Earlier this week, senior U.S. District judge Mark Wolf (an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan) retired from his post, saying President Donald Trump’s “assault on the rule of law was “deeply disturbing” and that he felt “compelled to speak out.” And now, he’s not sparing the Supreme Court from criticism for enabling Trump.
In a recent interview with Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, Wolf argued that judges need “support” from the institution of the judiciary, given that Trump and his followers are openly calling for the impeachment of federal judges for simply issuing rulings against the administration. He added that such behavior would have been seen as immediately disqualifying during the Watergate era.
“I’m afraid if the courts do not have the support they need … our rule of law and our democracy will be doomed,” Wolf said.
Wolf offered particularly sharp criticism of the current Supreme Court, which he accused of regularly undermining lower court judges and longstanding precedent with decisions issued on its emergency docket (also known as the “shadow docket”), which are sometimes devoid of any explanation and rationale for the decision. Wolf’s argument is sound: Stanford University professor Adam Bonica found that between May and June of this year, lower courts ruled against Trump 94.3 percent of the time, going against him in 82 of 87 cases. During that same period, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the administration 93.7 percent of the time in 15 of 16 cases.
“When Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa all started hitting 60 home runs or more when no one in the history of baseball except Babe Ruth and Roger Maris had ever hit 60 home runs, there was reason to suspect something improper was going on,” Wolf told Politico. “When the president wins 17 out of 20 cases decided on the shadow docket, to me at least it raises a concern about whether there’s a possible lack of impartiality.”
Cheney observed that Wolf isn’t the only Reagan-appointed judge to accuse Trump of violating the law. When ruling against Trump’s attempt to repeal birthright citizenship, U.S. District Judge John Cougheneur wrote: “It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore.”
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has repeatedly assailed the January 6 insurrection from the bench, along with Trump’s pardon of the roughly 1,500 Janury 6 defendants that he issued on his first day in office. And U.S. District Judge William Young denounced the Trump administration’s revocations of green cards for pro-Palestinian immigrants on American college campuses as a threat to free speech.
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