadly speaking, basically correct.  One might expect - or at least hope - that the judiciary as a whole, liberal and conservative, would close ranks when faced with a serious threat to its power, and that may indeed be what is happening.

** If you're especially interested in the methodology by which "judicial ideology" is measured, there's a good discussion of the metric that Bonica uses in an earlier paper of his, available here. He uses the "DIME" database (Database on Ideology, Money in Elections), which uses data on political contributions to construct ideology scores for several hundred thousand US lawyers. legal academics, and judges. I'm no expert, but Bonica and others have been working with this database for about 10 years and it seems to be broadly useful and predictive.

---

**The Truth Social posting by the President of the United States read in its entirety as follows:

"This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President - He didn't WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn't WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn't WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN'T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I'm just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges' I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON'T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

I know that we've all gotten used to the, um, tone that the President of the United States uses in his written communications with the nation, but it's good to remind ourselves, from time to time, just how outrageous and debased it is. We can argue all day about the merits of Judge Boasberg's ruling, and that's fine; but he is not a "Radical Left Lunatic," nor is he a "troublemaker and agitator," nor is he "Crooked." and that the President of the United States can assert otherwise and we all just roll our eyeballs is a sad commentary on where we're at these days.

Comments

[SRG2]

According to the cultists, all the judges who rule against Trump are leftists who should be impeached if not worse, so I doubt they will accept the categorisations as liberals, centrists, and conservatives.

[ReaderY]

It takes time. Hitler rounded up the communists after the Reichstag Fire decree of March of 1933; he didn’t get around to banning the socialists until the Enabling Act a couple of months later, he didn’t get around to eliminating the rival conservative and centrist parties until the Night of thr Long Knives in 1934, and he didn’t even get around to requiring that ecery member of his cabinet officially join the Nazi party until 1937, when a single holdout, Paul Freiherr von Eltz-Runenbach, resigned rather than join (his pension was taken away and he was put under surveillance by the Gestapo, but he was never sent to a concentration camp). But eventually everyone not a Nazi was an enemy of the state.

Trump’s timetable may take a little longer. But it certainly seems headed in a similar direction. He still needs the categorizations. For example, his position is still weak enough that he can work with sufficiently-cowed traditional Republicans as he works to get them replaced by MAGA Republicans. But once replaced, they too can become traitors, criminals, and enemies of the state.

[VinniUSMC]

El Oh El

[Dr. Ed 2]

Can the Hitler references and look up "Committee of Public Safety" and what they did during the American Revolution. Also who Mr. Lynch was and what he did.

[David Nieporent]

The Committee of Public Safety was part of the French Revolution, not the American one. Is there anything you get right, ever?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, they copied it --- MORON.
https://www.americanheritage.com/plight-massachusetts-loyalists

And that's pretty neutral.

[David Nieporent]

Do you see the words "Committee of Public Safety" anywhere in your link?

[Dr. Ed 2]

SRG2, I don't, for the reasons I explain below, and that's Research Methods 101. The DIMES methodology is meaningless.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Alas, the judiciary is organized to empower a single Court to summarize the character of the whole. And that Court has yet to weigh in.

[ReaderY]

We are heading towards the legal reasoning outlined in Carl Schmidt’s 1934 classic “The Furer protects the law.” The form of the rhetoric, the kind of language, used to describe the leader’s political opponents is in particular remarkably similar.

[Dr. Ed 2]

We are more heading toward things like this:

" Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."

--- John Adams

[Magister]

Dr. Ed 2 predicts a Democratic wave election in 2026.

[Dr. Ed 2]

John Adams was a FEDERALIST!

[BBSquatter]

John Adams was also a devout Christian. If our nation were, as the Founding Fathers concluded, a moral & religious people, America would not be in the mess that we find it to be, particularly the lack of consensus. So it follows:

“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102

[Dr. Ed 2]

I agree -- and Massachusetts was a theocracy

[BBSquatter]

A burning of heretics every now and then does a nation good. Plus it is Lent so extra graces for whoever throws the first match to burn the heretics

[Hyronymous]

The Federalist party was - traditionally - viewed as he ancestor of the Republican party.

