"What’s unspoken in Vance’s tweet is the well-established power of courts to police the limits of that discretion, i.e., to decide which exercises of power by the executive branch are, in fact, 'legitimate.'"

"Thus, there are examples of courts interfering in military operations—granting habeas petitions to individuals in military custody; blocking military commission prosecutions; and even, during the Biden administration, blocking the military’s COVID vaccination mandate as applied to certain active-duty troops. There’s even a single example of a federal judge blocking an active military operation—Judge Judd’s July 1973 injunction against President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia.... That ruling might have been wrong; it certainly wasn’t 'illegal.'... calling a judicial decision 'illegal' certainly sounds like a basis for refusing to abide by it—especially if one believes... that such rulings are 'a violation of the separation of powers.' The proper remedy, of course, is to appeal a decision you believe is wrong. And if the Supreme Court, the federal court of last resort, reaches the 'wrong' decision, there are legal ways to seek to overturn it; refusing to follow it isn’t one of them. But the reality is that there is no history or tradition in this country of presidents ignoring judicial rulings on the ground that they are 'illegal.'..."

Writes lawprof Steve Vladek in "What Vice President Vance Did—and Didn't—Say About Judicial Power" (Substack).

Here's the JD Vance tweet under discussion:

If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.

If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal.

Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

Significant chunks.

I don't (want to) believe this:

"There are significant chunks of the American populace that will find it very hard to respect a supreme court decision that keeps Trump off the ballot, and there are significant chunks of the American populace that will find it very hard to respect a supreme court decision that keeps Trump on the ballot."

That's a quote from lawprof Steve Vladeck that appears in this Guardian article, "'Did you just hear John Roberts scream?': US supreme court to have outsized influence in 2024 election Court temporarily waved off request from special counsel prosecuting Trump, but it’ll likely soon have to wade into fray."

It's Christmas, so I'm not delving into the status of the Supreme Court's mystique in the chunky Mind of America. 

After that last post, you may be anticipating that I'll veer off into a discussion of the word "chunk." But I did that, so extensively, in 2020 — replete with a survey of old posts of mine, historical quotes from the OED, an embedded video of the vintage Arnold Stang commercial for Chunky (the candy), and a photograph of a record I inherited from my father that had "a chunk taken out of it, and so I can't listen to Count Basie's 'One O'Clock Jump' or Dinah Shore singing 'Buttons and Bows.'"

I can't do that again!

"Trump threatens military action to quell protests, and the law would let him do it."

Writes Matt Zapotosky (at WaPo).

In a televised speech, Trump said he had recommended Monday “to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets.”

“Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled,” Trump said. “If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.... I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans”....

A law called the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the domestic use of military for law enforcement purposes without specific congressional authorization, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas Law School. But a different law, the Insurrection Act, provides the president authorization to do so under certain circumstances, he said....

[The Insurrection Act] was... used during the civil rights movement, including when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the Army into Little Rock to desegregate its schools, Vladeck said. The law says the president can intervene if state authorities are unable to give their residents the protection of law.

That example immediately crystallizes the "reason why the statute allows him to act even if states don’t ask him" (Vladeck's words).

On Twitter, Joe Biden said: “He’s using the American military against the American people.” Against or for? You have to admit he'd be using the American military against some American people, but the motivation is to protect other American people.

The article also quotes Kamala Harris, saying: "He is a divider. He is clearly scared. And he cannot meet this moment that he has partly created because of his inability to understand the pain and the suffering." I'm reading this idea of "understanding pain" as meaning willingness to tolerate chaos and destruction. Shouldn't we all be scared of disorder? What are Democrats offering to do about the violence — anything other than purporting to understand it?

If what Biden and Harris and other Democrats believe is that anything government does will only make it worse, I'd love to hear them come out and say it.