The Courts Can Rule. But Can They Still Matter?
Inside the authoritarian threat to judicial power in America.
America’s courts can write rulings, but they can’t enforce them. In 2025, that’s a crisis. As executive power grows more defiant and authoritarianism gains ground, we watch the rule of law rot from within. This is the story of how that collapse happens—and what we can do to stop it.
“The judiciary has neither force nor will but merely judgment.”
— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78
That line, penned in 1788, should keep every defender of democracy up at night in 2025.
It’s not a metaphor. It’s a structural reality. The U.S. Supreme Court can strike down unconstitutional laws. It can rule against sitting presidents. It can uphold civil liberties, expand voting rights, or rein in executive power. But what it can’t do—what it has never been able to do—is enforce any of it on its own.
The judiciary is the only branch of the federal government that doesn’t command an army, control a police force, or hold the national purse strings. It doesn’t direct federal agents or deploy troops. It can issue rulings, opinions, and orders, but it depends entirely on the executive branch to carry them out. When that executive is hostile or unwilling, the court’s authority exists only on paper.
That’s not a flaw of the system. It was baked into the Constitution by design. The framers believed the judiciary would be the “least dangerous” branch because it had “no influence over the sword or the purse.” Hamilton, Madison, and others assumed that the courts would rely on the moral authority of their judgments—and on the integrity of the other branches—to give those judgments life. It was a government built on balance, but also on belief.
That belief is now in crisis.
The American court system was founded on a dangerous kind of optimism: that presidents would honor rulings that constrained their power, that governors would uphold federal mandates they disagreed with, and that the public would see courts as legitimate, even when they didn’t like the decisions. But in a nation where elected officials openly defy court orders, where mobs storm the Capitol after courts affirm election results, and where former presidents campaign on promises to ignore or purge the judiciary, that optimism looks increasingly naïve.
Respect, it turns out, is a soft currency. And in 2025, that currency is crashing.
This is no longer just a conversation about legal theory or the separation of powers. It’s about the survival of democracy itself—about whether court orders are binding legal authority, or just polite suggestions. Because when judicial rulings are treated as optional, it’s not the courts that lose. It’s the rule of law. And once that goes, democracy doesn’t lag far behind.
⚖️ No Police, No Army—Just Paper and Principles
Let’s be clear: the U.S. judiciary has no direct enforcement mechanism. It does not command battalions, dispatch officers, or issue warrants with armed backup at the ready. The Supreme Court, despite being the highest legal authority in the land, cannot enforce its own rulings without help. It doesn’t control the military. It doesn’t control the purse. And it doesn’t oversee any law enforcement agency.
The closest it comes is the U.S. Marshals Service, which provides courtroom security, serves warrants, and ensures the safety of judges. However, even though they are not truly “judicial” agents, they operate under the Department of Justice, meaning they ultimately report to the Attorney General, who serves at the pleasure of the president. In other words, they are executive branch actors.
Judges can issue powerful tools: rulings, injunctions, contempt citations, temporary restraining orders, even arrest warrants. But these are only as effective as the willingness of others to act on them. A court’s order to desegregate schools, release detainees, halt a deportation, or block an unconstitutional law is meaningless unless someone shows up—with legal authority and often with force—to make it real.
“The Supreme Court rules, and America obeys.”
That’s the myth. It’s comforting, cinematic, and profoundly dangerous. The reality is far more fragile.
What keeps the judicial branch functioning isn’t raw power—it’s institutional respect. From local officials to federal agencies, there is a collective agreement that rulings will be followed even when inconvenient or politically unpopular. That agreement is now eroding under the weight of rising authoritarianism and partisan contempt.
Without that respect, the courts are left holding parchment in a burning house—armed with principle, but surrounded by power that may no longer care.
🏛️ When the Courts Were Defied—and Almost Powerless
We’ve seen what happens when the fragile compact between the judiciary and the rest of the government breaks down—when the courts speak, but the other branches turn their backs. History offers more than cautionary tales; it reminds us that without enforcement, the law is a suggestion, not a command.
