On Sunday morning, I hosted a Substack Live conversation about Friday’s convulsive Supreme Court ruling with Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, and someone I’ve turned to for expertise many times over the past decade. He’s been opposed in principle to universal injunctions for years, and argues in a new piece for The Atlantic that, whatever else you might say about the Republican-appointed justices and their solicitousness of Donald Trump, they got this holding correct.
I have similar misgivings about universal injunctions, but I formed that opinion long ago, before the U.S. was under acute authoritarian threat. The nub of the discussion is about whether this new context, where the Constitution itself is under sustained assault by the president, should change our views about what tools should be available to federal judges, and when.
If you watch, you’ll see I’m torn on the question, but ultimately believe the proper response to Friday’s decision is no different than the proper response to the Supreme Court’s longer-standing legitimacy problems: a commitment to real reform at the first opportunity.
Thanks to those of you who caught the conversation in real time. For the rest of you, please enjoy this as special bonus context, with (hopefully) more live conversations to come in the near future.
