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Wash U professor opines on National Emergency Declaration
Posted on: February 15, 2019 at 14:22:08 CT
TigerJackSwartz MU
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if you want a bit of local flavor, and 10 other opinions as well. If you want a visualization to attribute to Legomsky, think of Donald Sutherland as the professor in Animal House:
Stephen Legomsky, law professor, Washington University
The purpose of the National Emergency Act was not to authorize presidential declarations of emergency; it was to limit them. The statute, passed in 1976, was specifically designed to curb what Congress saw as excessive and unjustifiable presidential usurpations of congressional powers. The very first sentence begins, “An Act to terminate certain authorities with respect to national emergencies still in effect …” [my emphasis].
This much is crystal clear: There is no national security emergency at the southern border. Illegal entries today are a small fraction of what they were 20 years ago, and the total size of the resulting undocumented population has stayed flat for at least the past 10 years. In contrast, there is indeed a humanitarian crisis, but it’s the one that the Trump administration has unilaterally created through its systematic assault on the right to apply for asylum.
Whether the courts will invalidate the declaration of national emergency is a close question, however. On the one hand, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii refused to review a presidential claim of a national security threat justifying the Muslim ban. On the other hand, the courts might well fear the implications of a precedent of unquestioning deference to “emergency” declarations. Unlike the fictitious border emergency claimed by President Trump, a future progressive president could make a serious case for a green emergency, a democracy emergency, a gun safety emergency, or a civil rights emergency.
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/15/18225359/trump-speech-national-emergencies-act-border
Stephen Legomsky, law professor, Washington University
The purpose of the National Emergency Act was not to authorize presidential declarations of emergency; it was to limit them. The statute, passed in 1976, was specifically designed to curb what Congress saw as excessive and unjustifiable presidential usurpations of congressional powers. The very first sentence begins, “An Act to terminate certain authorities with respect to national emergencies still in effect …” [my emphasis].
This much is crystal clear: There is no national security emergency at the southern border. Illegal entries today are a small fraction of what they were 20 years ago, and the total size of the resulting undocumented population has stayed flat for at least the past 10 years. In contrast, there is indeed a humanitarian crisis, but it’s the one that the Trump administration has unilaterally created through its systematic assault on the right to apply for asylum.
Whether the courts will invalidate the declaration of national emergency is a close question, however. On the one hand, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii refused to review a presidential claim of a national security threat justifying the Muslim ban. On the other hand, the courts might well fear the implications of a precedent of unquestioning deference to “emergency” declarations. Unlike the fictitious border emergency claimed by President Trump, a future progressive president could make a serious case for a green emergency, a democracy emergency, a gun safety emergency, or a civil rights emergency.
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/15/18225359/trump-speech-national-emergencies-act-border
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Wash U professor opines on National Emergency Declaration - TigerJackSwartz MU - 2/15 14:22:08