The first case involving judicial interference in the president’s executive authority has reached the Supreme Court in an emergency appeal filed over President Donald Trump’s firing of Hampton Dellinger, the Biden-appointed head of the Office of Special Counsel.
In what acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris rightly calls an “unprecedented assault on the separation of powers” by federal judges, Harris is asking the court to throw out a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge, Amy Berman Jackson (an Obama appointee). Jackson apparently believes that she has more power than the president. She not only reinstated Dellinger, but told the president he could not appoint a replacement.
This “unprecedented assault” in Dellinger v. Bessent was upheld in a split, three-judge panel decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Judge Gregory…
