Law Profs Butt Heads Over Suit Filed Against Trump

CREW‘s claim that its focus on Trump‘s alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause drains resources away from its other activities brings to mind an old Henny Youngman joke. Patient says to the doctor, Doctor it hurts when I do this. Doctor says don‘t do that. Same principle applies here. Any hardship CREW may suffer as a result of its transparently partisan choice to hector the Trump administration is wholly self-imposed. Were CREW more reasonably to accept the voters‘ verdict of November 8 -- a verdict fully informed about Trump‘s vast business holdings -- it could carry on its other work as budgeted and not, like Aesop‘s Boy Who Cried Wolf, sacrifice its credibility.

According to this article, no one would have standing to sue.

It probably goes without saying that Chemerinsky, et al are politically motivated actors. Their suit is likely filed with the hope, not of winning, but simply of throwing mud against the Trump administration in the hope of denying the President any sort of honeymoon in public opinion. One has to wonder, however, if Chemerinsky et al have really considered the impact of filing such a transparently frivolous claim might have on their professional reputations. Perhaps they‘re simply too far gone in partisanship to care.

I‘d take Chemerinsky, Tribe and Teachout against Blackman, Muller and Adler every day of the week.

A law suit filed today by a group of prominent law professors, challenging President Donald Trump for alleged violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, may well yield the same result - a complete rout and debacle, including a major loss - as the last major case brought by law professors. In 2006, a law suit largely put together by constitutional and other law professors, arguing that universities which accepted federal funding nevertheless had a constitutional right to bar military recruiters from their campus, was rejected unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court which sharply rebuked the law schools and law professors who brought the case for even making the argument. The Court trashed the four legal theories advanced by the law professors, especially Harvard‘s statutory interpretation argument, although six justices went to Harvard Law. Worse, the case backfired on the learned professors when the Court also went on to say that Congress could probably mandate that colleges permit military recruiters on campus, even if the school does not accept any federal funding - a major and (to them) an unexpected loss. Perhaps even more stinging for the law professors was how they were treated and described by the major media, including even the liberal media which supported their cause but nevertheless trashed their law suit. For example, the New York Times, in a piece entitled "Supreme Court Smackdown," said "On Monday, the best minds in the legal business struck out. The vote was 8-to-0 against them -- a shutout, a rout, a humiliation.” It cited what it called the “Clueless Law Professor Theory" in trying to explain it. The Washington Post, even before the Supreme Court ruled, said "this litigation is something of a misfire. . . . As a legal matter, the [law school‘s] claim seems wrong." Later it opined that the suit "trivializes the plight of gays in the military." Likewise, the Los Angles Times, in a piece entitled "Flawed Legal Logic," asked "how could the nation‘s top law schools, overflowing with brilliant legal scholars, have agreed to make such an absurd argument? . . . But their constitutional argument is embarrassingly weak. It‘s also dangerous." It cautioned that "law schools should step back from their self-indulgent campus politics." The Harvard Crimson also weighed in, noting that Chief Justice Roberts singled out the Harvard professors’ brief, and later wrote that the Harvard faculty members’ interpretation of the Solomon Amendment is “clearly not what Congress had in mind.” It has been said that “those who can, do; those who can‘t, teach,” and that many law professors could not litigate themselves out of a paper bag, much less find their way to the courthouse. So, while this suit must be judged on its individual merits, the public should not assume that it has a significant probability of success simply because prominent law professors are backing it. FOR MORE ON THE FAIR SUIT, See: ly/2gnTYc3