With Each Injunction, Courts Become An Unelected Ruling Class

From the moment President Trump took office, his administration has faced relentless judicial obstruction from liberal activist judges determined to destroy, or at the very least, stall his agenda.

Whether it’s U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg attempting to block the Trump administration from deporting suspected illegal alien gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, or U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander blocking the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing Social Security Administration data, federal judges have repeatedly stepped in to undermine executive authority.

Opponents of the Trump administration will cite the U.S. Constitution’s “separation of powers” as justification for the judicial system’s resistance to his agenda, claiming the system crafted by the Founding Fathers is working as designed. However, this is a smokescreen for a far more sinister reality.

America increasingly lives under a Judicial Oligarchy, where the district court system that functions below the Supreme Court has assumed power far beyond its intended limited role, subverting the executive and legislative branches to impose a policy agenda dictated not by elected representatives but by unelected judges.

According to a Fox News report, nationwide injunctions against President Trump’s first administration accounted for more than half of the total injunctions ordered against the federal government since 1963.

Worse still, President Trump’s second term has shockingly endured more federal court injunctions in his first 60 days than Joe Biden did during his four years in office and Barack Obama during his entire eight-year presidency.

This obstruction is far from what the framers intended.

In a letter to William Charles Jarvis, Thomas Jefferson wrote that considering judges as the “ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions” would be “a very dangerous doctrine, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 78 that the judiciary would be the “least dangerous” branch of government because it had “no influence over either the sword or the purse.”

Contrary to the warnings and beliefs of Hamilton and Jefferson, federal courts have proven to be a profound threat to America’s constitutional order. A majority of the American people elected a president, but our unelected judiciary has repeatedly attempted to have the final say in how the United States is governed.

This power shift didn’t happen overnight but was a slow erosion, beginning with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison in 1803. This case gave birth to the process known as “judicial review,” which effectively gave American courts the power to strike down laws and government actions believed to have violated the Constitution.

While judicial review was meant as a check on abuses of power and governmental overreach, it has increasingly become a tool for unelected liberal justices to impose their political views on policies they ideologically oppose.

This perversion of judicial review undermines the democratic principle that elected representatives, not unelected judges, should shape national policy.

Take, for example, the 2018 Supreme Court Case Trump v. Hawaii.

After the tragic mass shooting by a Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California, President Trump issued Executive Order 13769, commonly referred to as the “Muslim ban” by liberal opponents. The order restricted entry from seven predominantly Muslim countries and led to nationwide protests and immediate legal challenges.

Federal courts issued nationwide injunctions blocking the enforcement of the ban, ruling that the order violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and exceeded the president’s executive authority.

In reality, it wasn’t so much that liberal politicians and activist judges believed that the travel ban was “unconstitutional” but instead that it was “fueled by bigotry and Islamophobia.”

U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson agreed and stated, “A review of the historical background here makes plain why the Government wishes to focus on the Executive Order’s text, rather than its context. The record before this Court is unique. It includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor.”

However, after a few revisions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in favor of the Trump administration, upholding the travel ban. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that the travel ban was “squarely within the scope of Presidential authority” under the Immigration and Nationality Act and, as such, the president can suspend non-citizens’ entry whenever necessary for national security.

But judicial overreach isn’t confined to federal policy alone. The controversy around California’s Proposition 8 ballot measure reveals how courts have overstepped their role by undermining and eroding states’ rights, which was once a foundational principle of our republic.

Proposition 8, passed in 2008, legally amended California’s state constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, effectively banning same-sex marriage.

Despite 52 percent of California residents voting for the measure, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, stating that the measure had no legitimate state interest and was rooted in discrimination against same-sex couples.

The Supreme Court agreed, effectively ruling that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (equal protection) overruled the 10th Amendment of the Constitution (states’ rights.) The outcome of that case ultimately led to Obergefell v. Hodges, where the Supreme Court explicitly ruled that state laws could not infringe on the fundamental right to marriage, despite marriage not being explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, historically being a state-regulated matter, and traditionally defined as a union between one man and one woman.

As these two cases illustrate, the courts have increasingly shifted from their primary role as interpreters of the law to that of legislators. This has fundamentally eroded the separation of powers and transformed the judiciary from a neutral arbiter into a force for liberal activism.

This disturbing pattern of judicial overreach further undermines our already fragile representative democracy and exposes the oligarchy beneath. Instead of three co-equal branches of government, none superior to the other, we now have an unchecked judiciary that can override the executive and legislative branches whenever elected officials pursue policies that conflict with the ideological preferences of the liberal establishment.

President Biden proudly boasted that the Supreme Court didn’t stop him from canceling approximately $190 billion of student debt. The Trump administration has thus far attempted to appeal the challenges to Trump’s executive authority through the same judicial system attempting to undermine his presidency, but a constitutional crisis is looming.

If the deliberate legal obstruction of Trump’s presidency continues without significant pushback, either by winning legal appeals, impeaching partisan justices, eliminating some federal courts, openly defying court orders, or the Supreme Court granting the Trump administration’s request to narrow the scope of the district court injunctions, the judiciary will effectively cement itself as America’s unelected ruling class.

Adam Johnston is a contributor to The Federalist whose work has been featured in The Blaze, WrongSpeak Publishing, and Man’s World Magazine. He is also the creator of conquesttheory.com, where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @ConquestTheory.