Deputy Attorney General Blanche's attack on lower courts is an impressive combination of light on substance; shamelessly hypocritical; and profoundly dangerous. More people should be condemning it.
I find DAG Blanche’s comments to mirror the statements of disrespect attributed by whistleblowers to Judge Bove.
Sadly, “war’ is a buzzword for the administration: Dept of War; war on narco-terrorists; and ICE is at war with protesters, etc. By using the buzzword, the speakers purpose is to project power and control, surely not respect and civility. The time has long passed when those in power like Todd Blanche must do their part to restore civility to dialogue. The best leaders understand this; those who cannot think independently, lack the required courage and humility.
Professor Vladeck, you're right to highlight that this is "war." You're right to highlight this is a war that even was declared publicly by Trump and his supporters. But this is not a "war on judges."
In only a limited sense could judges could be seen as the target of Trump's war because, as James Madison highlighted in The Federalist No. 51, "Ambition" was meant "to counteract ambition. The interest of the man [who holds a position was meant to be] connected with the constitutional rights of the place." But, Madison emphasized, it was merely "a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government."
The far greater truth about our Constitution is stated in the Preamble, the Supremacy Clause and the relevant oaths of office. "We the People" (acting as the sovereign and as the supreme legislative authority) did "ordain and establish [our] Constitution" to "establish Justice" and "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves." To do so, the People established our Constitution as the paramount authority in "the supreme Law of the Land" and established that every public servant must "support [our] Constitution." The People vested limited power in the President solely to "preserve, protect and defend [our] Constitution" to "the best of [the President's] Ability."
If judges are fulfilling their duty to support our Constitution, then Trump's war is on our Constitution, so it is a war on us. But when a judge violates her oath to support our Constitution (like the Fifth Circuit judge who attacked you for opposing and exposing judges abusing their powers or usurping powers they were not granted), she doesn't deserve and should not have our support. As Article III emphasized, we must judge judges by their behavior: all federal "Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts" may "hold their Offices [only] during good Behaviour." As Alexander Hamilton emphasized in The Federalist No. 79, only federal “judges” who “behave properly, will be secured in their places for life.”
Blanche is the poster boy for an ambulance chaser. He is a disgrace to our profession, as is Bondi. My former legal ethics professor, now a retired County Superior Court judge, has to be apoplectic about this Justice Department.
Anyone who's taken the trouble to read the thoroughly researched and cited, and exhaustively reasoned, decisions of these courts that are "at war" with Trump's DOJ knows precisely how ludicrous this claim is.
He's lucky the courts are being so circumspect in dealing with the buffoons who come before them with their meritless and candorless arguments. Most of them couldn't prevail in a simple dogbite case.
Yep. The district courts have been their own worst enemies with how pathetically they've responded to being openly lied to, and having their orders violated on the most absurd pretexts, over and over again. The lack of any consequence whatsoever for bad behavior invites further bad behavior.
In a sense, I get it-- the appeals courts and especially SCOTUS have repeatedly thrown them under the bus and assiduously worked to erase and cover up the administration's misconduct (cf. last Friday's ruling in the Alien Enemies Act case from the DC Circuit, which more or less acknowledged that a corrupt panel of its own judges had managed to entangle the case for eight months through the most transparent procedural BS) and so they're trying to make everything watertight. But it's not effective.
Did a single lawyer in attendance object, stand and turn their back, or leave? Was he given courteous applause or a standing ovation. Did the sponsoring organization make any public release about it not accepting the AAG’s remarks (see footnote below) and standing in defense of the judiciary and the Constitution and rejecting the declaration of war by a lawless administration? If not one objected or walked out, the attendees all deserve to be stripped of the privilege under which they are permitted to practice law!
FN: In 2023, Blanche was a registered Democrat in New York. In 2024, Blanche purchased a home in Palm Beach County, Florida and registered as a Republican.[9]
Haberman, Maggie; Protess, Ben; Feuer, Alan (April 4, 2024). "Trump's Trial Lawyer Gambled a Gilded Manhattan Career to Represent Him". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 26, 2024. (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Blanche)
" And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find any conservative groups, right-of-center law professors, or other right-wing commentators publicly criticizing these remarks or the broader attacks on lower federal courts emanating from this administration. I don’t say this lightly, but that is to their profound (and growing) discredit."