Worcester v. Georgia (1832)
In one of the earliest and most glaring examples of judicial impotence, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state of Georgia had no authority to enforce its laws within Cherokee territory. Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the decision, which affirmed the sovereignty of Native American nations and struck down Georgia’s efforts to control them.
The ruling was clear. But Georgia refused to comply.
Enter President Andrew Jackson. Though historians debate whether he literally said the now-infamous line, its sentiment has echoed through the centuries:
“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
Jackson’s refusal to uphold the Court’s ruling signaled open contempt for judicial authority. With the executive branch unwilling to enforce the judgment, Georgia proceeded to push the Cherokee off their land. The result was one of the darkest chapters in American history: the Trail of Tears. This forced migration killed thousands and marked a genocidal expansion of U.S. territory under the banner of manifest destiny.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Over a century later, the Supreme Court again issued a landmark ruling—this time declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was a moral and legal breakthrough, but in the South, it was met not with compliance but with “massive resistance.”
State governments and local school boards stalled, evaded, or outright refused to desegregate. Some closed public schools entirely rather than follow the Court’s order. In Virginia, lawmakers funneled money into private “segregation academies” to maintain Jim Crow by other means.
It wasn’t until President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957—three years after Brown—that desegregation was enforced at gunpoint. Federal troops had to escort nine Black students into Central High School through screaming, hostile white mobs. Without Eisenhower’s intervention, Brown would have remained a legal milestone with no real-world weight.
Cooper v. Aaron (1958)
In response to ongoing defiance in Arkansas, the Court issued Cooper v. Aaron, reaffirming that state officials cannot nullify federal law. The justices unanimously declared that Brown was “the supreme law of the land,” and that resistance by local governments was unconstitutional.
But let’s be honest—Cooper wasn’t obeyed because it was eloquent. It was obeyed because it came backed by paratroopers and the political will of a president who was, at that moment, willing to uphold the rule of law.
This isn’t ancient history. This is constitutional precedent soaked in blood, defiance, and reluctant enforcement. It’s a reminder that rulings don’t enforce themselves, and that courts cannot bend power without power backing them, no matter how noble.
It’s not the judgment that guarantees justice—it’s who’s willing to act on it.
🧨 The Authoritarian Test: Trump’s Defiance of the Courts
Donald Trump’s presidency wasn’t just a political anomaly—it was a full-blown stress test of the judiciary’s limits, a four-year experiment in how far a president could go in defying the courts without consequence. And even now, in 2025, we still live through the aftershocks.
From his first month in office, Trump showed disdain for judicial oversight. His Muslim travel ban, one of his signature early moves, was swiftly challenged in court. Federal judges in multiple circuits ruled the executive order unconstitutional, citing religious discrimination and due process violations. In response, the Trump administration didn’t comply immediately—it rewrote the order, reshaped the language, and tried again. This pattern—litigate, stall, revise, repeat—became a blueprint for governing by attrition rather than law.
The same dynamic played out during the family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. When federal courts ordered the administration to reunite migrant families, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE slow-walked the process, lost track of hundreds of children, and blamed bureaucratic confusion. The message was clear: court orders were a speed bump, not a stop sign.
But Trump’s defiance wasn’t just procedural but rhetorical and dangerous. He routinely referred to judges who ruled against him as “so-called judges,” questioned their legitimacy, and cast them as obstacles to his populist agenda. When courts began dismissing his post-election lawsuits in late 2020—dozens of them—Trump didn’t accept the rulings. He weaponized public opinion, spreading lies about election fraud and painting the judiciary as part of a “deep state” conspiracy.
“The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” President Biden later said, describing the January 6th insurrection. He wasn’t exaggerating.
When Trump’s legal challenges failed, he called on the mob. January 6 was the logical conclusion of a president who had convinced millions that the courts couldn’t be trusted. It was the moment when violent authoritarianism filled the vacuum left by judicial restraint.
