Vet Trump’s Judicial Picks for Their Views on Presidential Power
Issues
This excerpt is from a piece by Keith Thirion that originally ran in Democracy Docket on March 26, 2025.
There’s a seeming contradiction in the way conservative judges and justices have been ruling lately on issues related to checks and balances and the separation of powers. At times, they have overly asserted their own authority, while at others they’ve seemingly gone in the opposite direction, overly deferring to executive power.
There is, however, a throughline in these decisions. It points to a dangerous and extreme legal theory increasingly encroaching upon our democracy — one that will be essential to consider as President Donald Trump begins nominating federal judges.
On the one hand, we’ve seen the courts claim more power for themselves. In 2024’s Loper Bright decision, the Supreme Court overturned the concept of Chevron deference, which means courts will no longer defer to the agency experts whose knowledge helps keep our air, water, food, and drugs safe, among so many other things. Instead, judges will act as the experts themselves. This is consistent with the Court’s increasing use of the “major questions doctrine,” a completely made-up principle by which courts claim power to decide certain issues simply because they disagree with the decisions of those with the designated authority.
On the other hand, we’ve seen the courts increasingly hand more power to the president. This was best exemplified by last year’s Trump v. U.S. decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the president generally cannot be held accountable for illegal actions taken in the course of the presidency.
So what connects these two trends: both claiming more power for the courts and giving more power to the president?
In both situations, power is being taken away from non-partisan experts in the federal government so that the president and the justices can impose a partisan outcome. Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are being stripped of their power so that either the courts can overrule their decisions or the president can threaten workers if they don’t abide by his preferred outcomes.