Declaring an Emergency to Build a Border Wall: The Statutory Arguments - Lawfare

Declaring an Emergency to Build a Border Wall: The Statutory Arguments - Lawfare: The president’s statutory authorities regarding a proposed wall at the southern border are more generous than they might initially seem.

German cardinal calls for change in tradition ahead of celibacy discussion | America Magazine

German cardinal calls for change in tradition ahead of celibacy discussion | America Magazine: German Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising called for change in long-standing church tradition as the German bishops' conference prepares for a workshop debate to "review" the issue of celibacy for priests.

Injunction Granted In Virginia License Suspension Case | Legal Aid Justice Center

Injunction Granted In Virginia License Suspension Case | Legal Aid Justice Center 

Preliminary Injunction Granted in Driver’s License Case:Judge finds driver’s license suspension statute likely unconstitutional and orders DMV to reinstate Plaintiffs’ licenses while litigation proceeds.

Charlottesville, Virginia, (December 21, 2018) —This afternoon, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia issued a preliminary injunction against DMV Commissioner Richard D. Holcomb ordering him to reinstate the driver’s licenses of the three named plaintiffs in Stinnie v. Holcomb who lost their licenses automatically when they were unable to pay court costs and fines.

Judge Norman K. Moon found that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in establishing that Virginia’s license suspension statute is unconstitutional, and that the plaintiffs have suffered irreparable harm as a result of its enforcement. The opinion states, “While the Court recognizes the Commonwealth’s interest in ensuring the collection of court fines and costs, these interests are not furthered by a license suspension scheme that neither considers an individual’s ability to pay nor provides him with an opportunity to be heard on the matter.”

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the Constitution and for common sense. The Court stated unequivocally that Virginia’s driver’s license suspension statute likely violates procedural due process rights,” said Angela Ciolfi, Executive Director of the Legal Aid Justice Center. “This week, two branches of state government have weighed in against continued enforcement of this counter-productive policy, and there is strong bipartisan support for repeal in the General Assembly. It is time to end the devastating cycle of debt, unemployment, and incarceration once and for all.”

Judge Moon’s ruling comes on the heels of Governor Ralph Northam’s announcement earlier this week of his support for ending license suspension in Virginia of people too poor to pay court debt, and rulings earlier this year by two federal courts in Tennessee and Michigan declaring similar statutes unconstitutional. The ruling currently affects only the five named Plaintiffs unless and until the Court rules on Plaintiffs’ pending motion for class certification. Repeal legislation sponsored by Senator Bill Stanley will be considered by the General Assembly during the upcoming 2019 session.

Memorandum Opinion (PDF)

Order Granting Preliminary Injunction (PDF)

Overview:Stinnie v. Holcomb is a class action lawsuit, filed by Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) and McGuireWoods LLP, challenging the constitutionality of Virginia’s statute automatically suspending the driver’s licenses of nearly one million Virginia drivers who cannot afford to pay court costs and fines. The case was originally dismissed at the Circuit Court, but it was revived by the Fourth Circuit this summer when the appeals court allowed plaintiffs to amend their complaint. When LAJC filed the amended complaint, they also asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, which would have the effect of ordering the DMV Commissioner to stop suspending driver’s licenses for non-payment of court debt while the lawsuit is pending.  On November 15th, Judge Moon took evidence and heard arguments for and against the preliminary injunction.  On December 21, Judge Moon granted the preliminary injunction finding the driver’s license suspension statute likely unconstitutional and ordering the DMV Commissioner to reinstate Plaintiffs’ licenses while litigation proceeds. The Court also rejected the Commissioner’s arguments that the federal court lacked jurisdiction.

National and Statewide Implications:

• Virginia is one of 43 states that suspend driver’s licenses for non-payment of court costs and fines related to traffic and/or criminal offenses. Since Stinnie was originally filed in 2016, six more statewide lawsuits have been filed (or almost filed) in California, Tennessee, Michigan, Montana, Mississippi (settled pre-filing), and North Carolina, and advocates have won legislative reforms in many states, including California and, most recently, D.C.
• A federal judge recently issued a statewide injunction against a similar enforcement scheme in Tennessee.
• This ruling will not impact the nearly one million Virginia drivers who, as of December 2017, currently have at least one suspension on their license for failure to pay, including approximately 650,000 people whose licenses are suspended solely for not paying court costs and fines. 

