Prof. Alan Rozenshtein Quoted by New York Times About the Administration’s Escalating Fight With Judiciary

Professor Alan Rozenshtein was quoted by the New York Times about a Justice Department’s lawsuit filed on Tuesday against the Maryland federal district’s chief judge. In May, Judge George L. Russell III issued a new standing rule that said that any immigrant who sought to challenge their removal from the country by filing what is known as a habeas petition would be automatically granted a temporary order stopping the government from expelling them for at least one day. The lawsuit against Russell, as well as the other 14 federal judges who serve on the bench in Maryland, would seek a court order that would block the standing rule. Lawyers for the administration said that a rule issued by a judge in Maryland intruded on the White House’s inherent powers to “enforce the nation’s immigration laws.” Prof. Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official, said that both the government’s lawsuit and the standing rule it sought to do away with were extraordinary. But he pointed out that the fact that Judge Russell had put the measure in place to begin with suggested just how bad things had gotten between the branches. He said, “What’s important is not the procedural minutiae of how this case was brought, but rather the fact that the administration has completely lost the trust of the judiciary — and rightly so.”