How Trump is Changing the Country's Legal Culture

THE US PRESIDENT IS APPOINTING LIKEMINDED IDEOLOGUES TO FEDERAL AGENCIES AND COURTS. HIS NEXT TARGET WILL BE ABORTION, SAYS GRAZIELLA ROMEO

The tug-of-war between President Trump and the country's political and administrative structures has been at the center of US politics since his entry into the White House and is one of the lines of observation and research conducted by Graziella Romeo, Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law. This is a phenomenon that can also be found in the context of the pandemic emergency "as evidenced by the presidential provision by which Trump authorized federal agencies to lift certain regulations to protect workers and the environment for emergency reasons".
 
More generally, "Trump has never made a secret of his idea that federal agencies had to be curbed as responsible for altering, if not actually misdirecting, the fundamental decisions of executive power. And in effect he has made true to his promise both by soliciting the approval of laws in Congress, and by appointing a judge to the Supreme Court who thinks like him on many aspects ".
 
This course of action has proved controversial; in some cases, the presidency itself called for the intervention of the Department of Justice, invoking the adoption of a secondary rule that effectively distorts the law passed by Congress. "This is the case of the rule  recently introduced to limit asylum applications made by citizens coming from southern border of the United States, a right enshrined in a law of Congress," continues the professor.

"The broader goal of my research, however, is to look at how the Trump presidency is influencing the country's legal culture." This is an area where the appointment of the two justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court appears particularly significant. “The choice of two judges, above all Gorsuch, proponents of the so-called originalism, which interprets the Constitution in a literal fashion, is not neutral”, underlines the jurist.
 
“This approach, which had already been embraced by Bush or, much earlier, by Reagan, is dictated by the desire to limit the activism of judges, or their power to interpret the norms, calling for a more faithful and “originalist” reading of the US Constitution. Unlike his two Republican predecessors, however, Trump does by resorting to themes typical of populism, citing the his determination to protect the will expressed by the people in the American Constitution”.
 
But on the judicial level what are going be the first effects of these new appointments? "In my opinion, the first relapse will be on the issue of civil rights", concludes Romeo, "and, in particular, on the right of abortion. A strong anti-abortion movement already exists in the US, but now it finds backing in the presence of a Supreme Court justice, Gorsuch, who has already expressed himself in a very critical way on Roe v. Wade and therefore I would not be surprised if the Supreme Court showed itself to be leaning towards limiting this right".

by Emanuele Elli
Translated by Alex Foti