Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Albany Law Review
Abstract
The Trump Administration asserted an obscure legal doctrine to refuse to follow the direct order of a federal court enjoining its unilateral executive actions not to enforce
• One of the oldest international environmental treaties
• affecting the most capital-intensive industry in the U.S.
• providing the essential resource undergirding the modern world economy,
• as well as the primary renewable energy technology utilized in the U.S.
• at a time with lasting warming of our climate exceeding what the United Nations identifies now as “tipping points that are irreversible within the time span of our current civilization.”
This article dissects and contrasts critical unilateral exercise of executive actions starting during the Obama presidency; and how thereafter it was reversed and magnified in the Trump presidency. This article analyzes how this refusal by President Trump created a fundamental legal challenge to the separation of powers under U.S. law. This resulting in a judicial tug-of-war over the Chevron deference doctrine, the single most-cited Supreme Court precedent in the last three decades.
Refusing to follow court decisions, President Trump’s reaction that the judicial branch is not the final arbiter of the law transmuted a domestic legal conflict instantaneously to international dimension -- the subject of this battle directly determines whether the U.S. effectively controls rapid climate change. This article charts the legal consequences extending beyond substantive climate law. This is altering the fundamental separation of U.S. powers between the three branches of government and changes the legal toolbox from which U.S. law in the future will be made and enforced.
First Page
439
Last Page
499
Publication Date
10-2022
Recommended Citation
Steven Ferrey, Disordered Law: Obama to Trump Executive Branch Orders Mandating Non-Enforcement of International Treaties, 85 Albany L. Rev. 439 (2022).
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License