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Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - The justices must at long last deal with ‘chronic injunctivitis'
This week, the Supreme Court continued to deliberate over what to do with the growing number of national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration. The court has long failed to address the problem, and so-called 'chronic injunctivitis' is now raging across the court system. Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions. Both Democratic and Republican presidents have long argued that federal judges are out of control in issuing national injunctions that freeze the entire executive branch for years on a given policy. For presidents, you have to effectively sweep the district courts 677-to-0 if you want to be able to carry out controversial measures. Any one judge can halt the entire government. Under President Barack Obama, Justice Elena Kagan expressed outrage over the injunctions in public comments at Northwestern University School of Law. Kagan lashed out at the obvious 'forum shopping' by then conservative advocates to get before favorable courts, insisting 'It just cannot be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.' In his first term, Trump faced a more than 450 percent increase in the number of such injunctions over the number issued under Obama — a rise from 12 to 64. The number then went down to just 14 under former President Joe Biden. With Trump back in office, district courts have now outstripped that record and may surpass the total from the first term in the first year. However, when the current case came up before the Supreme Court on one of the Trump injunctions, Kagan suggested that this was 'different,' because Trump was clearly wrong. In oral argument, Kagan snapped at the Solicitor General: 'Every court is ruling against you.' It was a curious point coming from a justice who had previously acknowledged that challengers were forum-shopping by going to favorable judges, as with the current cases coming out of largely blue states. Kagan did not explain where the line should be drawn, leading to speculation on when something would be viewed as 'just sorta wrong' or 'really, really wrong.' This week, the Supreme Court enjoined the Maine House of Representatives from denying State Representative Laurel Libby her right to speak and vote on the floor. In an outrageous action, the Democratic majority had effectively taken Libby's constituents hostage by telling her that, unless she apologized for identifying a transgender athlete in public comments, she could not vote. The Supreme Court voted 7-2 to lift the ban, with Kagan joining the more conservative justices. However, in her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (who has favored the injunctions in the Trump cases) stressed that there was no need for an injunction here because there were no 'significant legislative votes scheduled in the upcoming weeks' or where Libby's lack of a vote would 'impact the outcome.' It again left many scratching their heads on what Jackson would consider a 'significant vote.' Moreover, thousands of Maine residents have been denied representation on the state House floor. That would seem significant even if the justice did not find certain bills to be sufficiently weighty. These different approaches only deepen the uncertainly over the standards for lower courts. Just in case the Supreme Court doubted the need for greater clarity on the use of these injunctions, Boston District Judge Myong J. Joun, perfected the record this week. The Biden appointee had just been reversed by the Supreme Court last month when he issued a temporary restraining order that the Trump Administration to pay out frozen grants worth more than $65 million. The administration had raised questions about the basis for the grants and ordered a review. Usually, a temporary order freezes the parties from changing the status quo to allow for review. It is difficult to appeal such an order, and the parties generally wait for a couple of weeks to seek review after the court issues a preliminary injunction. But Judge Joun wanted to use the temporary restraining order to force the payments to happen, changing the status quo permanently. This did not seem like temporary relief, since money is not likely to come back after it is paid out. This week, Joun was back with another injunction. This time he enjoined an effort of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to initiate a reduction-in-force and prepare for the potential elimination of the Department of Education. Despite the false claims that Trump's underlying executive order actually shut down the department, it stated that McMahon should, 'to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.' While Joun admits that this was not a department shutdown, he still enjoined these efforts in an 88-page decision full of sweeping, dramatic language that sounds more like a policy paper than a restrained judicial order. The court simply declared that even a reduction in force would make it 'effectively impossible for the department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions.' Many on the left again celebrated a judge effectively micromanaging the executive branch. Michael Mann, a climate professor and senior administrator at the University of Pennsylvania, even seemed to add a threat — that 'If Trump doesn't comply, we're in second amendment territory.' Insurrection aside, it is clearly time for the Supreme Court to do something about this. Despite a majority of justices harrumphing for years about these injunctions, lower court judges continue to issue them with abandon. In the meantime, presidents like Trump are looking at two years of litigation before they can make meaningful changes, including downsizing the government. For the Supreme Court, it has become madness, as emergency motions pile up every morning after executive programs are frozen overnight. The solution to chronic injunctivitis is simple: You give district judges a dose of clarity and tell them not to call you in the morning. Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School, where he teaches a course on the Supreme Court and the Constitution. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