• For many drivers, a license suspension means giving up their only mode of transportation to work, forcing them to choose between losing their jobs and risking jail time for driving on a suspended license. These long-suffering Virginia drivers will continue to endure a never-ending cycle of debt and incarceration, so long as the law forces them to choose between driving illegally and forsaking the needs of their families. 

To read more about the lawsuit, or to download the briefs, go to http://www.justice4all.org/drive.

About the Legal Aid Justice CenterThe Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) fights injustice in the lives of individual Virginians while rooting out exploitative policies and practices that keep people in poverty. LAJC uses impact litigation, community organizing, and policy advocacy to solve urgent problems in areas such as housing, education, civil rights, immigration, workers’ rights, healthcare and consumer finance. LAJC’s primary service areas are Charlottesville, Northern Virginia, Richmond and Petersburg, but the effects of their work are felt statewide.

Automatic Driver's License Suspension for Unpaid Child Support is Unfair | New Jersey Law Journal

Automatic Driver's License Suspension for Unpaid Child Support is Unfair | New Jersey Law Journal
by the Editorial Board

Responding to Congressional pressure and the problem of substantial delinquencies in court-ordered child support payments—much of it owed to the state which sought to recover welfare payments—New Jersey in 1998 amended its child support act, providing in NJSA 2A:17-56.41 (a) for suspension of driving licenses “as a matter of law” if a child support arrearage equals or exceeds the amount of child support payable for six months or court-ordered health care coverage for the child is not provided for six months. Judges, on the recommendation of probation officers, issued failure to pay (FTP) warrants by virtue of which the statutes provides the “obligor’s driver’s license shall be suspended by operation of law.”

Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson has ruled that this “automatic” suspension of driving privileges violates both “due process” and “fundamental fairness.” Relying on our state constitution in her 187-page opinion in Kavadas v. Martinez as chief administrator of the Motor Vehicle Division, the Mercer County assignment judge enjoined such automatic suspensions and gave the state 120 days to devise regulations to eliminate this practice by which some 20,000 people each year have lost their driving licenses without notice or an opportunity to be heard.

The obligation to pay child support depends on the ability to comply with court-ordered child support payments. Delinquency is concentrated among low income parents with support obligations. It is only willful failure to pay that is enforceable and sanctionable. Judge Jacobson therefore ordered the state to provide counsel to indigent obligors who seek to demonstrate their inability to pay, typically due to changed circumstances such as job loss, ill health, etc. Building on the landmark ruling in Pasqua v. Council (2006), in an opinion by Justice Barry Albin, our Supreme Court required that “attorneys be appointed to assist indigent non-custodial parents facing incarceration at child support enforcement hearings”.

Aside from the automatic license suspensions enjoined, in some circumstances a hearing officer may recommend, or a judge may order, suspension of a license as a punitive and coercive measure. Plaintiffs, represented by the lawyer who prevailed in Pasqua, sought to extend the right to appointed counsel to all indigent obligors who faced serious consequences for failure to pay child support. Judge Jacobson extended the Pasqua principle to some civil enforcement of litigants’ rights hearings. She explained that “both due process and fundamental fairness require courts to provide counsel to indigent obligors at any hearing at which a hearing officer may recommend a driver’s license suspension to a court, or at any hearing when the family court itself is considering a driver’s license suspension.”

In her comprehensive opinion, Judge Jacobson took note of a 2006 study by the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission—“Motor Vehicles Affordability and Fairness.” The report “found that 42 percent of individuals who had their licenses suspended lost jobs as a result of the suspension, 45 percent of those who lost jobs could not find another job, and 88% of those that were able to find another job reported a decrease in income.” Jacobson wrote that “[e]ven though most of the Report’s findings addressed license suspensions in general and did not focus on child support-related suspensions, it is reasonable to assume that the affected dependents likely included many children who are the subject of child support orders, and the very individuals that the automatic license suspensions were intended to benefit.” The Bloustein/MCV report also found that in low income areas “child support suspension rates for drivers…were ten times higher than the statewide average.”
We find that Judge Jacobson’s ruling addresses an important public problem. We hope that the governor, attorney general, and the Division of Family Development will work diligently and earnestly to produce the new regulations which the court has granted 120 days to formulate. Judge Jacobson declined to make her order retroactive. Thousands of parents—especially low income—doubtless remain stranded without driving privileges. Their status is something which the Legislature can and should address.