And now, in 2025, Trump is back. His contempt for judicial authority hasn’t softened—it’s escalated. He has promised to purge the Justice Department, pardon January 6 rioters, and fill the courts with loyalists who will rubber-stamp his agenda.
The judiciary can still write the law. However, Trump has shown how easily a determined authoritarian can treat rulings like background noise. When presidents stop listening to the courts, the very idea of a constitutional republic begins to collapse.
🚨 The 2025 Crisis: When the Executive Ignores the Courts
If you're still waiting for a “constitutional crisis” to arrive, stop. It’s already here. It’s not always loud. Sometimes it doesn’t come with mobs or burning buildings—it comes with bureaucratic indifference and handcuffs on judges. Recent headlines reveal the extent to which the Trump administration has declared war on judicial authority, choosing when—and whether—to follow the law.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the building blocks of a system where power no longer respects checks, and where court rulings are enforced only when they align with the desires of those in charge.
🔹 The Deportation Defiance
In a landmark April 2025 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had unlawfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man expelled under the obscure and xenophobic Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Court reversed the Biden-to-Trump transition-era deportation, demanding that the government take steps to locate Garcia and facilitate his return so he could seek due process.
Instead of complying, the Trump-controlled Department of Justice dismissed the ruling outright.
“We believe the court’s jurisdiction ended when he landed in El Salvador,” said a DOJ spokesperson.
This wasn’t legal interpretation—it was open defiance. The executive branch effectively declared the Court's authority null beyond U.S. borders, setting a precedent that the judiciary’s reach ends where presidential convenience begins.
Federal Judge Paula Xinis, tasked with overseeing compliance, called the government’s conduct “profoundly disrespectful” and raised the possibility of holding DOJ officials in contempt of court. But here’s the catch: contempt is only powerful if it can be enforced. Without marshals willing to act—or an executive willing to abide by legal norms—a contempt ruling is as toothless as a warning label on a grenade.
What we are witnessing is more than delay or dysfunction. The executive branch is arrogating to itself the power to decide when the judiciary matters. That is authoritarianism in action, not in theory, but in real time.
🔹 The Arrest of a Judge
If ignoring court rulings is one form of authoritarian creep, intimidating judges is its natural escalation.
In Wisconsin, state Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested by federal agents after allegedly helping an undocumented man avoid arrest by ICE agents during a courtroom proceeding. The case details remain murky—whether she obstructed federal officers or protected a defendant’s due process rights is still under legal review. But one thing is clear: the federal executive’s arrest of a sitting judge sends a seismic signal.
“This is the kind of authoritarian stunt you expect in a police state—not in a democracy,” said Wisconsin State Rep. Ryan Clancy (D).
The incident marks a dangerous shift in the judiciary and executive relationship. In a healthy democracy, tensions between state and federal authority are managed through the courts, not with cuffs and federal raids. By criminalizing judicial discretion, the administration is not just punishing one judge—it’s sending a message to all jurists: stay in line or face consequences.
Legal experts have warned that this move blurs the lines between enforcement and intimidation, potentially chilling judicial independence nationwide. If judges believe they can be arrested for ruling against executive interests, their rulings are no longer legal interpretations but survival calculations.
This is more than institutional dysfunction. It’s a coordinated erosion of the rule of law—one defiant act at a time. Together, the deportation standoff and the judge’s arrest make clear that this administration does not view courts as co-equal branches of government, but as adversaries to be ignored, manipulated, or punished.
If this becomes the norm—if court orders are optional and judges are disposable—then the legal architecture of democracy will collapse in silence, not in spectacle. And when that happens, we won’t be living under constitutional law anymore—we’ll be living under the law of whoever holds power next.
🧠 Courts Don’t Fail Overnight—They Erode Piece by Piece
The collapse of judicial authority doesn’t come with fireworks. It doesn’t happen in a single news cycle or when a single ruling is ignored. Instead, it unfolds in a series of small erosions—each one seemingly technical, procedural, or “just this once.” But together, they form a deliberate dismantling of the court’s power to check the other branches of government.
