By Cassandra Burke Robertson
President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act on March 15, 2025, and deported about 200 Venezuelan immigrants his administration alleged have ties to a Venezuelan gang. U.S. District Court Judge James Bloasberg verbally issued an order that same day telling the government that the planes carrying the deportees must return to the United States.
The U.S. government, though, allowed the flights to continue and for the Venezuelans to be detained at a facility in El Salvador infamous for its mistreatment of prisoners.
The subsequent legal back-and-forth, which is still going on, intensified so quickly and dramatically that many legal scholars say the U.S. is past the point of a constitutional crisis, as the Trump administration appears to be defying a federal court order, for which Boasberg may hold the government in contempt. Trump has also called for Bloasberg to be impeached. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts then issued a rare public statement that day rejecting Trump’s statement.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a written statement on March 18.
Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., posed a few questions to Cassandra Burke Robertson, a scholar of civil proceedings and legal ethics, to break down some of the dynamics of this complex, evolving case.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Is it rare for a Supreme Court justice to weigh in on politicians’ activities or statements?
It’s uncommon for a Supreme Court justice to publicly contradict a president. Roberts has typically shown great respect for the separation of powers between branches of government. He has also consistently recognized that presidents have broad authority to run the federal government.
However, this isn’t the first time Roberts has spoken up to protect judicial independence. During Trump’s first term in 2018, the president criticized rulings as coming from “Obama judges.” Roberts responded publicly, and said, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Why is Roberts’ statement of note, and what influence does he have in this situation?
Roberts leads the U.S. Supreme Court. He also oversees all federal courts across the country.
Roberts takes this leadership role very seriously. He has been willing to speak up when he believes something threatens judicial operations and independence.
Since Roberts was confirmed as chief justice in 2005, he has often spoken publicly about why judges need to remain independent from political pressure. He has pointed out four main threats to judges’ independence: “violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.”
When Roberts makes a public statement, it carries weight because he speaks as the top judicial officer in the country. His words are a reminder about the importance of keeping courts free from political interference.
What is most important for people to understand about the Alien Enemies Act case that Judge Boasberg is currently considering?
First, Trump is using a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act. This law allows for deportations during a time of war without the normal legal protections like court hearings. Some legal experts argue that Trump doesn’t have the authority to use this law since the U.S. isn’t officially at war with Venezuela or with the gang the administration has cited, Tren de Aragua. They worry that invoking the Alien Enemies Act inappropriately expands presidential power beyond constitutional limits and could be misused to target other immigrant groups.
Second, Boasberg ordered a stop to these deportations on March 15. But the Trump administration went ahead with the deportations anyway. It later claimed it did not violate the judge’s order because the planes were over international waters. Under our legal system, the executive branch must obey valid court orders. This case raises concerns about whether the president is respecting the authority of the courts.
https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/content/chief-judge-james-e-boasberg
Third, Trump has publicly called for Boasberg to be impeached, saying the judge overstepped his authority by ruling against the president’s actions. There’s no evidence that Boasberg acted corruptly or improperly – he simply made a legal ruling the president disagreed with.
The case touches on fundamental questions about the balance of power between presidents and courts, and what happens when an administration chooses not to follow a judge’s orders. This confrontation between branches represents one of the most direct challenges to judicial authority by a president in American history.
What would it take for a judge to be impeached, and what is the precedent for doing so, based on disagreements about a case?
Federal judges can only be impeached by Congress for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That generally means serious wrongdoing, not just making unpopular decisions.
The impeachment process for judges works just like it does for presidents.
First, the House of Representatives votes to impeach, needing just a simple majority. Then, the Senate holds a trial where a two-thirds majority is needed to remove the judge.
Only 15 federal judges have ever been impeached in the U.S., and of those, only eight were convicted by the Senate.
The only two judicial impeachments during this century involved very serious misconduct – including a judge who lied about sexually abusing two female employees in 2009.