Their hypocrisy is long-lasting. One person concerned about "both sides" (lower court judges & Trump) going too far back in time was deeply concerned about the Democrats passing a messy form of the Affordable Care Act. He, for some strange reason, didn't blame Republicans for even providing the senators with one vote to break the filibuster and pass a cleaned-up version.
The true believers [in the spirit of Prof. Vladeck, I will add "mostly"] are a lost cause. The so-called reasonable opposition is ultimately why we are on the road to perdition.
Though you don’t devote much argument to it here, Steve, it seems significant that district court grants of emergency relief against this Trump administration have also overwhelmingly been upheld by the circuit courts, typically explaining in detail how the lower court has not abused its discretion—a process that involves a number of additional judges of diverse backgrounds.
> eroding public faith, at least among those who take Bondi and Blanche seriously, in the lower federal courts.
Unfortunately, it will reach far beyond those people, and will ultimately reach the common citizen that has no real interest in politics. These people decide issues by either direct observation or gut feel, and the drum beat of Blanche's attack will echo around in their media until they "feel" that there is something wrong with how the lower courts operate.
Coalition Rips Trump Deputy AG's Claim Of 'War' With Judges
By Rose Krebs
November 13, 2025, 4:45 PM EST
A group of former federal judges on Thursday condemned what they called "inflammatory remarks" last week by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche detailing the U.S. Department of Justice's "war" with...
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FREE Access for 7 Days
Already a subscriber? Click here to view full article
Some of Blanche's comments about being at "war" with activist judges are around 55:00 - 56:45 in the video that Steve links to.
Blanche later said that they're going to handle complaints about DOJ lawyers internally to take "activist bars" out of the picture. He complained particularly about the D.C. bar, which he apparently thinks is biased against conservatives.
As always, you write a very moving and well reasoned piece that is comprehensible even to those not trained in the law, such as myself.
The lower court judges have often been quoted at some length on sub stack, and I often find their writings to be courageous, eloquent, and moving. It feels to me like good lawyers and fair judges are the one consistent barrier against those in the government who would like to invent new laws to serve themselves.
Is there something that members of the public can do that would be constructive in this fight? How can we effectively protect the rights of judges to be evaluated on the merits of their rulings?
The current tendency to discuss which president appointed a judge is grossly overdone (and grossly overdone here, too, frankly) for a couple of reasons.
One, the vast majority of cases district judges hear are relatively straightforward civil and criminal matters. And even if they're not straightforward (a complex antitrust case, for example), the cases typically have no ideological component. A judge's ideological bent (i.e., "right" vs. "left") has no effect at all on how the judge decides those matters. None.
Two, whatever their ideology (and here I assume purely for the sake of argument that every judge has one, something I don't actually believe), judges take their oaths seriously. They swear to apply the law faithfully and to rule "without fear or favor," and whether their decisions are wrong or right, that's what they do.
Making a big deal out of whether a Republican or a Democrat appointed a particular federal judge only contributes to our corrosive environment in which people wrongly believe that every judicial decision is also a political one.
From what I understand, there have been studies indicating that one of the best predictors of how a judge will rule on controversial issues is the party of the president who appointed them. And, if there aren't studies showing this, common sense compels us to assume it. Because well-meaning judges have biases.
First, Steve, and others who make this charge, aren't alluding to the everyday cases that do not significantly implicate the ideological commitments of judges. Nobody claimed that this ideological bias manifests in every case.
As to your second point, yes, I think judges take their oaths seriously, but this is beside the point, because I think most of time judges are biased, they believe they are being reasonable and upholding their oaths.
Nobody who cares about the perceived institutional integrity of the courts is required to bury their head in the sand regarding the fact that judges are human, and, thus, that how they do their jobs is influenced by all the accompanying vagaries of being human.
Yeah, that whining is absolute poppycock. I spent 14 years working for the NLRB and can tell you with absolutely zero hesitation that whether a judge was appointed by a Democrat or a Republican was THE first thing I looked at when deciding not just whether we were likely to win, but also how we needed to frame our arguments. Failure to look at it would have been legal malpractice. And I can't count the number of decisions where right-wing judges reversed the agency for no better reason than that they disliked the outcome below and felt they could get away with reweighing the evidence in favor of corporations.
