Try and stop me!
One of the problems with the Supreme Court is that we really don't know what to do when Presidents ignore it. And that's been done a few times:
- Democrat President Andrew Jackson ignored rulings against his Indian removals, and just continued to do it anyways.
- Abraham Lincoln (acting like a Democrat) just ignored the Constitutional limitations of powers, and SCOTUS the rulings against him (like suspending Habeas Corpus and imprisoning Journalists that disagreed with him)
- Democrat FDR was grabbing extraconstitutional powers, and a sympathetic court took years to crack down on it. Then he threatened to just pack the Supreme Court by appointing lots more judges. But the blowback on the threat of doing that was so great, that he backed down. But the Court was scared/chastised, so they flipped and started ignoring their duty and tolerating his overreach more.
Andrew Jackson
- In 1828, the first Democrat President was Andrew Jackson, and he almost immediately signed the Indian Removal Act into law[1], which basically said all Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi were rounded up and marched to camps farther west.
- The US Supreme court ruled in favor of Cherokee Indians in a suit against Georgia: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia[2] which said the Cherokee Nation could not be forcibly removed from their homes. So Andrew Jackson was the first President to completely ignore the Constitution, Oath of Office, and rule-of-law, and just ignored the decision. (Very much like Democrats to this day). The Cherokee people were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to Oklahoma: one in four Cherokee people died during the inhumane journey which became known as the Trail of Tears[3]
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Abraham Lincoln
FDR
In 1937, in an effort to create a court more friendly to his New Deal programs, President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to convince Congress to pass legislation that would allow a new justice to be added to the courtâfor a total of up to 15 membersâfor every justice over 70 who opted not to retire. Congress didnât go for FDRâs plan.
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