At the moment, I'd probably say that the Dixiecrats that split off from the Democratic party during the 70s have forced their way to the top of the Republican party, so there's no party that still traces itself back to the Federalists today. It's just two separate groups, each vying to get the vote of Labor and the lowest common denominator.

[Magnus Pilatus, MBA, MD, JD, PhDx2]

The South didn't turn Red until the 90s.

State and local elections demonstrate this.

[Dr. Ed 2]

There was also a Great Replacement in the South.
Metro Atlanta census figures:

1920 622,283 19.1%
1930 715,391 15.0%
1940 820,579 14.7%
1950 997,666 21.6%
1960 1,312,474 31.6%
1970 1,763,626 34.4%
1980 2,233,324 26.6%
1990 2,959,950 32.5%
2000 4,112,198 38.9%
2010 5,286,728 28.6%
2020 6,089,815 15.2%

[Hyronymous]

That is certainly a piece of evidence in favor of what I wrote.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Study the populist progressive era before you go down that road.
Yes the GOP emerged out of the wreckage of the Whig party, but it was split over Slavery.

The Dems cite Jefferson and Jackson as their roots -- but FDR essentially created a *new* party in 1933 and that is evidenced by a lot of Jacksonian Democracy communities going from all D to all R.

The same sort of thing is happening now -- the GOP has become the Populist party and while nuts like AOC will destroy the Dems, much as pro-slavery nuts destroyed the Whigs, what will come out of its wreckage will be a Progressive party.

The problem with understanding the populist movement of the past is that it was largely centered in rural areas (and around the Grange) while the media was in the cities. This is why it is often considered to be part of the Progressive era and it was NOT! Trump and AOC are both significant figures of the early 21st Century, but not the same!

[David Nieporent]

The Dems cite Jefferson and Jackson as their roots -- but FDR essentially created a *new* party in 1933 and that is evidenced by a lot of Jacksonian Democracy communities going from all D to all R.

This is a thing that did not, of course, happen.

[Bob from Ohio]

"“The Furer [sic] protects the law.” "

Two, comments, two consecutive Nazi references! Well done!

[ReaderY]

It is the only legitimate comparison. Trump and Hitler are the only two people who have sought to overthrow the republican constitution of a major Western country. As an objective historical matter, there is simply no other comparable historical precedent for what Trump is attempting to do. Their tactics are remarkably similar, including steps like creating personaly loyal shadow government agencies to control and displace the offical state ones.

And as noted above, Trump and his followers’ rhetoric about their political opponents are remarkably simialr as well.

[Bob from Ohio]

Counterpoint: You are just deranged because Trump broke your brain

[David Post]

As usual, Bob from Ohio has nothing of substance to say - just "you're such a dope." One wonders why he continues to post his comments here.

[Vryedni]

Like virtually all MAGA adherents, he's a nihilist. He's here to shitpost and fight, not to argue.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Reader Y -- In addition to Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II (who, with Reagan, took down the USSR), let me see:

Andrew Jackson -- "John Marshall has made his decision, now let's see him enforce it.'

Abraham Lincoln -- Maryland was never "in rebellion"...

Woodrow Wilson -- WWI ban on free speech, etc.

Franklin Roosevelt -- Ban on private ownership of gold (etc.!!!).

Lyndon Johnson -- Vietnam.

B. Hussain Obama -- Pallets 'o Cash for Iran.

Brandon -- Ibid.

[Absaroka]

"Trump and Hitler are the only two people who have sought to overthrow the republican constitution of a major Western country"

Just for the sake of completeness, Franco, Napoleon, Mussolini...

[Bob from Ohio]

Italy was a kingdom, not a republic [David Nieporent probably]

Napoleon III

Piłsudski in Poland too.

[Absaroka]

"Italy was a kingdom, not a republic"

It had a king, but has also had prime ministers since 1861, when it was unified. So a constitutional monarchy, like Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Britain, ...".

