A Constitutional Crisis
According to the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen, a constitutional crisis occurs “if a president refuses to carry out an authoritative opinion of the Supreme Court.” Adam Liptak provides a more expansive view, defining a constitutional crisis as “generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.” (New York Times, 2-12-2025). Consider Trump’s response to federal judge James Boasberg who temporarily blocked the removal by the Trump administration of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, which his administration is stonewalling. In Trump’s eloquent phrasing, the judge is a “Radical Left Lunatic” who should be impeached (Huffington Post, 5-20, 2025). This evoked a response from Chief Justice John Roberts that “for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachmen...