Town Halls

In this episode, Dr. John C. Eastman, founding director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, is joined by Ilya Shapiro, 2015 Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, and editor-in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review.

Up first, they discuss Trump, President of U.S. v. Hawaii. This is the legal challenge to President Trump’s executive orders restricting immigration from several terrorist hotbed countries, finally being heard on the merits by the Supreme Court after more than a year of legal wrangling in the lower courts. The oral argument for this case was held on April 25, the last day of the Court’s oral argument calendar for the term.

The two also discuss a couple of other immigration-related recent developments in the news. 

• Does the president’s use of the National Guard in order to help patrol border violate the Posse Comitatus Act? Do governors have the authority to refuse to allow their states’ national guard to be called into such service by the president?
• Can the current president cancel the DACA program? Three lower courts have now held that he cannot, without first going through the notice and comment rulemaking procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act. This is despite that the fact that the prior president himself implemented the program without going through the notice and comment rulemaking procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act. Is the president’s promise to cancel the DACA program illegal, or are the lower court injunctions against him doing so an example of judicial overreach, even lawlessness?

Dr. Eastman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University Fowler School of Law. He served as a law clerk with Justice Clarence Thomas in 1996-97.