On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, Gertner, who is consulting on several cases challenging the administration’s actions and is a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, and The Intercept’s senior counsel and correspondent Shawn Musgrave discuss the federal courts’ response so far and what it demonstrates about our system of checks and balances.
“I hope that they will realize that one of the two checks on an aggressive president doing unlawful things is that the courts are functioning as a check on his power. I fear that the other takeaway is that Congress is not. The concern about Trump wiping out programs that Congress has approved is a concern that should bother every legislator — Republican or Democrat, it shouldn’t matter. That is a core, foundational checks-and-balances issue. And the fact that there is not an outcry from Congress is troubling,” says Gertner.
Musgrave adds that it is a real test of governmental structure. “We’re in a moment that illustrates the fragility of the system of checks and balances that’s held for a couple hundred years. The system that was set up in the Constitution isn’t guaranteed; it has to be protected. And so far, it looks like it’s going to be up to the courts to do that,” he says.
