The Supreme Court Generals Failed Their Troops This Year

This will go down as the year when the president of the United States openly went to war against the rule of law. I’ve been writing about the many battles of this war throughout 2025. In this column, I’m going to zoom out and take a broad view of the overall state of the battlefield, with special attention to the main combatants defending the law: the lower federal courts, which are the frontline troops; and the Supreme Court justices, who serve as the generals of the joint chiefs of staff.

The first thing to understand about the conflict is that President Donald Trump’s primary weapon is unilateral executive action. He started issuing executive orders that violate constitutional and legal norms on day one of his administration.