Only judges who have serious misconduct have been impeached and removed from office – not those involved in cases of political disagreements about judicial decisions.
What are the most important legal and ethical questions that this case raises?
This case raises important questions about the rule of law in the U.S. A key American belief is that no one, not even the president, is above the law. As Thomas Paine famously wrote in 1776, “In America, the law is king.”
This doesn’t mean every court decision is always right. That’s why the legal system has appellate courts, as Roberts pointed out – so decisions people disagree with can be challenged through an appeal in proper channels. My scholarly research on the right to appeal explores how this process serves as a crucial safeguard in the country’s legal system.
Twenty years ago, Roberts also stressed how important the rule of law is, saying it “protects the rights and liberties of all Americans.”
When a government chooses to ignore court orders instead of appealing them through the legal system, it creates a serious threat to this principle. The current situation raises concerns about whether the federal government will continue to respect the boundaries established by the Constitution in the country’s legal system.
Cassandra Burke Robertson is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University.
Jackson says
From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:
“Crisis – an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending
especially : one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome”
What’s the point of continuing to hem and haw or wonder at all about the definition of the phrase “Constitutional Crisis?”
WE ARE THERE. Arguably, we are well beyond the definitional moment.
Arguably, we have been there since January 20, 2016.
Congresssional Republicans and the Trump and Biden DOJs failed to properly uphold the rule of law and failed to hold everyone to account. They failed to defend the US Constitution against its Public Enemy #1. While many followers, sycophants, treasoners, and foreign actors were prosecuted for their crimes, DJT was allowed to walk free to run for re-election as POTUS, the one office in the land where he has the least likelihood of being held to account for all of his crimes and treasons.
Very little focus has been trained on disenfranchisement and very little has been written in the past 6 months about what was done and how much money was spent on purging voter roles in many battleground states. It was a very close election.
Please, stop wondering about what is happening and open your eyes and ears. We can all read the Constitution. If you can’t comprehend the multitude of violations that have originated from the actions and decisions of Donald Trump and his Cronies, then please, pass the torch.
Al says
Anything Trump is automatically a constitutional crisis. To those of you that feel for these criminals why not adopt one? You wouldn’t want them in your home, why should the country live with them? Trump should take the bext batch and set them up in the judge’s district, a tent city with no guards. I’m sure the dumbass judge would approve, after all these are great people.
Liberals make me sick just knowing you idiots exist.
Deborah Coffey says
Elect a criminal and you get lawlessness…even worse. This is Project 2025 which describes a coup d’etat. All of us Americans that have not practiced good citizenship by seeking facts and truth will now lose their country, their jobs, their life savings, their health, the education of their children and their safety.
Sherry says
Thank you Deborah and Jackson. . . Very well said1
Skibum says
Al, you have been misinformed, misled, and intentionally LIED to. As has the judge, who is not amused by the DOJ’s deceitful effort in his courtroom to provide FACTUAL evidence that those who were loaded onto the planes and rapidly deported were in fact criminals as drumph and his DOJ have asserted. The judge did exactly what judges do… he asked DOJ questions, seeking answers that would satisfy his desire for adequate information that would allow him to come to an informed decision whether those deportations were legal and necessary. But instead, DOJ switched defenses to their unlawful actions and decided to try the secrecy defense, telling a sitting U.S. federal judge that the information that DOJ had regarding those who were on the planes was so secret that they could not divulge it to the judge! How ignorant and completely telling… they know that many of those who were swiftly adjudicated as “criminal aliens” had NO criminal history whatsoever. So then the DOJ switched defenses once again, and this time it was a real doozy and completely laughable. DOJ asserted, well maybe the ones we deported were not criminals but that was only because they weren’t in the U.S. long enough to commit a crime. WOWZER!!! So now, Drumph and his sycophants think they have a right under our U.S. Constitution to lock up AND deport without any kind of hearing or court order ANYONE under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES who has committed NO crime whatsoever based solely on the assumption that the individual they want gone could potentially commit a crime in the future?! If that is allowed to be legal justification for lawful detention/arrest/deportation in this country, then NOBODY, and certainly NO tourist from any country in the world is safe coming to the U.S. because any or all of them just might commit SOME crime at some point down the line. How absurd, how blatantly unconstitutional, how illegal to penalize someone not for something they have done, but for the slim possibility that they might do something in the future. And Al, if you support the idiot in the WH with such a draconian policy such as that, then we just might as well call 911 on YOU and have the police come knocking on YOUR door to take you away… you know, because who knows, YOU could be ca criminal at some point in the future too. How lucky our country would be to lock you up now and say it was to keep you from committing a crime 15 years from now. What a country, huh?
