PDA

View Full Version : Nationwide Injunctions Menace Rule of Law and Democracy Itself, Senior DOJ Official Says




Swordsmyth
02-07-2019, 05:31 PM
The historically unprecedented, recent tendency of unelected federal judges to issue sweeping nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration, in which they impose their own policy preferences on the nation, is becoming a threat to the rule of law and democratic governance, a senior U.S. Department of Justice official told a Heritage Foundation audience.
The statement came from Beth Williams, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, during a Heritage panel discussion (https://www.heritage.org/courts/event/the-legality-nationwide-injunctions) titled, “The Legitimacy of Nationwide Injunctions” that took place on Feb. 4.
According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) review, an average of 1.5 such injunctions were issued each year against the administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Under Barack Obama, the average rose to 2.5, Williams said.
Twenty injunctions, representing an eightfold increase over the Obama-era average, were issued against Donald Trump’s administration during its first year.
“We are now at 30, matching the total number of injunctions against the first 42 presidents combined,” she said.
‘Cosmic’ Injunctions The DOJ opposes nationwide injunctions, which are also known as “universal” injunctions, “limitless” injunctions, or as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has termed them, “cosmic” injunctions, Williams said.
Nationwide injunctions “grant relief to parties outside the case and outside the class-action framework, when relief is not necessary to address the plaintiffs’ injury,” she said.
“The core problem, in other words, is not so much the geographic scope of the injury, but its reach far beyond the confines of the case or controversy before the court.”
In earlier days, it was thought that when courts deemed it necessary to issue injunctions to provide immediate emergency relief to litigants, those injunctions ought to be narrowly drawn, affecting only the parties involved or the jurisdictions, states, or judicial circuits in which the litigation was taking place.


More at: https://www.theepochtimes.com/nationwide-injunctions-menace-rule-of-law-and-democracy-itself-senior-doj-official-says_2791491.html