It starts with a judge being defied, and nothing happens. Then a court order is openly ignored, and there’s no real consequence. Contempt rulings are issued but not enforced, and everyone shrugs. Over time, the judiciary looks less like a co-equal branch of government and more like a suggestion box—politely consulted, easily discarded.
And that’s when the real danger sets in: the public loses faith in the courts altogether. When the judiciary is no longer seen as an impartial guardian of law and rights, but as just another political actor to be captured, circumvented, or crushed.
This erosion isn’t theoretical. It’s happened before.
In 1930s Germany, Hitler came to power legally—but once in office, he stripped courts of independence, packed them with loyalists, and used them to justify repression. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán rewrote judicial rules, lowered retirement ages to purge judges, and filled the courts with allies. In Russia, Vladimir Putin steadily co-opted the judiciary, turning it into a rubber-stamp machine for state power and a weapon against dissent.
Each case began similarly: by casting courts as illegitimate, biased, and beholden to “elites” or “foreign interests.”
Sound familiar?
The warning signs are here. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that once judicial authority is gone, getting it back is nearly impossible. Democracies don’t fall overnight—they fall piece by piece, court by court.
🛡️ Can Courts Defend Democracy Alone? No. And They Were Never Meant To.
Here’s the hard truth: courts are not saviors—they are referees. They don’t write legislation. They don’t command armies. They don’t have the power to seize bank accounts or arrest rogue officials on their own. They issue rulings, not warrants. They rely on voluntary compliance from the executive branch and political buy-in from the public and other institutions.
This isn’t a flaw. It’s how the system was designed.
The framers of the Constitution intended the judiciary to interpret the law, not to enforce it. That responsibility falls to the executive. When the executive complies, the system works. When it doesn’t, the system doesn’t collapse immediately butbegins to rot.
The Court’s power rests not in force, but in faith—the belief that its decisions are legitimate, impartial, and binding. It’s a fragile kind of authority. And when elected officials scoff at rulings, defy orders, or arrest judges, that fragile authority shatters—unless someone defends it.
That’s where we come in.
Because if no one listens to the courts—if the president doesn’t comply, if law enforcement won’t act, if the media shrugs, and if the public tunes out—then democracy dies not with a bang, but with widespread silence.
But silence isn’t mandatory.
The courts can’t enforce their rulings, but we can demand that others do. We can vote out those who defy them. We can protest when judges are attacked. We can organize to defend judicial independence—not because the courts are always right, but because without them, we have no peaceful mechanism for settling what is.
Courts alone can’t save democracy. But democracy can save the courts—if we choose to act.
⚠️ Final Warning, Final Word
The American judiciary stands at a precipice—not because it has changed, but because the country around it has. The myth of its invincibility, permanence, and untouchable moral authority has never looked more fragile than it does today.
Judges are being arrested. Court orders are being ignored. Executive officials openly mock rulings from the bench. And instead of public outcry, we get partisan shrugs. What was once unthinkable—defiance of judicial authority at the highest levels of government—is now becoming routine.
Here’s the reality: the rule of law doesn’t die with a dramatic explosion—it dies quietly, one ignored ruling at a time. And when the courts are sidelined, what fills the void isn’t order or justice. It’s power. Raw, unaccountable power. The kind that serves only itself.
The Court has no sword.
But we do.
We wield it not with violence, but with votes, with voices, with protest signs and organizing drives and court challenges of our own. We wield it every time we refuse to normalize authoritarian behavior, every time we speak up when others stay silent, every time we defend institutions that were built to restrain, not glorify, power.
If we wait for the moment the judiciary fully collapses, it’ll be too late. The time to act isn’t after the next ignored ruling. It’s now—before the exception becomes the rule.
As Rep. John Lewis so powerfully put it:
“Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.”
This is our part.
To uphold the rule of law.
To protect the power of the courts.
To insist that no one—not even a president—is above the law.
Let this be our line in the sand.