Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) spoke with law professors about a district court judge on a national ban issued by the President’s administration during a congressional hearing Tuesday.
Hawley provided a chart at a hearing on the Senate Joint Judicial Subcommittee that showed that the number of bans issued against Trump was much higher than other U.S. presidents.
“Do you think this is a little abnormal?” Hawley asked Kate Shaw, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
“A very reasonable explanation, Senator, what you have to consider is that he (Trump) is engaged in more inability to do than other presidents,” Shaw said. “You have to admit that it’s a possibility.”
Hawley argued that the national injunction issued by the judge in recent months temporarily stopped or slowed down the executive branch’s conduct but was not used until the 1960s, “Suddenly, Democratic judges decided that we love the national injunction and then when Biden took office, no, no, no, no, no.”
ABC News’ Supreme Court contributor Xiao noted that the Republican-appointed justices also imposed bans on the administration, adding that the 1960s were “where some scholars started – finding the beginning of that.”
The professor who works in Obama’s White House lawyer’s office said Mila Sohoni, “he was another scholar in the general ban, and he showed that 1913 was actually the first and others in the 1920s.”
“Until 100 years ago, the federal government performed much less,” said Shaw. “In the past 100 or the last 50 years, a lot of things have changed.”
“So, as long as it is a Democratic president, we shouldn’t have a national ban,” Hawley said in the exchange. “If it’s a Republican president, then it’s absolutely good and necessary.”
During Trump’s second White House term, the judge ruled against the president’s efforts to mass deportation, federal funding, end federal workers and tariffs.
During Tuesday’s hearing, other Republican senators expressed dissatisfaction with the judge’s ruling. Republicans in Congress proposed measures earlier this year that would curb a nationwide ban, saying it would prevent jurists from overturning, while Democrats said judges were just doing their jobs.
The Missouri Senator also asked, “How does our legal system survive on these principles?”
“I think the president’s system without restrictions is a very dangerous one,” Xiao replied.
Hawley shot Shaw, saying it was not the argument she used when former President Biden occupied the Oval Office.
“You said this is the danger of the concept of democratic principles, judicial justice and rule of law,” Hawley said.
“You also say that when Joe Biden was president, you said anyone would think of foreign shops to get a judge who would object nationwide, and that was just looking like a politician in robes, threatening the basic legal system again. It was just trying to get the result they wanted. It was a trivia of the rules of law,” Gop Lawmaker.