Judicial ideology is a pervasive force in judicial decisions because even when a party is unambiguously right on the law, the judge has a tremendous amount of sway over things like how broad a remedy is, whether misconduct by the opposing party will be tolerated or punished, and so on.
Far from "contributing to our corrosive environment," acknowledging that judges are not Solomonic figures engaged in some mythical law-giving exercise ought to be mandatory for any serious analysis. If you want a childish fantasy, go watch Schoolhouse Rock.
All judges have biases because all people have them. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But judges are required to apply the law and the facts, and they are surprisingly good at putting those biases aside. I know a bit about this, having served for almost 22 years as a trial judge. Did I have biases? Of course. Was I aware of them? Of course. Did I make decisions based on those biases? No. Even the most conservative judges know that police officers sometimes lie, just as even the most liberal judges know that police officers sometimes tell the truth. That's just life. Judges are sophisticated enough to recognize as much and wait for the evidence before making a decision rather than coming into a case with a particular predisposition.
My problem is with the constant focus on the political party of the appointing president. That leads people who aren't members of the legal profession, let alone judges, to conclude that most judicial decisions, maybe even all of them, are political, that all we need to know is how judges vote as citizens to know how they will rule as judges. I'm telling you that's not the case, and the identity of the appointing president is not nearly as relevant as the media these days would lead you to believe. Reporters routinely express surprise when, for example, a Trump-appointed judge rules against the administration. I'm not surprised in the least.
Thank you for this clear and well reasoned essay. Blanche is a stooge and toady whose bellicose statements should be condemned by any jurist or attorney (which I am not) who says they respect the rule of law.
I find DAG Blanche’s comments to mirror the statements of disrespect attributed by whistleblowers to Judge Bove.
Sadly, “war’ is a buzzword for the administration: Dept of War; war on narco-terrorists; and ICE is at war with protesters, etc. By using the buzzword, the speakers purpose is to project power and control, surely not respect and civility. The time has long passed when those in power like Todd Blanche must do their part to restore civility to dialogue. The best leaders understand this; those who cannot think independently, lack the required courage and humility.
Professor Vladeck, you're right to highlight that this is "war." You're right to highlight this is a war that even was declared publicly by Trump and his supporters. But this is not a "war on judges."
In only a limited sense could judges could be seen as the target of Trump's war because, as James Madison highlighted in The Federalist No. 51, "Ambition" was meant "to counteract ambition. The interest of the man [who holds a position was meant to be] connected with the constitutional rights of the place." But, Madison emphasized, it was merely "a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government."
The far greater truth about our Constitution is stated in the Preamble, the Supremacy Clause and the relevant oaths of office. "We the People" (acting as the sovereign and as the supreme legislative authority) did "ordain and establish [our] Constitution" to "establish Justice" and "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves." To do so, the People established our Constitution as the paramount authority in "the supreme Law of the Land" and established that every public servant must "support [our] Constitution." The People vested limited power in the President solely to "preserve, protect and defend [our] Constitution" to "the best of [the President's] Ability."
If judges are fulfilling their duty to support our Constitution, then Trump's war is on our Constitution, so it is a war on us. But when a judge violates her oath to support our Constitution (like the Fifth Circuit judge who attacked you for opposing and exposing judges abusing their powers or usurping powers they were not granted), she doesn't deserve and should not have our support. As Article III emphasized, we must judge judges by their behavior: all federal "Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts" may "hold their Offices [only] during good Behaviour." As Alexander Hamilton emphasized in The Federalist No. 79, only federal “judges” who “behave properly, will be secured in their places for life.”
Blanche is the poster boy for an ambulance chaser. He is a disgrace to our profession, as is Bondi. My former legal ethics professor, now a retired County Superior Court judge, has to be apoplectic about this Justice Department.
Anyone who's taken the trouble to read the thoroughly researched and cited, and exhaustively reasoned, decisions of these courts that are "at war" with Trump's DOJ knows precisely how ludicrous this claim is.
He's lucky the courts are being so circumspect in dealing with the buffoons who come before them with their meritless and candorless arguments. Most of them couldn't prevail in a simple dogbite case.