If ReaderY's list intended to only discuss dictators taking over 'pure' democracies, i.e. ones that weren't constitutional monarchies, then I yield the point! I just didn't take it that way, because people usually don't draw much of a line between pure democracies like France and nominal monarchies like Denmark or whatever.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"One might expect - or at least hope - that the judiciary as a whole, liberal and conservative, would close ranks when faced with a serious threat to its power, and that may indeed be what is happening."

The presumption is that this is a good thing.

I argue that it isn't.

I argue that the judiciary is way too powerful, that the perhaps necessary actions of the Warren Court have been percolating in an isolated purgatorial cesspool to the point where we have an attempted judicial coup.

The power of the judiciary needs to be reigned in for the good of the republic. Perhaps what this shows is just how out of control these tyrants with lifetime tenure have become.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596980095/reasonmagazinea-20/

[A Japanese Student]

Many of the lawsuits can be easily dismissed had Congress passed laws authorizing the executive actions. It's not that the judiciary is inherently powerful. For example, Congress could, in theory, repeal the Administrative Procedure Act, or abolish all the agencies Trump wants to kill.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No -- the Fascists in Black would find some other reason.

The problem is that the richest counties in this country now encircle DC. We have a legal/judicial/bureaucratic caste that is running the country much in the way that South Africa once was.

Andrew Jackson was the first POTUS not from either Tidewater Virginia or Boston, and when he took office in 1829, he simply fired EVERYONE and installed his people instead. It became problematic over time, eventually contributing to the assassination of a President (although it was more mental health) and that's what lead to the Civil Service system of today. We're where we were 250 years ago, just with Washington instead of London.

The other problem with your suggestion is that it was tried -- in 1995 with Newt Gingrich and then-President Clinton simply nullified everything.

If Trump fails, we will have WW-III -- I say world war for the very same reasons that WW-I was a world war.

[ReaderY]

You seriously don’t consider Musk and fellow billionaires to be a political caste?

[dwb68]

eyeroll. George Soros, Bill Gates, and Sheryl Sandburg never get included in the "political cast" because they are Democrats.

[David Nieporent]

Andrew Jackson was the first POTUS not from either Tidewater Virginia or Boston,

Is that as true as every other thing you've said? Why, yes, it is. Thomas Jefferson was not from the Tidewater region.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is not a doctoral dissertation, nimwit.

Neither Adams was from actual "Boston", nimwit.
Both were born in and lived in what was then Braintree and is now Quincy -- a municipality to the immediate south of Boston.

I neither know nor particularly care exactly where "Tidewater Virginia" ends (Boston ends at the Neponset River), my reference is to a culture, not a GPS coordinate.

Nimwit.

[David Nieporent]

This is not a doctoral dissertation, nimwit.

I know, because those are really unreliable, whereas your posted comment only made one factual error.

[Stephen Lathrop]

John Quincy Adams owned property in Boston. He was from Braintree, MA, and considered that his home throughout his life. While doing business in Boston, public or private, it was his custom whenever possible to commute back and forth to Braintree during weekends, on foot, and I suppose by rowboat where necessary.

People then were accustomed to a good deal more walking. Even today, folks driving automobiles do not think of Braintree as a suburb of Boston—the Southeast Expressway is too hellish to permit it.

Sometimes while driving it stop-and-go, I conjure an image of J.Q. Adams overtaking me from behind. It seems a near-certainty that the road has buried under it the footpath relied upon by Adams. It was a stroll of about 13 miles.

[Magister]

Dr. Ed 2 arguing that something is not a good thing is a strong indication that it is in fact a good thing. (Well, I've heard about the stopped clock that's right twice a day, but Dr. Ed 2 is more like a stopped 24 hour clock with month and day and maybe day of the week.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

They've murdered at least 22 judges in Mexico since 2012.
I fear that is where we are headed.

[David Nieporent]

How many are you signing up to kill?

