On Friday, a judge ordered the government to immediately release Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk on bail from a federal immigration detention center. The judge said Ozturk’s challenge of her arrest raised serious claims of due process and First Amendment violations, and that her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and […]
Imagine, for a moment, a president who doesn’t want to spend money. Given the last several decades of presidential history, this may sound fanciful. But assume that a president has successfully campaigned on spending less money, and perhaps even balancing the federal budget, and then, once in office, has decided to try to carry out […]
A federal judge ruled today that the Donald Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 to remove alleged members of a Venezuelan gang from the country is unlawful. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a Trump appointee, issued a permanent injunction barring AEA-based removals from the Southern District of Texas. Rodriguez […]
Newly uncovered guidance from the Justice Department claims the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) allows federal law enforcement officers to enter the houses of suspected gang members without a warrant and remove them from the country without any judicial review. In a March 14 memorandum, obtained by the open government group Property of the People through a […]
Due process is really having a moment, and the Founders are rolling in their graves. The basic legal principle—that people have the right to challenge the evidence against them before the government takes away their liberty—is central to the Constitution. And yet, it has come under fire recently, after President Donald Trump’s administration deported hundreds […]
President Donald Trump and his administration continued to assault the concept of due process this week, with Trump claiming that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be entitled to appearances before judges prior to deportation. “I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t […]
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss how President Donald Trump is de-prioritizing due process by not adhering to a ruling from the Supreme Court. They also talk about how Harvard University’s tax status could be in jeopardy and reflect on the legacy of Pope Francis. 0:00—Introduction 0:12—The Pope’s legacy 5:56—Is […]
Justice Abandoned: How the Supreme Court Ignored the Constitution and Enabled Mass Incarceration, by Rachel Elise Barkow, Harvard University Press, 320 pages, $35 “The United States is now a world leader when it comes to incarceration,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and co-author Janie Nitze noted last year in their book Over Ruled. They added that […]
Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as “the least dangerous branch” of the federal government because it holds neither “the purse” nor “the sword.” Rather, the federal courts have “merely judgment.” In fact, the judiciary “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” But what happens to […]
Warning that the executive branch’s claims should shock “the intuitive sense of liberty” of Americans, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit today unanimously rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to stay a lower court order to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a prison camp in El Salvador. The […]