Jonathan Turley: "Congress must step in and rein in the lower courts legislatively"

Jonathan Turley: "When Biden came in and eliminated all of Trump’s executive orders, I don’t remember seeing all these injunctions appear—because they didn’t. And these judges are really following Oscar Wilde’s rule: the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. They’ve been issuing these nationwide injunctions. Even liberal judges like Justice Kagan have said: this is madness.

What’s interesting is that Roberts has said it, everyone has said it during oral arguments. In my view, part of the problem is that Roberts tends to believe that, over time, people will come to the right decision. They’ve been saying for years to stop issuing nationwide injunctions, and it hasn’t worked. So now Congress will have to step in.

I think it would be good to revise the language around injunctions, and possibly limit the ability to issue nationwide injunctions. Personally, I’d like to see that—even though there are some cases where a nationwide injunction might be appropriate, depending on the case, like if it’s a class action lawsuit—I’m not entirely sure how we’d handle that. But I’d like to see, at the very least, that any class action requiring a nationwide injunction has to go through a special three-judge panel, with very specific conditions under which such an injunction can be issued.

I’d also like Congress to shorten the appeal time. The problem we’ve seen—and I really sympathize with the president on this—is that a temporary restraining order (TRO) is issued, which some courts don’t consider appealable, it lasts for two weeks, and then it becomes a preliminary injunction (PI), and then you can appeal. The problem is, two weeks is a very long time if a president believes there’s a national security issue. And I think Congress can help by shortening that period, allowing immediate appeals to truly speed up the process."