[Dr. Ed 2]

What is your oxygen stat figure?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Hey there, as far as I know Dr. Ed has only called for judges he disagrees with to be arbitrarily imprisoned, not killed. Although once he finds that some are women, I guess all bets are off.

[SRG2]

I fear that is where we are headed.

Where do you think these threats to American judges will come from - the right or the left?

[JimM47]

In addition to the hypothesis that the current cases involve "more fundamental constitutional violations," I wonder if the current cases also involve worse procedural postures for the administration.

Some of the high-profile cases are preliminary orders in cases where the administration has created its own artificial emergencies. It is not surprising that, when considering preliminary relief in such cases, judges might be placing more emphasis on irreparable harms and the balance of equities -- where they are likely to be more united -- and might be placing less emphasis on the merits of litigation -- which might divide them more.

[mikeybates]

Am I right that the ideology score isn't based on a judge's decisions, it's based on which party they have donated money to in the past? So I guess a lawyer in Vermont who gave $50 to Phil Scott once would be coded as 'extremely conservative' since 100% of his donations went to Republicans?

[Drewski]

This comment sent me down a rabbit hole. It's interesting that weighing federal judges' scores with those of Senators during confirmation is a significantly better predictor of ideology than doing the same for the nominating President.

[Lee Moore]

Bingo. It’s a garbage in garbage out survey.

Judge Boasberg is rated a conservative.

[M L]

"One might expect - or at least hope - that the judiciary as a whole, liberal and conservative, would close ranks when faced with a serious threat to its power, and that may indeed be what is happening."

Yes . . . but the fact that the federal judiciary wields a certain amount of power today, does not mean that it is constitutionally proper for them to have that much power. You are conflating two different things here. In other words, you are assuming the conclusion (a true "begging the question") that whatever power the federal judiciary has is the constitutionally appropriate amount. A conclusion I would disagree with.

But I agree totally that individuals and institutions can be expected to act in ways that attempt to preserve their own power - furthermore, to aggrandize it.

A problem with lawyers and judges in general is that they all went through law school. And the problem with law school is that the legal education system as a whole has largely bought into a lot of questionable things. Basically, they teach precedent. The law and the Constitution means whatever a handful of judges have said from time to time over 200 plus years (but actually now, usually just in the last 50-60!). And so you have this unwieldy and nasty looking accretion of questionable opinions, and the whole of academia consists of twisting themselves into pretzels to construct this elaborate but laughable pretense that it can all be logically harmonized and justified. And that's your body of received wisdom on the law.

Anyway, beyond that, to the main point of this post, obviously the work here is being done by this bogus "ideology" categorization. They've apparently identified some sort of correlations in how federal judges rule. That's fine. Call it red team and blue team. Now comes a purple team. The red team and blue team, in addition to disagreeing with each other, also disagree with the purple team. Ok, fair enough. A sort of "700 Article 3 judges can't be wrong!" logic.

[SRG2]

If the president attempts to do something that on its face is unconstitutional, who has the delegated power to tell him to stop?

[M L]

I could tell him myself if I'm so inclined. So could you.

[SRG2]

Try answering the actual question, fuckwit

[Dr. Ed 2]

I have problems with Bonica's underlying DIMES research.

First, political party really doesn't mean that much right now, and the best example of this is the Massachusetts gay marriage decision where the majority had been appointed by Republican Governors -- including the Chief Justice -- and the minority had been appointed by Democrats, I believe all by Dukakis.

One may donate to Susan Collins (R-ME) or Ted Cruz (R-TX) but unless one was engaged in strategic giving, I doubt one would donate to both. And the next NY Senate race may be Schumer v. AOC, both Democrats.

But there's a much larger fallacy here -- the presumption that the legal population statistically represents the general population and it doesn't. For example, the average US female is 5' 04" -- but the average female college basketball player is (say) 6' 00".

Bear in mind that the average US male is 5' 09" and you conclude that women are taller than men. See the problem here???

Even if politics of the appointing President was the sole factor (and Senate Confirmation irrelevant), conservative Presidents are still picking people to the left of them.

