Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appeared on Thursday to support Donald Trump’s push to curtail the power of federal judges.
The situation unfolded during Supreme Court arguments over an executive order signed by Trump that aimed to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to non-citizen or non-permanent resident parents.
The Department of Justice has argued that judges on lower-level courts should only have the power to issue rulings on a specific group of people involved in a suit, and not issue nationwide injunctions.
Justice Thomas appeared to support that argument when discussing the history of universal injunctions with Solicitor General D. John Sauer. Justice Thomas asked: “So, we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?”
I honestly don’t understand why this isn’t the opposite case, where the government should have to bring to court every individual case that they want to deny birthright citizenship to.
This is essentially what the liberal judges are wondering too. Trump’s lawyers seem to be arguing that the default should be to suspend people’s due process rights, instead of accepting the burden of having to prove their case against each person.
This creates a system where instead of the government protecting people’s rights…the people are obligated to defend their rights from the government.
It’s a terrifying outcome, but that appears to be where the Trump administration is heading with all this. You are guilty until proven innocent, and no one is obligated to provide proof of your guilt, in order to pass sentence on you. It’s up to you to prove your innocence…which any lawyer with half a degree will tell you, is impossible. You can’t provide evidence for something that doesn’t exist.