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Comment by helthanatos | Hacker News Reader

He could just play the executive order dance

An injunction against new EOs would be a rather fascinating Constitutional crisis...

Such an injunction would be without any basis in law whatsoever, the constitution instructs the President to "take care that laws be faithfully executed". Individual executive orders need to have their own constitutional reasoning, but since executive orders are really the means by which the president fulfills that clause, a court could not prohibit them altogether.

The question, then, is what recourse would the courts have against a President who just spams new EOs with the same text and new IDs? Can he be charged with contempt of court?

He and his Cabinet could be held in contempt of court.

Legal DOS?

Those orders would not hold an legal water. Any court that saw them would throw them out on precedent.

As an equivalent example of this, if the court rules a particular law unconstitutional and congress passes the same law under a different name, that law would be utterly powerless as well. In general, Changing the name of something doesn't change its legality.

I think ceejayoz meant an injunction against any new executive orders with containing certain provisions.

In that case, no injunction would be necessary. The orders would be utterly powerless if they relied upon bits that the court previously found unconstitutional.

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