Finally, as the judge urged, the Legislature should “remove the provision directing automatic suspension of drivers licenses upon issuance of a support-related warrant.” We concur with Judge Jacobson that “[s]uch an amendment would also end New Jersey’s outlier status as the only state utilizing this linkage and would restore the procedural protections originally afforded to obligors facing driver’s license suspensions.”

How a Gazan paramedic volunteer was killed by the IDF

https://nyti.ms/2RpE8AO

How Trump corrupts rule of law

Check out @LeahLitman’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/LeahLitman/status/1079449459904241664?s=09

/someone-has-already-been-charged-for-most-of-the-actions-the-steele-dossier-attributes-to-michael-cohen/

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/12/29/someone-has-already-been-charged-for-most-of-the-actions-the-steele-dossier-attributes-to-michael-cohen/

Chinese dissenters lawyers trial backfires ~WaPo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-holds-a-secret-trial-for-a-rights-lawyer-after-3-years-in-detention-it-backfired/2018/12/27/884d8b6a-09a9-11e9-892d-3373d7422f60_story.html

Congress must not confirm William Barr -Trump’s attorney general nominee. //Slate

Congress must not confirm Trump’s attorney general nominee.: The attorney general must report to the people, not the president.
by Joyce White Vance (former United States Attorney, Northern District of Alabama)

...No matter what [William] Barr’s intentions, the appearance of impropriety—of ingratiating himself with a president whose desire to install a wingman as attorney general—means that the public perception will always equate Barr, if confirmed, with Trump’s desire to hold himself above the law. There will be no public confidence in decisions about potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, or about obstruction of justice. Such a significant loss of public confidence will inevitably erode the credibility of the department’s work in other areas as well. The future of the Justice Department, and that of all Americans, will be impaired if it appears the department is being used as a tool to protect this president.

Recusal is not a sufficient remedy for a faulty choice for attorney general at this critical juncture. Congress has the responsibility to deny confirmation to an attorney general who is not suited for the job. A worthy nominee faced with the knowledge that they, even inadvertently, had damaged DOJ’s credibility would make amends if possible, or take themselves out of the running to ensure the people’s faith in justice. It is hard to believe someone who makes serious missteps, as Whitaker and Barr both have, but remains unwaveringly in place will have the fortitude to pass the challenges Trump’s next attorney general will certainly face.

In Major Move, Census Bureau Offers Up Citizenship Data For Redistricting – Talking Points Memo

Republicans getting ready to cut representation in cities with large non-citizen populations.  In addition to so-called "illegal aliens" there are millions of "legal" aliens.  Republicans, seeking to reduce Democrats votes plan to redisrict based oncitizenshi not residence.
In Major Move, Census Bureau Offers Up Citizenship Data For Redistricting – Talking Points Memo: In what could be a major change for voting rights and the distribution of political power between urban and rural areas,...

China to enhance IPR protection - Global Times

China to enhance IPR protection - Global Times
by Lung Shumei

China has clarified punitive damages for intellectual property right (IPR) infringement in the draft civil code, a move which analysts said would help relax trade friction between China and the US.

Two sections of the draft civil code including provisions on tort and contract were submitted to the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) - China's top legislature - on Sunday, launching the second phase of formulating the country's long-expected civil code that is expected to run until 2020, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.

The draft empowers people whose IPRs are seriously infringed upon with the right to claim for punitive damages.

Shen Chunyao, head of the Legislative Affairs Commission under the NPC Standing Committee, said in a report to the committee that it is necessary to raise the penalty of IPR infringement to enhance the protection of IPRs and fully enact the deterrent role of law, according to Xinhua.

Ni Feng, a deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of American Studies, told the Global Times on Monday that the move is in accordance with China's goal of establishing a socialist market economy and constructing an innovative country.

