President Obama seems to be doing everything in his power, and quite a few things that are not legitimately within his power, to bring about a constitutional crisis. He has repeatedly suspended laws he dislikes or finds inconvenient, or rewritten them according to his preferences. The Supreme Court has on several occasions ruled that the Obama administration was exceeding its constitutional authority: most recently, in making appointments without getting the required consent of the Senate. On many of those occasions, including that one, the Court has ruled unanimously, with even Obama’s own appointees to the Court joining in the rebuke.
Now the administration appears to be preparing to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants by creating a program to sidestep the immigration laws. Congress has been considering legislation to provide this legal status for nearly a decade, but it has never passed. For the administration and its supporters, this “failure” (as it is always described) means that “the system is broken.” The conclusion they draw from this premise, though they rarely state it directly, is that the president must therefore resort to novel forms of lawmaking that the Constitution does not contemplate.
Comments