193. The "War" on Judges

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The Supreme Court made a fair amount of news last week, but I wanted to use today’s post to reflect upon a story that got swallowed up in the SNAP-related developments—comments made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday, November 7. Specifically, Blanche attributed the Trump administration’s myriad losses in the lower federal courts to “rogue activist judges,” claiming that these “liberals” are “more political or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or D.A.” As Blanche continued (with my emphasis), “There’s a group of judges that are repeat players, and that’s obviously not by happenstance, that’s intentional, and it’s a war, man.” (There’s video here.) Exhorting young lawyers and law students in the audience to come work for the Department of Justice, Blanche continued, “We need you, because it is a war, and it’s something we will not win unless we keep on fighting. It’s hard to get the media, it’s hard to get the American people to focus on what a travesty it is when you have an individual judge be able to stop an entire operation or an entire administrative policy that’s constitutional and allowed just because he or she chooses to do so. So, it’s a war.”

These remarks, of course, did not come entirely off the cuff (you don’t refer to something as a “war” three times by accident), nor did they take place in isolation. The Attorney General herself has filed a (frivolous) misconduct complaint against Chief Judge Boasberg on the D.C. district court; Stephen Miller keeps decrying each adverse ruling against the Trump administration as just part of a broader “judicial insurrection”; and, although the hearing has been postponed for now, the Senate Judiciary Committee had been set to convene tomorrow to hold a hearing on incredibly dubious claims of misconduct by two district judges (never mind that the impeachment power belongs to the House of Representatives).

It’s certainly not a coincidence that we’re seeing all of these spurious attacks on lower courts at the exact same ...