Yep. The district courts have been their own worst enemies with how pathetically they've responded to being openly lied to, and having their orders violated on the most absurd pretexts, over and over again. The lack of any consequence whatsoever for bad behavior invites further bad behavior.
In a sense, I get it-- the appeals courts and especially SCOTUS have repeatedly thrown them under the bus and assiduously worked to erase and cover up the administration's misconduct (cf. last Friday's ruling in the Alien Enemies Act case from the DC Circuit, which more or less acknowledged that a corrupt panel of its own judges had managed to entangle the case for eight months through the most transparent procedural BS) and so they're trying to make everything watertight. But it's not effective.
Did a single lawyer in attendance object, stand and turn their back, or leave? Was he given courteous applause or a standing ovation. Did the sponsoring organization make any public release about it not accepting the AAG’s remarks (see footnote below) and standing in defense of the judiciary and the Constitution and rejecting the declaration of war by a lawless administration? If not one objected or walked out, the attendees all deserve to be stripped of the privilege under which they are permitted to practice law!
FN: In 2023, Blanche was a registered Democrat in New York. In 2024, Blanche purchased a home in Palm Beach County, Florida and registered as a Republican.[9]
Haberman, Maggie; Protess, Ben; Feuer, Alan (April 4, 2024). "Trump's Trial Lawyer Gambled a Gilded Manhattan Career to Represent Him". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 26, 2024. (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Blanche)
" And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find any conservative groups, right-of-center law professors, or other right-wing commentators publicly criticizing these remarks or the broader attacks on lower federal courts emanating from this administration. I don’t say this lightly, but that is to their profound (and growing) discredit."
Their hypocrisy is long-lasting. One person concerned about "both sides" (lower court judges & Trump) going too far back in time was deeply concerned about the Democrats passing a messy form of the Affordable Care Act. He, for some strange reason, didn't blame Republicans for even providing the senators with one vote to break the filibuster and pass a cleaned-up version.
The true believers [in the spirit of Prof. Vladeck, I will add "mostly"] are a lost cause. The so-called reasonable opposition is ultimately why we are on the road to perdition.
Though you don’t devote much argument to it here, Steve, it seems significant that district court grants of emergency relief against this Trump administration have also overwhelmingly been upheld by the circuit courts, typically explaining in detail how the lower court has not abused its discretion—a process that involves a number of additional judges of diverse backgrounds.
> eroding public faith, at least among those who take Bondi and Blanche seriously, in the lower federal courts.
Unfortunately, it will reach far beyond those people, and will ultimately reach the common citizen that has no real interest in politics. These people decide issues by either direct observation or gut feel, and the drum beat of Blanche's attack will echo around in their media until they "feel" that there is something wrong with how the lower courts operate.
LATEST NEWS
New York State Bar Association Denounces Attack on the Judiciary and Bar Associations
By Susan DeSantis
November 10, 2025
https://nysba.org/new-york-state-bar-association-denounces-attack-on-the-judiciary-and-bar-associations/?srsltid=AfmBOop4g5GNEzLYHG56kudBKpnG6uqgBCMaF-3vMo-A_IvjdbpJ2sgo
Coalition Rips Trump Deputy AG's Claim Of 'War' With Judges
By Rose Krebs
November 13, 2025, 4:45 PM EST
A group of former federal judges on Thursday condemned what they called "inflammatory remarks" last week by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche detailing the U.S. Department of Justice's "war" with...
To view the full article, register now.
FREE Access for 7 Days
Already a subscriber? Click here to view full article
Where are the rest of the State Bar Associations?
Some of Blanche's comments about being at "war" with activist judges are around 55:00 - 56:45 in the video that Steve links to.
Blanche later said that they're going to handle complaints about DOJ lawyers internally to take "activist bars" out of the picture. He complained particularly about the D.C. bar, which he apparently thinks is biased against conservatives.
If Mr Blanche is concerned about the court rulings, perhaps the DOJ attorneys could learn to prepare better arguments.
Blaming judges for losses and accusing them of being political does not improve the work of the DOJ.
Lawyers Call On High Court To Stop 'Capitulating' To Trump
By Katie Buehler ·
Law360 (November 16, 2025, 12:56 PM EST) --
https://www.law360.com/articles/2411616/lawyers-call-on-high-court-to-stop-capitulating-to-trump
Too small a turnout!
