When Presidents Think About Defying the Courts

“We have had an executive branch that has emasculated itself by surrendering constantly to the idea that once the court says something, that’s it, it’s the law of the land,” Mike Huckabee, the conservative commentator and former governor of Arkansas, said on Fox News, on Monday, talking about the court rulings against President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban. “When I hear that phrase, ‘It’s the law of the land ’cause the court said it,’ I think, Did you guys pass ninth-grade civics, for gosh sake?” It is unclear what was taught in ninth-grade civics classes at Hope High School in the early nineteen-seventies, when Huckabee was a student there, but it probably wasn’t that judicial opinions are a form of advice that a President can disregard.