Noah Feldman, Columnist

Trump Lawyers Get Ready: You'll Be in Court a Lot

After a ruling in the Washington immigration case, there'll be another challenge. That's how the system works.

February 9, 2017 at 4:04 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

We all know where this is headed.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

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No matter how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rules, the legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration from seven majority Muslim countries won’t be over. Not even close. That’s because, in addition to the case that currently has the policy on hold, a number of challenges to different aspects of the order by different kinds of plaintiffs are pending in courts across the country.

This may seem perverse, given the need for a single immigration policy. But it’s the way challenges to federal action proceed almost all of the time, and it follows the same convoluted path as the arguments against the Affordable Care Act during Barack Obama’s presidency. Ultimately only the U.S. Supreme Court can impose uniformity throughout the federal judicial system. This system isn’t perfect, but it has stood the test of time.