WSJ editorial board lauds Supreme Court for reining in judges 'abusing' power

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board applauded the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. CASA, which significantly limited how district courts use nationwide injunctions as a check on Presidential power.

"This is a positive development in many ways, given the dysfunctions that universal injunctions encourage," the editorial board wrote. "If halting any new White House policy requires convincing only a single federal judge in any favorable forum anywhere in the U.S., Democrats will gladly run to California, and Republicans to Texas. All-or-nothing emergency appeals then rise to the Supreme Court, as critics accuse the Justices of settling substantive questions on a 'shadow docket.' That’s the experience of recent years."

Critics have argued that the decision in Trump v. CASA is evidence of the Supreme Court ceding more power to the Executive Branch. Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, that "such complicity should know no place in our system of law."

“With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution,” Sotomayor wrote. “Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way."

The Journal's editorial board countered that the ruling cleans up a process that had become unworkably murky over the years. They echoed Justice Amy Coney Barrett's argument in the majority opinion, that the dissenting justices appeared to "[decry] an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."

"The ruling is a heavy weight on the scale against broad injunctions by district-court judges," the editorial board wrote. "But as Justice Brett Kavanaugh notes in an important concurrence, plaintiffs can still appeal the denial of an injunction. In cases of particular significance with broad national impact, the Supreme Court can act and set a national uniform standard while the merits of the lawsuit are being heard by lower courts."

The board wrote, "When the President abuses his executive power, the answer isn’t for federal judges to abuse theirs."