'Fake news': Law professor schools JD Vance after he suggests Trump ignore federal judges

11 February

Vice President JD Vance recently suggested that federal judges blocking President Donald Trump were overstepping their boundaries, potentially laying the groundwork for Trump ignoring the courts. One constitutional law expert is warning that while the United States is not yet in a constitutional crisis, a president defying the judiciary would be an unprecedented step in that direction.

During a Tuesday segment on CNN, Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar urged Americans to "stay tuned and stay vigilant" in the early days of the Trump administration, and that the public and the media should familiarize themselves with the Constitution in the event it is breached.

"If we aren't vigilant and we don't stand behind the rule of law and courts, then we could be in a constitutional crisis down the line," he said. "If and when these cases go up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules, then actually presidents must obey. That's actually a deep part of what the Constitution actually provides for. And Trump himself, the very first thing he was obliged to do was to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, as every president is obliged to do."

At that point, host Pamela Brown brought up a remark Vance made in a 2021 podcast segment, before he ran for U.S. Senate. Vance suggested that if Trump were elected president again, he should "fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state [and] replace them with our people." He then added that if the courts attempted to block him from doing so, Trump should "stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, 'the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.' ... If we continue to let bureaucrats control the entire country, even when Republicans win elections, then we've lost."

Amar countered that "what JD Vance said is not true." He noted that the supposed Andrew Jackson quote Vance referenced was "fake news," and that experts have deemed it "apocryphal," meaning it's doubtful Jackson ever uttered the phrase. Amar added that the origin of that story comes from the 1832 Worcester v. Georgia case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia's seizure of Cherokee land where gold was found violated several federal treaties. And ultimately, Jackson emphasized that it was the duty of presidents to obey the federal judiciary as a co-equal branch of government.

"That's what presidents have done in years past. And I fully expect that this president will do that if he really wants to make America great and have a good reputation going forward," Amar said. "Our best presidents actually have been law abiding presidents. The greatest of them all was Abraham Lincoln. He did not disobey a Supreme Court order, as some people have sometimes said. It's just not true. It's fake news."

Watch Amar's segment below, or by clicking this link.

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