"Meanwhile, it also can be viewed as an indication of China's effort to ease trade friction with the US as IPR infringement is an issue of which the latter often accuses China," Ni said. 

The Office of the US Trade Representative said in a report released on November 20 that, "China fundamentally has not altered its acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation."

In response to the slam, China's Ministry of Commerce said on its website on November 23 that China does not accept the report, "which levels new, groundless accusations that go against facts."

China's draft civil code has six sections, namely provisions on property, contract, personality rights, marriage and family, inheritance, and torts, consisting of 1,034 articles in total, according to Xinhua.

China has made multiple attempts to draft a civil law only to halt due to political turmoil and other reasons, according to Xinhua.

"Civil codes are the most important basic law that regulates all aspects of daily life. The draft of it requires clear understanding of social development and social order as well as workable plans to deal with social problems," Wang Sixin, a professor at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times on Monday.

But as China has experienced a rapid development in recent decades, the country has lacked mature conditions to draft it, Wang noted.

The committee had collected suggestions from Chinese citizens on its website for two months before the two sections mentioned above were submitted.

It is reviewing the two sections during a bimonthly session scheduled from Sunday to Saturday. 

Chinese police lock down court for trial of prominent rights lawyer

Chinese police lock down court for trial of prominent rights lawyer: Wang Quanzhang spent 1000 days incommunicado after being charged with inciting subversion of state power in a case that has attracted concern in the west.

Some Holiday Book Recommendations – Talking Points Memo

Some Holiday Book Recommendations – Talking Points Memo: With Christmas and New Year’s upon us, I thought I would give some book recommendations. As always a few caveats...

China: 100,000 comment on tort law draft

http://www.china.org.cn/china/2018-12/23/content_74304496.htm

Beto O'Rourke is the new Obama. And that's the last thing we need | David Sirota | Opinion | The Guardian

This is the Left critique of the Center-Left.  The 2020 Democratic Party race - already underway - is going to be messy. - gwc

Beto O'Rourke is the new Obama. And that's the last thing we need | David Sirota | Opinion | The Guardian: Betomania may have befallen Washington elites, but replicating an Obama presidency would be a tragedy.

Why another Obama would be a tragedy

Replicating an Obama presidency would be better than what we have now. But it would still be a tragedy. That’s because the fundamental premise of Obamaism - and its predecessor, Clintonism – is that there is always a policy that can at once serve the people and the powerful. And recent history has showed that is both false and dangerous.

The fantastical mythology of a satisfactory “third way” between the corporate class and the rest of us posits that the Democratic party’s insurance industry backers can be enriched and healthcare policy can still be humane; its Wall Street sponsors can eviscerate industries and workers can still earn enough to survive; and its fossil fuel donors can keep pumping out carbon and the ecosystem can still sustain human life.

The alluring idea is that we never actually have to answer that haunting question of labor lore: “Which side are you on?” Obamaism leads us to believe that we do not need to choose, and that we can actually have it all – as long as we always make sure to line up behind policies that appease the super-wealthy.

It is, in other words, the ideology undergirding the argument recently put forward by former vice-president, Joe Biden, who insisted: “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble … the folks at the top aren’t bad guys.”

Judge blocks Virginia DMV from suspending licenses for failure to pay fines and costs | Courts and Legal News | dailyprogress.com

RICHMOND, VA — A federal judge in Charlottesville has granted an injunction to prevent the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles from enforcing a state law that requires automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for failure to pay court fines and costs.The judge also required the agency to reinstate the licenses of three plaintiffs and refrain from suspending those of two others.

U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon issued the injunction on Friday against DMV Commissioner Rick Holcomb, whom he ordered to cease enforcing the agency policy against the five plaintiffs, remove suspensions on their licenses and refrain from charging a $145 fee to reinstate their driving privileges.

The Charlottesville, Virginia Legal Aid Justice Center announces that on the heels of Governor Ralph Northam’s announcement earlier this week of his support for ending license suspension in Virginia of people too poor to pay court debt, and rulings earlier this year by two federal courts in Tennessee and Michigan declaring similar statutes unconstitutional. The ruling currently affects only the five named Plaintiffs unless and until the Court rules on Plaintiffs’ pending motion for class certification. Repeal legislation sponsored by Senator Bill Stanley will be considered by the General Assembly during the upcoming 2019 session.

