{"id":127655,"date":"2025-07-22T12:11:53","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/07\/22\/trump-wont-give-up-on-his-biglaw-executive-orders-until-he-gets-in-front-of-the-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T12:11:53","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:11:53","slug":"trump-wont-give-up-on-his-biglaw-executive-orders-until-he-gets-in-front-of-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/07\/22\/trump-wont-give-up-on-his-biglaw-executive-orders-until-he-gets-in-front-of-the-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Won\u2019t Give Up On His Biglaw Executive Orders Until He Gets In Front Of The Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s dogged pursuit of executive orders that target Biglaw firms<\/a> that displease him continues. Yes, four different district court judges from across the political spectrum<\/a> have all ruled that EOs aimed at Perkins Coie<\/a>, Jenner & Block<\/a>, WilmerHale<\/a>, and Susman Godfrey<\/a>, respectively, are unconstitutional on a variety of grounds. Despite L after L on the matter, yesterday the Trump administration announced they are appealing the Jenner & Block case<\/a>. Which, isn\u2019t shocking since the Department of Justice has already appealed<\/a> the similar case versus Perkins Coie. But it puts none too fine a point on the question of WHY they\u2019re doing it.<\/p>\n

Matthew Wallin at Slate argues<\/a> that railing against judges that\u2019ve done Trump wrong is simply part of his brand at this point. <\/p>\n

\n

Trump administration has a very different relationship with legal action than any previous administration. They do not seem to view legality, or effective administration of existing laws, to be a primary or even desirable goal. Rather, they seem to view state action primarily as a means of political advocacy, in which an ultimate loss\u2014or a few constitutional violations\u2014doesn\u2019t really matter as long as those losses manage to move the conversation. (This is a lesson that Democrats could stand to learn from.) Appealing this decision plays exactly into this strategy, because it allows the Trump administration to keep threatening lawyers representing political opponents because they get to keep talking about it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2026Which checks out. <\/p>\n

And of course there\u2019s the elephant at 1 First Street. These appeals (obviously at this point they\u2019re expected in the WilmerHale and Susman cases) are how Trump gets in front of his favorite justices<\/a>. Wallin acknowledges that the Supreme Court\u2019s tendency to bend over backwards for Trump means that what should be an easy call at the High Court gets a lot more dicey, \u201cThe government could appeal an issue that they never argued in the lower court (despite the fact that they\u2019re not supposed to be able to do that), and the Supreme Court could agree with them on that. The Trump administration might do something so new and crazy that OK\u2019ing this executive order suddenly seems like a \u2018moderate\u2019 decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t go poor betting on the Roberts court selling out the norms and precedent of the legal system, so it\u2019s definitely on the table that SCOTUS backs Trump on this one. I still think these orders are such an affront to legal institutions and the very rule of law that the EOs won\u2019t get the green light from the Court. But it\u2019s not 100% \u2014 and that\u2019s terrifying.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Trump Won\u2019t Give Up On His Biglaw Executive Orders Until He Gets In Front Of The Supreme Court<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Illustration via ChatGPT)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s dogged pursuit of executive orders that target Biglaw firms<\/a> that displease him continues. Yes, four different district court judges from across the political spectrum<\/a> have all ruled that EOs aimed at Perkins Coie<\/a>, Jenner & Block<\/a>, WilmerHale<\/a>, and Susman Godfrey<\/a>, respectively, are unconstitutional on a variety of grounds. Despite L after L on the matter, yesterday the Trump administration announced they are appealing the Jenner & Block case<\/a>. Which, isn\u2019t shocking since the Department of Justice has already appealed<\/a> the similar case versus Perkins Coie. But it puts none too fine a point on the question of WHY they\u2019re doing it.<\/p>\n

Matthew Wallin at Slate argues<\/a> that railing against judges that\u2019ve done Trump wrong is simply part of his brand at this point. <\/p>\n

\n

Trump administration has a very different relationship with legal action than any previous administration. They do not seem to view legality, or effective administration of existing laws, to be a primary or even desirable goal. Rather, they seem to view state action primarily as a means of political advocacy, in which an ultimate loss\u2014or a few constitutional violations\u2014doesn\u2019t really matter as long as those losses manage to move the conversation. (This is a lesson that Democrats could stand to learn from.) Appealing this decision plays exactly into this strategy, because it allows the Trump administration to keep threatening lawyers representing political opponents because they get to keep talking about it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2026Which checks out. <\/p>\n

And of course there\u2019s the elephant at 1 First Street. These appeals (obviously at this point they\u2019re expected in the WilmerHale and Susman cases) are how Trump gets in front of his favorite justices<\/a>. Wallin acknowledges that the Supreme Court\u2019s tendency to bend over backwards for Trump means that what should be an easy call at the High Court gets a lot more dicey, \u201cThe government could appeal an issue that they never argued in the lower court (despite the fact that they\u2019re not supposed to be able to do that), and the Supreme Court could agree with them on that. The Trump administration might do something so new and crazy that OK\u2019ing this executive order suddenly seems like a \u2018moderate\u2019 decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t go poor betting on the Roberts court selling out the norms and precedent of the legal system, so it\u2019s definitely on the table that SCOTUS backs Trump on this one. I still think these orders are such an affront to legal institutions and the very rule of law that the EOs won\u2019t get the green light from the Court. But it\u2019s not 100% \u2014 and that\u2019s terrifying.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @[email\u00a0protected].<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s dogged pursuit of executive orders that target Biglaw firms that displease him continues. Yes, four different district court judges from across the political spectrum have all ruled that EOs aimed at Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey, respectively, are unconstitutional on a variety of grounds. Despite L after L on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":127641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-mDhtHo.jpeg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}