Fourth Circuit Bobos Put Judiciary On Collision Course With America
The federal judiciary’s legitimacy rests on its connection with the values of people whom it serves and who pay its salaries. Indeed, as judges serve without any democratic oversight, judges’ basic moral commitments must mirror those of the people...I nearly drove off the road today when I heard that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued a 10 [Democrat[-3 [Republican] decision basically blocking President Trump’s revised travel ban—and I’m a law professor: I’m not easily shocked by federal judges [Federal appeals court maintains freeze of Trump’s travel ban. Attorney general vows Supreme Court appeal, by Ann E, Marimow and Robert Barnes, Washington Post, May 25, 2017]. This is an extraordinary assertion of judicial supremacy over the Executive and Legislative branches’ right to make immigration policy. Not surprisingly, the reaction is intense—and ominous e.g. Why Trump has a responsibility to ignore the Fourth Circuit, by Daniel Horowitz, Conservative Review, May 25, 2017.
But in a larger sense, this development is not surprising. It’s the culmination a phenomenon Charles Murray documented in his book Coming Apart—our professional, business, and educational elites have isolated themselves from the rest of American and, in particular, the working class for whom they have growing contempt.
New York Times columnist David Brooks,... in his satirical Bobos in Paradise, to which Murray alludes repeatedly, described how our new elites’ identities rest upon meritocratic achievement and cultural self-expression rather than attachment to traditional American culture...
The legal issues Trump’s orders present are easy. Congress has plenary power to decide who comes into this country. Section 8 U.S.C. §1182(f) delegates this power to the President giving authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever he “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”...
At some point—perhaps sooner than we might expect, the democracy will realize this.