Memorandum Opinion (PDF)

Order Granting Preliminary Injunction (PDF)

Stinnie v. Holcomb is a class action lawsuit, filed by Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) and McGuireWoods LLP, challenging the constitutionality of Virginia’s statute automatically suspending the driver’s licenses of nearly one million Virginia drivers who cannot afford to pay court costs and fines. The case was originally dismissed at the Circuit Court, but it was revived by the Fourth Circuit this summer when the appeals court allowed plaintiffs to amend their complaint. When LAJC filed the amended complaint, they also asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, which would have the effect of ordering the DMV Commissioner to stop suspending driver’s licenses for non-payment of court debt while the lawsuit is pending.  On November 15th, Judge Moon took evidence and heard arguments for and against the preliminary injunction.  

On December 21, Judge Moon granted the preliminary injunction finding the driver’s license suspension statute likely unconstitutional and ordering the DMV Commissioner to reinstate Plaintiffs’ licenses while litigation proceeds. The Court also rejected the Commissioner’s arguments that the federal court lacked jurisdiction.

National and Statewide Implications:

• Virginia is one of 43 states that suspend driver’s licenses for non-payment of court costs and fines related to traffic and/or criminal offenses. Since Stinnie was originally filed in 2016, six more statewide lawsuits have been filed (or almost filed) in California, Tennessee, Michigan, Montana, Mississippi (settled pre-filing), and North Carolina, and advocates have won legislative reforms in many states, including California and, most recently, D.C.
• A federal judge recently issued a statewide injunction against a similar enforcement scheme in Tennessee.
• This ruling will not impact the nearly one million Virginia drivers who, as of December 2017, currently have at least one suspension on their license for failure to pay, including approximately 650,000 people whose licenses are suspended solely for not paying court costs and fines. 

• For many drivers, a license suspension means giving up their only mode of transportation to work, forcing them to choose between losing their jobs and risking jail time for driving on a suspended license. These long-suffering Virginia drivers will continue to endure a never-ending cycle of debt and incarceration, so long as the law forces them to choose between driving illegally and forsaking the needs of their families. 

To read more about the lawsuit, or to download the briefs, go to http://www.justice4all.org/drive.

Closed until further notice – Beto O'Rourke – Medium

Beto O'Rourke's essay on the Christmas shutdown reveals a man whose thinking out in the open strikes the sae sort of notes as his fellow Columbia college alumnus Barack Obama.  He has the same directness, logical train of thought and aspirational approach.  The two term Texas Member of Congress shows that he has the intellectual competence to present himself credibly for high office, as his Senate race showed.  He is definitely worth watching as 2020 approaches. - gwc

Closed until further notice – Beto O'Rourke – Medium: The government of the greatest country the world has ever known, the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet: closed until further notice. This shutdown – hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans working without pay during the holidays, basic government functions no longer available to the taxpayers who fund them – didn’t have to happen. The Senate passed a compromise government funding bill two days ago, 100–0. The men and women who can’t agree on what to name a post office were able to unite and unanimously agree on how to fund the entire government.

But maybe it was intended to happen.

Maybe in the face of an investigation that seeks the facts surrounding allegations of collusion with a foreign government and obstruction of justice within our own government… as one aide after another pleads guilty… as the stock market tumbles… as men and women intent on keeping their dignity and their conscience flee his administration… perhaps the President calculates that by adding to the blizzard of bizarre behavior over the last two years and shutting down the government at Christmas, while his own party still controls each branch of it, the institutions that we need for our democracy to function (and to ensure no man is above the law) will be overwhelmed.

From a President who promised action, we got distraction.

But my concern for the country goes beyond the immediate pain and dysfunction that this shutdown will cause. Beyond even ensuring that this President is held accountable. What’s happening now is part of a larger threat to us all.

