Here is the column:<\/p>\n It\u2019s only March, and we have yet another declaration of a \u201cconstitutional crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest dire declaration comes from roughly 950 law professors, who refer generally to actions and policies implemented by President Trump as \u201cbeyond his constitutional or statutory authority.\u201d<\/p>\n So \u2014 what happens if the \u201cexperts\u201d hold a crisis and no one shows up?<\/p>\n After years of such claims, the perpetual crisis has\u00a0left a dwindling\u00a0number of people inclined to\u00a0panic.\u00a0Many simply\u00a0have more pressing matters at the moment and have the same reaction of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger:\u00a0\u201cThere cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a \u201cconstitutional crisis\u201d caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.<\/p>\n The purging of conservative and libertarian faculty from most universities has been a long-standing problem. In self-identified surveys, professors confirm that some departments lack a single Republican. A study by Georgetown University\u2019s Kevin Tobia and MIT\u2019s Eric Martinez found that only 9 percent of law school professors in the top 50 law schools identify as conservative.<\/p>\n In other words, it is embarrassingly easy to get 1,000 law professors to sign off on letters claiming endless constitutional crises caused by Trump or conservatives.<\/p>\n Those letters are then fed to eagerly awaiting media outlets. The perpetual machine then whirls and spins as liberal professors feed liberal reporters, who then feed liberals in Congress, who cite the unchallenged consensus of academia and the media.<\/p>\n The New York Times\u00a0rushed the\u00a0news<\/a>\u00a0to its viewers that \u201cTrump\u2019s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say.\u201d The Times interviewed Berkeley Dean\u00a0Erwin Chemerinsky,<\/a><\/span>\u00a0who previously called the conservative justices \u201cpolitical hacks\u201d and just published a book titled\u00a0\u201cNo Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Chemerinsky breathlessly explained \u201cWe never have seen anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem is that we have. Presidents often negate the prior executive orders of their predecessors, fire their appointees and implement sweeping new changes. Those actions are frequently challenged and some are found to be procedurally or substantially unlawful. Others are upheld.<\/p>\n President Biden\u00a0<\/a><\/span>was repeatedly found to have violated the constitution without most of these signatories expressing a peep of concern over the mounting \u201ccrisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, some pushed for unconstitutional actions against the overwhelming views of legal experts. Take Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, who also signed this letter to express alarm at Trump pushing the Constitution to the breaking point. Tribe has attacked conservatives in\u00a0profane diatribes<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0supported packing the Supreme Court<\/a> to engineer a liberal majority.<\/p>\n When Biden wanted to circumvent Congress and implement billions in student loan forgiveness payments before the election, Tribe was there. Even former Speaker\u00a0Nancy Pelosi\u00a0<\/a><\/span>admitted that Biden could not constitutionally wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars of student loans without congressional action. However, Tribe\u00a0assured President Biden that it was entirely legal<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and lower courts.<\/p>\n When Biden wanted to impose a national eviction moratorium, he admitted that his own lawyers told him that it would be flagrantly unconstitutional. Pelosi then told him to call Tribe, who assured Biden\u00a0he had the authority<\/a> to act alone.<\/p>\n This was also quickly found to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n Biden was also found to have engaged in racial discrimination and other flagrant constitutional violations.<\/p>\n Of course, none of that is a crisis, and none of these signatories ran to blast fax a letter to the legal academy.<\/p>\n Other signatories, such as Professor Heidi Li Feldman, have declared that conservative justices and lawyers are \u201clawless\u201d due to their opposing constitutional views. She has\u00a0called upon<\/a>\u00a0law professors not to fall \u201cinto complicity with lawlessness.\u201d In other words, conservative jurisprudence, followed by roughly half of the bench, is simply unacceptable and should not be recognized.<\/p>\n If you view conservatives judges and justices as \u201clawless,\u201d then every decision that they issue can be construed as a \u201ccrisis\u201d in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.<\/p>\n There are good-faith reasons to challenge some of Trump\u2019s actions, as there were under Biden. I have criticized some of those measures. However, Trump has repeatedly pledged to follow adverse court orders while he seeks appeals. That is precisely what he did in his first term, where he complied with opposing rulings, including some issued by his own appointees.<\/p>\n Trump is also prevailing in some of these cases and will likely prevail in many others. Democratic groups have forum-shopped around the country to bring challenges before favorable judges. Some have issued injunctions, while others have not. Others have already been reversed.<\/p>\n For example, the media made great fanfare over restraining orders issued to limit the actions of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Less coverage was given to later opinions reducing those orders or setting them aside, including a recent order\u00a0refusing to bar<\/a>\u00a0Trump from firing many government employees at USAID.<\/p>\n Likewise, the media and many professors lionized Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger for suing to stop Trump\u2019s firing. When Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington issued her opinion, some of us expressed skepticism over her cited legal authority. Within four days, the D.C. Circuit had reversed her, ruling for Trump. Dellinger then dropped his own case rather than multiply adverse rulings.<\/p>\n None of this means that Trump will prevail in most such lawsuits or that these are not good-faith challenges. However, the record does not suggest a constitutional crisis. It suggests the opposite \u2014 a constitutional system that continues to function efficiently and fairly.<\/p>\n The real \u201ccrisis\u201d seems to be that Trump is winning in some of these cases. To make matters worse, he is complying with adverse rulings. After an election where many of these same voices declared the imminent death of democracy if Trump were elected, the constitutional system seems to be, inconveniently and stubbornly, very much alive and well.<\/p>\n Of course, opposing these actions on policy or conventional legal grounds would generate little press. It has to be a \u201ccrisis\u201d to get headlines and segments on cable news. Stanford law Professor Pamela Karlan and co-signatory\u00a0described<\/a> Trump as different, a president \u201cfor whom the Constitution [is] essentially meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n Karlan, who previously testified in favor of impeaching Trump in his first term, ignores the fact that our system does not depend on how Trump feels about the Constitution, even if she did have an insight into his inner self. We have the oldest and most successful constitutional system because it does not rely on the good motivations or values of those in government. It has survived centuries with often hostile presidents due to its checks and balances.<\/p>\n In the end, the seeming unanimity is not reflective of the merits but the membership of the legal academy. From calls to\u00a0pack the court<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0curtailing free speech<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0trashing the Constitution<\/a>, law professors are like priests who have kept their frocks while losing their faith. And their crisis of faith is the only crisis these professors are facing.<\/p>\n Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of \u201cThe Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jonathanturley.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/the_scream.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>Below is my column in the Hill on yet another letter from law professors declaring a \u201cconstitutional crisis\u201d over the Trump policies. Despite the claims that this is a rogue president ignoring the rule of law, the Administration continues to prevail in some of these cases, including another ruling<\/a> in favor of the Department of Government Efficiency late on Friday. As stated in the column, it has also lost some cases as did the prior Administration. The point is that, rather than witnessing the collapse of the constitutional system, these cases show that it is continuing to function as designed in sorting out these disputes.<\/p>\nLike this:<\/h3>\n