Injunction Dysfunction Is a Threat to Our System

Nationwide injunctions — or perhaps, as Justice Neil Gorsuch has acidly observed, we should call them “universal” or even “cosmic” injunctions — are a distortion of our constitutional order. Alas, they are proliferating because of other, more deeply seated distortions.

A nationwide injunction occurs when a single unelected judge, seated in just one of 94 federal districts throughout the nation — say, the District of Hawaii, home to just 0.4 percent of our population — issues a ruling that binds the entire country, forbidding the government (most often, the president through subordinate executive agencies) from executing a policy, regulation, or statutory interpretation.