24-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
The justices must at long last deal with ‘chronic injunctivitis'
This week, the Supreme Court continued to deliberate over what to do with the growing number of national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration. The court has long failed to address the problem, and so-called 'chronic injunctivitis' is now raging across the court system. Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions. Both Democratic and Republican presidents have long argued that federal judges are out of control in issuing national injunctions that freeze the entire executive branch for years on a given policy. For presidents, you have to effectively sweep the district courts 677-to-0 if you want to be able to carry out controversial measures. Any one judge can halt the entire government. Under President Barack Obama, Justice Elena Kagan expressed outrage over the injunctions in public comments at Northwestern University School of Law. Kagan lashed out at the obvious 'forum shopping' by then conservative advocates to get before favorable courts, insisting 'It just cannot be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.' In his first term, Trump faced a more than 450 percent increase in the number of such injunctions over the number issued under Obama — a rise from 12 to 64. The number then went down to just 14 under former President Joe Biden. With Trump back in office, district courts have now outstripped that record and may surpass the total from the first term in the first year. However, when the current case came up before the Supreme Court on one of the Trump injunctions, Kagan suggested that this was 'different,' because Trump was clearly wrong. In oral argument, Kagan snapped at the Solicitor General: 'Every court is ruling against you.' It was a curious point coming from a justice who had previously acknowledged that challengers were forum-shopping by going to favorable judges, as with the current cases coming out of largely blue states. Kagan did not explain where the line should be drawn, leading to speculation on when something would be viewed as 'just sorta wrong' or 'really, really wrong.' This week, the Supreme Court enjoined the Maine House of Representatives from denying State Representative Laurel Libby her right to speak and vote on the floor. In an outrageous action, the Democratic majority had effectively taken Libby's constituents hostage by telling her that, unless she apologized for identifying a transgender athlete in public comments, she could not vote. The Supreme Court voted 7-2 to lift the ban, with Kagan joining the more conservative justices. However, in her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (who has favored the injunctions in the Trump cases) stressed that there was no need for an injunction here because there were no 'significant legislative votes scheduled in the upcoming weeks' or where Libby's lack of a vote would 'impact the outcome.' It again left many scratching their heads on what Jackson would consider a 'significant vote.' Moreover, thousands of Maine residents have been denied representation on the state House floor. That would seem significant even if the justice did not find certain bills to be sufficiently weighty. These different approaches only deepen the uncertainly over the standards for lower courts. Just in case the Supreme Court doubted the need for greater clarity on the use of these injunctions, Boston District Judge Myong J. Joun, perfected the record this week. The Biden appointee had just been reversed by the Supreme Court last month when he issued a temporary restraining order that the Trump Administration to pay out frozen grants worth more than $65 million. The administration had raised questions about the basis for the grants and ordered a review. Usually, a temporary order freezes the parties from changing the status quo to allow for review. It is difficult to appeal such an order, and the parties generally wait for a couple of weeks to seek review after the court issues a preliminary injunction. But Judge Joun wanted to use the temporary restraining order to force the payments to happen, changing the status quo permanently. This did not seem like temporary relief, since money is not likely to come back after it is paid out. This week, Joun was back with another injunction. This time he enjoined an effort of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to initiate a reduction-in-force and prepare for the potential elimination of the Department of Education. Despite the false claims that Trump's underlying executive order actually shut down the department, it stated that McMahon should, 'to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.' While Joun admits that this was not a department shutdown, he still enjoined these efforts in an 88-page decision full of sweeping, dramatic language that sounds more like a policy paper than a restrained judicial order. The court simply declared that even a reduction in force would make it 'effectively impossible for the department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions.' Many on the left again celebrated a judge effectively micromanaging the executive branch. Michael Mann, a climate professor and senior administrator at the University of Pennsylvania, even seemed to add a threat — that 'If Trump doesn't comply, we're in second amendment territory.' Insurrection aside, it is clearly time for the Supreme Court to do something about this. Despite a majority of justices harrumphing for years about these injunctions, lower court judges continue to issue them with abandon. In the meantime, presidents like Trump are looking at two years of litigation before they can make meaningful changes, including downsizing the government. For the Supreme Court, it has become madness, as emergency motions pile up every morning after executive programs are frozen overnight. The solution to chronic injunctivitis is simple: You give district judges a dose of clarity and tell them not to call you in the morning. Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School, where he teaches a course on the Supreme Court and the Constitution.
