Progressives have spent months insisting that President Trump is "ignoring the rule of law" whenever he resists or questions judicial rulings — on birthright citizenship, trade policy, the removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, or even the addition of his name to the Kennedy Center.The critique collapses under the weight of the Left’s own constitutional commitments.
Many of the same people attacking Trump champion popular constitutionalism and departmentalism — two frameworks that explicitly reject judicial supremacy and affirm the independent interpretive authority of the elected branches.In today’s hyper‑ politicized legal environment, the Left’s selective outrage obscures the constitutional reality.Popular constitutionalism, most famously explicated by former Stanford Law dean Larry Kramer in The People Themselves, holds that the people — acting through elected officials — retain ultimate authority over constitutional meaning.Courts are not supreme; they are participants in a broader constitutional conversation.
Departmentalism, embraced by presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Nixon, similarly maintains that each branch has an independent duty to interpret the Constitution.GORSUCH SAYS IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDES ON SUPREME COURT COME DOWN TO ‘HOW YOU READ LAW,’ NOT POLITICSCrucially, departmentalism draws a distinction modern critics ignore: while a court’s judgment binds specific parties in a specific case, it does not bind the political branches as a permanent mandate.Rejecting judicial supremacy is not defying the rule of law; it is rejecting the idea that five or six judges have a monopoly on constitutional truth.
That view is a mainstream critique of judicial supremacy, yet when Trump invokes the same logic, the Left treats departmentalism as dangerous heresy.Trump’s critics speak as though presidential resistance to judicial interpretations is unprecedented, but it is woven into American history.Thomas Jefferson refused t...