Three co-equal branches of government, yes. That does not mean that any judge in the country can just give an order that the president has to follow. The country couldn’t operate like that.
The most obvious problem with that is that one judge could, say, order a military flight, approved by the president, carrying criminal aliens back to their country of origin, to turn around.
What if another judge ordered it to continue? Then a third judge could order it to turn around again. A fourth judge could order it to fly to an entirely different destination. A fifth judge could order the plane to put its left wing in, take its left wing out, put its left wing in and shake it all about.
And so on.
What does the pilot do? Whose order does the pilot follow? One person has to have the overriding authority. Is it some random appointed judge somewhere? If so, WHICH judge makes the decision? It just doesn’t work. That’s why a judge can’t just decide to say the president has to stop what they’re doing.
Even a written order doesn’t make sense, because it would work the same way, it would just take a little bit longer.
Where is this power given to these judges and what are its limitations? Is it limited to flights carrying illegals or can it order a military flight on a bombing run, ordered to do so by the Commander in Chief of the military, to turn around?
What about the ultimate, ideally, power of the people? The president was elected by Electoral College majority. The judge was an appointee. He does not represent the voice of the people.
It just doesn’t work.
That’s what I came up with in about five minutes of thinking about it. I’m sure there are legal and Constitutional scholars who could give dozens more reasons. But it doesn’t take a special kind of scholar to see that allowing any federal judge to countermand the orders of a duly-elected president would be a special kind of stupid.
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