Articles by James Caldwell

Deference and the Insurrection Act

When a president reaches for a domestic deployment tool, the immediate legal fight is often not about tactics on the ground. It is about a threshold judicial question: how much should a court defer to the president’s version of the facts? That word, deference , can determine whether statutory...

Supreme Court Clears Border Wall Work in Big Bend

When a federal judge blocks a president’s border policy, the next question is practical as much as legal: does the order stay in place while the case moves forward? On Monday, the Supreme Court delivered a blunt, temporary answer. It granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to lift a...