As always, you write a very moving and well reasoned piece that is comprehensible even to those not trained in the law, such as myself.
The lower court judges have often been quoted at some length on sub stack, and I often find their writings to be courageous, eloquent, and moving. It feels to me like good lawyers and fair judges are the one consistent barrier against those in the government who would like to invent new laws to serve themselves.
Is there something that members of the public can do that would be constructive in this fight? How can we effectively protect the rights of judges to be evaluated on the merits of their rulings?
The current tendency to discuss which president appointed a judge is grossly overdone (and grossly overdone here, too, frankly) for a couple of reasons.
One, the vast majority of cases district judges hear are relatively straightforward civil and criminal matters. And even if they're not straightforward (a complex antitrust case, for example), the cases typically have no ideological component. A judge's ideological bent (i.e., "right" vs. "left") has no effect at all on how the judge decides those matters. None.
Two, whatever their ideology (and here I assume purely for the sake of argument that every judge has one, something I don't actually believe), judges take their oaths seriously. They swear to apply the law faithfully and to rule "without fear or favor," and whether their decisions are wrong or right, that's what they do.
Making a big deal out of whether a Republican or a Democrat appointed a particular federal judge only contributes to our corrosive environment in which people wrongly believe that every judicial decision is also a political one.
From what I understand, there have been studies indicating that one of the best predictors of how a judge will rule on controversial issues is the party of the president who appointed them. And, if there aren't studies showing this, common sense compels us to assume it. Because well-meaning judges have biases.
First, Steve, and others who make this charge, aren't alluding to the everyday cases that do not significantly implicate the ideological commitments of judges. Nobody claimed that this ideological bias manifests in every case.
As to your second point, yes, I think judges take their oaths seriously, but this is beside the point, because I think most of time judges are biased, they believe they are being reasonable and upholding their oaths.
Nobody who cares about the perceived institutional integrity of the courts is required to bury their head in the sand regarding the fact that judges are human, and, thus, that how they do their jobs is influenced by all the accompanying vagaries of being human.
Yeah, that whining is absolute poppycock. I spent 14 years working for the NLRB and can tell you with absolutely zero hesitation that whether a judge was appointed by a Democrat or a Republican was THE first thing I looked at when deciding not just whether we were likely to win, but also how we needed to frame our arguments. Failure to look at it would have been legal malpractice. And I can't count the number of decisions where right-wing judges reversed the agency for no better reason than that they disliked the outcome below and felt they could get away with reweighing the evidence in favor of corporations.
Judicial ideology is a pervasive force in judicial decisions because even when a party is unambiguously right on the law, the judge has a tremendous amount of sway over things like how broad a remedy is, whether misconduct by the opposing party will be tolerated or punished, and so on.
Far from "contributing to our corrosive environment," acknowledging that judges are not Solomonic figures engaged in some mythical law-giving exercise ought to be mandatory for any serious analysis. If you want a childish fantasy, go watch Schoolhouse Rock.
All judges have biases because all people have them. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But judges are required to apply the law and the facts, and they are surprisingly good at putting those biases aside. I know a bit about this, having served for almost 22 years as a trial judge. Did I have biases? Of course. Was I aware of them? Of course. Did I make decisions based on those biases? No. Even the most conservative judges know that police officers sometimes lie, just as even the most liberal judges know that police officers sometimes tell the truth. That's just life. Judges are sophisticated enough to recognize as much and wait for the evidence before making a decision rather than coming into a case with a particular predisposition.
My problem is with the constant focus on the political party of the appointing president. That leads people who aren't members of the legal profession, let alone judges, to conclude that most judicial decisions, maybe even all of them, are political, that all we need to know is how judges vote as citizens to know how they will rule as judges. I'm telling you that's not the case, and the identity of the appointing president is not nearly as relevant as the media these days would lead you to believe. Reporters routinely express surprise when, for example, a Trump-appointed judge rules against the administration. I'm not surprised in the least.
Thank you for this clear and well reasoned essay. Blanche is a stooge and toady whose bellicose statements should be condemned by any jurist or attorney (which I am not) who says they respect the rule of law.
Two words: Judge Cannon. Crickets from the right when she went rogue.