If our institutions no longer work, if we no longer have faith in them, if there’s no way to count on government even functioning (three shutdowns this year alone), then perhaps ultimately we become open to something else. Whatever we choose to call it, whether we openly acknowledge it at all, my fear is that we will choose certainty, strength and predictability over this constant dysfunction, even if it comes at the price of our democracy (the press; the ballot box; the courts; congress and representative government).

If there were ever a man to exploit this precarious moment for our country and our form of government, it’s Trump. Sending 5,400 troops to U.S. border communities during the midterm elections. Organizing Border Patrol “crowd control” exercises in El Paso on election day. Defying our laws by taking children from their parents, keeping kids in tent camps, turning back refugees at our ports. Calling the press “the enemy of the people” and celebrating violence against members of the media. Pitting Americans against each other based on race and religion and immigration status. Inviting us to hate openly, to call Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, to call asylum seekers animals, to describe Klansmen and neo-Nazis as very fine people. Seeking to disenfranchise fellow Americans with made up fears of voter fraud. Isolating us from the other great democracies as he cozies up to dictators and thugs. Lying again and again. Making a mockery of the United States – once the indispensable nation, the hope of mankind.

KEEP READING

Mattis Proved You Can't Serve Both Trump and America - The Atlantic

Mattis Proved You Can't Serve Both Trump and America - The Atlantic:  
by Eliot A. Cohen (Counselor of the State Department 2007-2009)

The departure of Jim Mattis from government service is proof that you cannot have it all. You have to walk if you are to remain the human being you were, or conceived yourself being, before you went in. He alone refused to curry favor, to pander at the painful televised Cabinet sessions, or to praise someone who deserved none of it. In the end, he could not do his job and serve the country as he knew it had to be served. No one could.

Thomas Wright: Trump, unchecked

Henceforth, the senior ranks of government can be filled only by invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and careerists. If they had policy convictions, they will meekly accept their evisceration. If they know a choice is a disaster, they will swallow hard and go along. They may try to manipulate the president, or make some feeble efforts to subvert him, but in the end they will follow him. And although patriotism may motivate some of them, the truth is that it will be the title, the office, the car, and the chance to be in the policy game that will keep them there.

83 complaints against Kavanaugh buried.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/brett-kavanaugh-ethics-complaints-dismissed.html

Barr’s memo on Mueller embraces a dubious constitutional vision - The Washington Post

Trump's expected nominee for Attorney General William P. Barr (who held the office during the first Bush presidency) is an advocate of the broad view of presidential power known as the "unitary executive". Perhaps angling for a job on rump's team in June 2018 Barr wrote a very detailed memo attacking the obstruction of justice case he understands Special Counsel Robert Mueller to be developing.

Bar admits that "corrupt" intent can make a president's actions criminal and impeachable.  He then sets about whittling down Trump's exposure.  Former Deputy Attorney General Harry Litman has done a careful analysis of Barr's view.  the excerpt below captures the concerns that I had in my cursory reading of the document - which requires mush more thought than I have been able to give it so far.  A flood of commentary has already begun.- GWC
Barr’s memo on Mueller embraces a dubious constitutional vision - The Washington Post: Senators must probe Bill Barr on his views about Bob Mueller's investigation.
by Harry Litman
****There are substantial counter-arguments to Barr’s analysis — though he doesn’t spend a lot of time identifying and rebutting possible objections. But it is in fleshing out his statutory conclusion that Barr wanders into constitutional territory that I believe is dubious and, depending on very plausible courses of events in the coming year, alarming.

Barr asserts that “defining facially-lawful exercises of Executive discretion as potential crimes, based solely on subjective motive, would violate Article II of the Constitution by impermissibly burdening the exercise of core discretionary powers within the Executive branch.” He later adds that “the President’s exercise of its Constitutional discretion is not subject to review for 'improper motivations' by lesser officials or by the courts.”

Barr seems here to suggest that a president cannot commit a crime or violate the Constitution if he is exercising an enumerated executive power, such as appointment, removal or pardon. To date, I am aware of nobody other than Rudolph W. Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz who have advanced this view. It is a royalist mind-set that cannot be squared with the constitutional text and structure, important decisions of the Supreme Court, and our strongest shared intuitions about unconstitutional conduct (for example, the president’s removal of an official for reasons of rank racial prejudice). ***