Since President Donald Trump took office two months ago, self-proclaimed left-wing legal “experts” have declared that his aggressive policy agenda has created a “constitutional crisis.” But even some more level-headed liberal scholars are beginning to acknowledge just how disingenuous and outright absurd that narrative is.
A February letter from the American Constitution Society (ACS), the liberal alternative to the conservative-leaning Federalist Society, provides a representative example of the “constitutional crisis” hysteria now sweeping the left-wing echo chamber.
“The undersigned are professors and teachers of law, dedicated to the rule of law,” the letter states. “We believe we are in a constitutional crisis. The President has signed a number of executive orders that are beyond his constitutional or statutory authority.”
“The President cannot change who is a citizen,” the 950 signers of the letter continue. “He does not have unbridled legal authority to stop funds already allocated by Congress, nor can he unilaterally impose new, politically-motivated conditions on government benefits that violate the constitutional rights of the recipient individuals, companies, and institutions.”
In other words, according to ACS, because President Trump is cutting waste, securing the border, and rooting out fraud in benefits programs, the United States has been thrust into a “constitutional crisis.”
“We stand as allies to those individuals and institutions targeted by illegal and unconstitutional coercion,” the letter proclaims. “Our democracy can survive, but not without law.”
While one might hope that an honest press would dispel these overly dramatic and overtly partisan declarations, no such luck. The New York Times, taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, Washington Post and CBS News have all fully embraced the “constitutional crisis” farce.
“Trump’s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say,” reads one particularly provocative headline from the Times. That article quoted five law professors – all from notoriously liberal institutions – to justify its claims. Apparently, readers are supposed to view President Trump as a dictator and a threat to democracy because five academics high in their ivory towers say so.
Of course, it would be just as easy to find five (and probably many more) legal experts on the right – and maybe even a few on the left – who have the opposite view.
Harvard University Law Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen had the courage to call out the ridiculousness of the “constitutional crisis” narrative on a panel last month, even as she acknowledged her opposition to President Trump’s policies themselves.
“We seem as a culture to have lost our ability to talk about our disagreements with outrageous presidential policies and our strong feelings of judgment about their immorality without channeling it into the language of illegality, unlawfulness, unconstitutionality, and then at the extreme, ‘constitutional crisis,’” she said.
Gersen also pointed out that Trump has yet to disobey any court rulings, undermining claims that the president is somehow usurping the constitutional order. “As people who care about the rule of law, I think that we need to think about our own participation in hastening its demise,” she added.
Law professor Jonathan Turley also took aim at his peers for their haughty language. He pointed out in a March 8 opinion piece in The Hill that it is no surprise the authors of the ACS letter gathered plenty of signers – after all, there is a clear left-wing bias in law schools. He noted one study that “found that only 9 percent of law school professors in the top 50 law schools identify as conservative.”
Turley also wrote that “[p]residents often negate the prior executive orders of their predecessors, fire their appointees and implement sweeping new changes.”
Sometimes those actions are upheld, and sometimes they are struck down. The Supreme Court, for instance, struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout in 2023 – after he had been warned that it was unconstitutional, as Turley notes. (It’s worth noting that Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, a signer of the anti-Trump letter, told Biden the plan was constitutional. So much for a “crisis.”)
“Trump is also prevailing in some of these cases and will likely prevail in many others,” Turley pointed out in his column.
Indeed, federal courts are upholding many of Trump’s supposedly “unconstitutional” policies. For example, a federal judge recently issued a ruling allowing the president to fire some USAID contractors. In other cases, judges have overturned the White House’s actions, and President Trump has respected those rulings, even if he disagrees with them.
While the constitutional crisis crowd is undoubtedly deeply motivated by base partisan ambitions, there is also something else underpinning this panic that betrays a fatal flaw in the left’s view of the Constitution in the first place.
The predominant philosophy among liberal legal scholars is a view known as “living constitutionalism,” or the belief that the Constitution is a “living” document whose meaning can “evolve” over time. Conveniently for those who espouse this view, this “changing meaning” invariably ends up being whatever convoluted interpretation justifies far-left policies.
To the left, then, the “Constitution” isn’t a historical document with a defined meaning, but rather a nebulous and ever-shifting set of beliefs that confer unlimited power on Democrat Party politicians while restraining duly elected Republican leaders from exercising any authority.
In this sense, President Trump’s agenda may indeed present a “constitutional crisis” – but the threat is to the left’s twisted and distorted vision of what the Constitution is. For Americans who care about upholding the original meaning of the Constitution and protecting the freedoms it entails, Trump’s sweeping executive actions thus far are a welcome relief.
AMAC Newsline contributor Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
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