A Harvard Law School professor and a San Francisco State University political scientist wrote a letter urging President Joe Biden to ignore the Supreme Court if it rules against him on issues such as affirmative action.
"We urge President Biden to restrain MAGA justices immediately" by declaring that his "administration will be guided by its own constitutional interpretations," Harvard's Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State's Aaron Belkin wrote in an open letter. "A president who disagrees with a Court's interpretation of the Constitution should offer and then follow an alternative interpretation."
This is far from the first time left-wingers have proposed upending the American constitutional order because they disagree with Supreme Court rulings. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) called for packing the Court with liberal justices, calling it a "MAGA Supreme Court." The mainstream media, meanwhile, have repeatedly defended Biden against accusations of politicizing the Court even as the president "repeatedly railed against the Supreme Court in highly partisan terms," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Tushnet and Belkin, who also support Court-packing, wrote, "The threat that MAGA justices pose is so extreme" that Biden must "act when MAGA justices issue high-stakes rulings." While the professors say Biden shouldn't "simply ignore every MAGA ruling," they point to the affirmative action decision as a ruling he should ignore.
The professors' argument, which is based on a theory called "Popular Constitutionalism," flies in the face of the American constitutional principle of judicial review, which says that the Supreme Court can strike down laws as unconstitutional. A president who refuses to abide by a Supreme Court ruling would almost undoubtedly spark a constitutional crisis.