Boston Globe
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
George Ryan, Illinois governor who halted prison executions, dies at 91
Barely a year into his single four-year term, Mr. Ryan said that since 1977, when the Illinois death penalty was reinstated after a federal pause, the state's capital punishment system had been rife with grievous errors. Of 25 inmates who had been placed on death row in that time, he said, 12 had been executed, but 13 had been sent there for crimes they did not commit and were later exonerated and released. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I cannot support a system which in its administration has proved so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life,' he said. Advertisement He added, 'Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate.' The moratorium was hailed by opponents of capital punishment, who said that wrongful death-penalty cases were common in America, often corrupted by issues of race, poverty, bad lawyering, and police or prosecutorial misconduct. Contemporary research has suggested that 70 percent of fully reviewed capital cases contain reversible errors. Advertisement But Mr. Ryan's blanket commutation was questioned by conservative law-and-order groups and by families and friends of victims slain by people who ultimately landed on death row. Many said the moratorium amounted to a killers' reprieve granted by a governor capriciously overturning settled court decisions. Mr. Ryan, however, insisted that his moratorium was an act of conscience based on statistical evidence that people on death row in Illinois -- guilty or not -- were likely to be executed. He found himself in a media spotlight, being compared to his fellow Republican, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, who had presided over 135 executions in five years in office and who was running for president at the time. Mr. Ryan did not seek reelection in 2002. Some political observers linked his demurral to a series of criminal convictions of former subordinates from his days as the Illinois secretary of state, and to reports that prosecutors were examining his conduct while in that position. Months later, as his term ended, Mr. Ryan pardoned four death-row inmates whose innocence had been proved by new evidence. He then exercised the ultimate authority in his arsenal by commuting, to life terms, the death sentences of all 167 inmates still facing execution in Illinois. It was the largest commutation of death-row sentences in the nation's history, and it stripped the Illinois death row bare of inmates. Advertisement He announced his decision in a speech before a large audience in a hall at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. 'I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,' the governor said, quoting Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the US Supreme Court. He added, 'The Legislature couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. But I will not stand for it. I must act. Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error, error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.' Mr. Ryan's attack on capital punishment drew praise from world leaders, including Pope John Paul II and, in South Africa, former president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Mr. Ryan was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. But history was closing in on him. The origins of his downfall lay in a decade-old federal corruption investigation called 'Operation Safe Road.' It had uncovered the illegal sale of government contracts, leases, and even driver's licenses to incompetent truckers, some of whom were involved in fatal highway crashes. At least 79 people -- former subordinates of Mr. Ryan, lobbyists and others -- were implicated and charged with felonies. Nearly all were convicted and served prison terms. In 2004, the investigation reached Mr. Ryan: He was accused of accepting $167,000 in cash, vacations, and gifts for himself, his family, and friends. Indicted on charges of fraud and racketeering, he was convicted on 18 counts after a five-month trial in 2006 and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison. He was temporarily released in 2011 to visit his wife, Lura Lynn Ryan, in a hospital in Kankakee, Ill., on the day she died of lung cancer. Advertisement Scott Turow, a lawyer, author, and member of the commission that Mr. Ryan had named to review the state's capital cases, posed a rhetorical question to reporters about the man who had plumbed the limits of power and disgrace: 'Who was George Ryan?' Turow asked after the conviction. 'It's a question best put to Shakespeare.' George Homer Ryan, the youngest of three children of Thomas and Jeanette (Bowman) Ryan, was born Feb. 24, 1934, in Maquoketa, Iowa, where his mother's family raised cattle. Months after his birth, his father earned a pharmacy degree from the University of Iowa and took a job with Walgreens. After a brief posting at a Walgreens on the South Side of Chicago, Thomas Ryan was transferred to a store in Kankakee, a small city an hour's drive south of Chicago, where the family settled and where George; his sister, Kathleen; and his brother, Tom, grew up. In 1947, the Ryans adopted 15-year-old Nancy Schrey after the death of her widowed father, Harry Schrey, a friend of the family. In 1948, Thomas Ryan opened his own pharmacy in Kankakee. George Ryan, a high school freshman, worked there on lunch hours and weekends, making sodas, washing dishes, and scrubbing floors. George Ryan was drafted by the Army in 1954. He spent 13 months in Korea, was discharged in 1956 and returned to the family business. In 1961, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy from Ferris State College in Michigan. He and his siblings were co-owners of the family drugstores until 1990, when the chain was sold. While Mr. Ryan had his sights on politics, it was his brother, Tom Ryan, who jumped in first. He was elected mayor of Kankakee in 1965 and held the post for 20 years. Advertisement George Ryan began his political career on the Kankakee County Board of Supervisors from 1968 to 1973. He was then elected to a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives, serving from 1973 to 1983, with two terms as minority leader and one as speaker. Over the next 20 years, he was elected to the state's highest offices, as lieutenant governor under Governor James R. Thompson (1983-91); as a two-term secretary of state (1991-99); and finally as governor of Illinois (1999-2003). Mr. Ryan defeated a five-term Democratic Illinois Congress member, Glenn Poshard, for the governorship. Mr. Ryan's most ambitious undertaking as governor was a $12 billion effort to rebuild the state's roads, schools, and transit systems. In 1999, he became the first sitting American governor to meet President Fidel Castro of Cuba in Havana. The next year, he was named chair of the Midwestern Governors Association and the Illinois chair of George W. Bush's campaign for the presidency. In 1956, Mr. Ryan married his high school sweetheart, Lura Lynn Lowe, whose family owned one of the first hybrid seed companies in the United States. In addition to his son, Mr. Ryan leaves five daughters, Julie Koehl, Joanne Barrow, Jeanette Schneider, Lynda Fairman, and Nancy Coghlan; 17 grandchildren; and 21 great-grandchildren. The Illinois death penalty was abolished March 9, 2011, with Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat, signing the legislation. No one has been executed in Illinois since Ryan's moratorium in 2000. Mr. Ryan could not attend the signing ceremony; he was still incarcerated in Terre Haute, with a couple of years left on his sentence. He was released Jan. 30, 2013, and returned home to Kankakee. Advertisement Mr. Ryan wrote a book, 'Until I Could Be Sure: How I Stopped the Death Penalty in Illinois' (2020, with Maurice Possley), which traced his conversion from supporter of capital punishment to, in his words, 'the man who almost single-handedly brought it down.' This article originally appeared in