And then there's this:

"While only about 33% of judges appointed during 1980s have contributor DIME scores, the coverage rate rises to 71% of judges appointed since 2001."

I didn't even know that judges were ALLOWED TO make political contributions, and this shows a vastly more political judicial cadre than we used to have (presuming DIMES goes back to include 1980s data).

OK law professors, explain this as being irrelevant....

[Drewski]

It's not irrelevant exactly, it's just babbling nonsense with no relationship to the research or results. It's like listening to a child try to explain arbitrage after overhearing a conversation about it. You don't really understand the most basic concepts but also lack the attention span to try. Instead you just assume others are as lazy, sloppy, and dishonest as yourself and use that as a basis for criticism. It's sad.

[David Nieporent]

I like his "party doesn't mean much right now" and then he reaches for a single anecdote from more than 20 years ago — for literally no other reason than that it involves Massachusetts — in a desperate attempt to prove it.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

The dataset is called DIME, not "DIMES". Bonica is not a law professor. DIME CFScores do not use political party to estimate the scores, and nothing in your analogy to sampling is relevant to how the scores are calculated. The entire point of the methodology is that it allows the possibility of calculating an ideological score without knowing underlying labels for any of the donors or candidates. The scores are calculated in a way that understands the distinction between donating to Susan Collins and Ted Cruz. The research that led to DIME addresses the issue of strategic giving, extensively.

Nothing in this comment whatsoever reflects even a basic understanding of what you are talking about.

I am begging you not to reply to something you found out about 15 minutes ago as if you know anything about it. DIME is a standard database and the CFScores a standard method for addressing this kind of question. It has been rigorously vetted by many, many, many professionals of all ideological backgrounds over a long period of time. It is the gold standard for this task.

One way you know the basic method is sound is that the ideological CFScores produced for DIME of elected officials correlate very well with other best-practice ideological scores based on legislative speech and roll-call voting (e.g. NOMINATE and others)

Full disclosure: I have also published work on ideological scaling of political data, though not donation data, and projects related to mine as well as co-authors of mine are cited in the original DIME paper, "Mapping the Ideological Marketplace". I have never met Bonica in person and have no affiliation with Stanford.

[SRG2]

I am begging you not to reply to something you found out about 15 minutes ago as if you know anything about it.

But this is the Cult's SOP - though it's usually 5 minutes not 15, whether it's the birth citizenship clause, the pardons clause, the National Archives - or this.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Please, Daivd, Seek Help — Glad to have an expert available to query.

I have long contended that Chief Justice Roberts' record needs to be divided to be understood. In one division go cases with high political valence, but which otherwise lack power to directly affect election activity—basically culture war cases about sexuality, social equity, or other issues which divide the electorate, but without legal implications for the particulars of what happens during campaigns, or at the polls. Into the other division go cases which directly impact voting practices by regulating voting-related activity—such as voter ID, gerrymandering, campaign finance, regulation of contributors, etc.

I contend that Roberts' record varies along that scheme of division. He seems to be content to let social-justice-related cases go either way, with maybe a bias toward social liberty. He seems rigidly doctrinaire with regard to political-power related cases, almost invariably favoring decisions to delight Rs, and enrage Ds.

As an expert, can you judge whether the analytical tools you know about have power to confirm or refute that hypothesis about Roberts' decisions?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Please, Daivd, Seek Help — I did not intend that query of mine as a rhetorical stalking horse. I am genuinely open to any answer you care to furnish. I hope you see this and reply.

[Magnus Pilatus, MBA, MD, JD, PhDx2]

I saw a stat recently:

67% of all national injunctions this century were applied against Trump.

94% of those judges were Democrat.

---
That tells the better story of where the judicial activism is coming from.

[BBSquatter]

A better truism:

“Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.”
― David Horowitz

[SRG2]

And 100% of the nationwide injunctions against Biden were by Republican judges. I: guess activism isn't restricted to one side.

[Bob from Ohio]

14 versus 64 against Trump.