Marla says
It amazes me that now that we know how corrupt the Treasury has become, the man who uncovers the theft is the criminal. Biden blatantly ignored two Supreme Court decisions in recent years and I am betting most are unaware of that fact.
The crisis here is the courts taking away the authority of a President. That crisis will be lasting, guilty or not.
Why do we need a Congress? Had they been doing their job of oversight, non of this would be happening. We stopped respecting the Constitution a while ago.
Sherry says
Regarding President Biden and his student loan forgiveness plans. . . This from Newsweek:
It’s true that the Biden administration has taken steps to reduce payments for citizens with student debt despite a Supreme Court ruling voting against a much wider plan in June 2023.
However, these new plans do not ignore the ruling by the Supreme Court as they are narrower in scope.
The administration had planned to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 of federal student loan debt per borrower, which the White House said would have benefited more than 40 million Americans from debt relief. The program would have granted student borrowers earning less than $125,000 a year up to $10,000 in debt relief, with $20,000 available to Pell Grant recipients who come from low-income households.
The debt forgiveness scheme would have cost about $400 billion, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office, making it one of the most expensive executive decisions in American history had it not been blocked.
However, the conservative-majority Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn it.
The Biden administration then moved forward with the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.
The SAVE plan does not provide immediate loan forgiveness but an income-driven repayment (IDR) that reduces monthly payments and the total years you have to pay before remaining balances are forgiven, most applicable to low to middle-income borrowers.
The White House has said that the plan would cut many borrowers’ monthly payments to zero, saving others around $1,000 per year, estimating that over 20 million Americans could benefit.
The program has faced two separate legal challenges in Republican-led states, which argue that the president overstepped his authority in implementing his debt relief plans by not acquiring input from Congress.
Last week, federal judges in Kansas and Missouri halted parts of the SAVE plan. In Kansas, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree, ruled in a lawsuit filed by the state attorney general that the Department of Education could not implement parts of the program designed to assist students with larger loans by lowering their monthly payments and reducing their repayment period from 25 years to 20 years.
He permitted parts of the program that allow students who borrowed less than $12,000 to have their remaining loans forgiven after making repayments for 10 years instead of the usual 25 years.
U.S. District Judge John Ross of Missouri ruled that the DoE could not forgive loan balances going forward, but said the federal department could lower monthly payments. He said the DoE “lacks the requisite congressional authority to forgive loans under the SAVE plan.”
Dennis C Rathsam says
TRUMP was elected by the majority to do just what he,s doing! These Obama, Biden 1/2 ass judges are being taught by George Soros. They are here just to disrupt what America wants. Americans voted to clean house, stop the fraude, making sure our tax dollars help AMERICANS! The Dems been getting kick backs from all this wastefull spending, just look, Their all millionaires, in the JACKASS PARTY! AOC A millionaire, yet see hasn’t paid back her student loans, & roames the country looking for support on her bid to the presidency.Nancy Pelosi is the greatest stock trader, in the history of WALL ST! Wake up America, this is why the dems keep fighting MUSKS audits. He,s discovered some whooppers so far, with more to come. And the only ones crying, & making all this fuss… is because their dirty, their crooks, just like Biden! Time to show America how they’ve been lied to. Time for all of us to know where are tax dollars are going!