[SRG2]

It's still 100%

[Drewski]

Since shithead here didn't provide a cite, I will: https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-137/district-court-reform-nationwide-injunctions/

True story. It breaks down partly because conservative judges have used vacatur preferentially over injunctions. See, for example, NLRB v Canning. It should come as no surprise that the party that speaks against national injunctions has often nominated judges who disfavor them, instead using vacatur to similar effect when available.

[Roger S]

Judge Boasberg certified a class action lawsuit for criminal gang aliens facing deportation. Seems radical leftist to me.

[SRG2]

Is Boasberg advocating for seizing the means of production?

And why do you assume that in such cases the government never makes mistakes? (tm USSR)

I find it funny that people like you insist that we shouldn't trust the government, and come out in favour of reduced government intrusion, but when push comes to shove, you argue - implicitly at least - that we should trust the government, and that intrusive government is fine and dandy as long as it's just affecting "those people".

[Roger S]

The government makes mistakes all the time. And this judge is making a mistake.

[SRG2]

But you seem not to accept that the government might make mistakes over who is an illegal immigrant and gang member and who is a green card holder with tattoos. Or perhaps you just don't care, as they're all "those people"...

[Roger S]

Humans make mistakes. You have apparently mistaken me for someone else.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nope. He's got you dead to rights.

[SRG2]

Assuming you're telling the truth, do you think that there should not be any mechanism to correct those mistakes?

[Dan Schiavetta]

"Bonica suggests that "what changed" between Trump's first term and today is that "today's cases pose more fundamental constitutional violations uniting judges across partisan divides," and that strikes me as, broadly speaking, basically correct."

Undoubtedly.

[Thought about __ all my life]

Judicial Coup: Radical Leftist Judges Wage All-Out War Against President Trump and the Nation — 129 Legal Challenges Filed in Two Months, MORE THAN ALL US PRESIDENTS COMBINED!

[dwb68]

Certified Trump hater with incurable derangement syndrome cites statistics that confirm his biases.

In other news, forum shopping by lawfare-wielding blue states attorney general is fake news!

[Longtobefree]

Why hasn't the (theoretical) republican majority in both legislative houses passed a law specifying that district judges rulings only apply in their district, and only to those parties in the case?
Come on guys, it ain't that hard!
And/or, pass a law that all cases impacting presidential use of executive power must originate in the supreme court? Let those lazy lawyers earn their pensions and book deals.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Because there isn't a Republican Majority.

[Bob from Ohio]

Because the Senate won't eliminate the filibuster and the Dems wouldn't vote for such laws.

[David Nieporent]

Why hasn't the (theoretical) republican majority in both legislative houses passed a law specifying that district judges rulings only apply in their district, and only to those parties in the case?

Because that would make the existence of Judge Kacsmaryk nearly useless to them.

[PaulS]

The escalation will be filing criminal charges based on conflicts (Including Judge and spouse/relative etc) - win or lose (almost certainly lose) it would take the judge off the table for the duration

[F.D. Wolf]

According to the Harvard Law Review, of all the nationwide injunctions between 2001 and 2020 (Bush, Obama, Trump [first term], Biden), 67% of them were issued against Trump, and 92% of those were issued by Democrat-appointed judges.

Bush, 6 nationwide injunctions, 50% issued by Democrat judges
Obama, 12 injunctions, 58% issued by Republican judges
Trump, 64 injunctions, 92% issued by Democrat judges
Biden, 14 injunctions, 100% issued by Republican judges

https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-137/district-court-reform-nationwide-injunctions/

[David Nieporent]

According to recent police statistics, 50% of the local MS-13 members were arrested, and only 4% of the local Chamber of Commerce members were. This proves that there's some sort of law enforcement bias against MS-13.

[Thought about __ all my life]

"WASHINGTON EXAMINER " says the opposite

Judges blocking Trump government efficiency moves have history of liberal activism
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/judges-blocking-trump-government-efficiency-moves-have-history-of-liberal-activism/ar-AA1z0pRE
"