In the debate over the judicial struggles of the Trump administration, both sides have a point.

The Trump administration is struggling to win court disputes over its various “shock and awe” policies (my description) in its war on the federal bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, the two sides in these disputes have different explanations for the administration’s struggles.

To the pro-Trump side, the mounting losses are the result of ideologically-driven decisions by partisan judges who hate Trump and love the Deep State. In this account, unelected judges are trying to run the executive branch. In doing so, they are thwarting democracy

To the anti-Trump side, the defeats are the product of an administration that shoots first and answers questions later. In this account, as Jack Goldsmith argues here, Trump isn’t vetting his shock and awe policies with lawyers in the executive branch (or else, he has replaced those who might provide careful legal analysis with yes men). He isn’t concerned with legal niceties, he just wants to get things done. Therefore, he’s pressing forward without much regard for the law and, in essence, daring judges to stop him. A number of them are doing so, or at least slowing him down.

I believe there is plenty of truth to both accounts.

But it doesn’t matter much whose account is correct. The important point is that under our system, judges review challenges to the lawfulness of presidential edicts. Presidents abide by court orders stemming from these challenges, and adhere to the final outcome of the judicial process. That’s the way it has worked, virtually without exception, for two centuries.

This system doesn’t give random district court judges the right to dictate to the president. Their rulings are appealable, with resort to the Supreme Court available. And it so happens that three of the nine current Supreme Court Justices were appointed by President Trump. Two others are to the right (if that’s the correct way of putting it) of his three appointees.

The results of this system infuriate the Trump administration and many of its supporters. However, the same people were quite happy when the courts stepped in to thwart various orders of the Obama and Biden administration. And they will be happy to have this system in place when, inevitably, a future Democratic president abuses his or her authority.

Stephen Miller, the White House chief-of-staff, is among the infuriated. Yesterday, he tweeted:

Currently, district court judges have assumed the mantle of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security and Commander-in-Chief. Each day, they change the foreign policy, economic, staffing and national security policies of the Administration. Each day the nation arises to see what the craziest unelected local federal judge has decided the policies of the government of the United States shall be.

It is madness. It is lunacy. It is pure lawlessness. It is the gravest assault on democracy. It must and will end.

(Emphasis added)

Nearly all of what Miller says is an overwrought version of the view I described at the beginning of this post. But the last three words seem to go further. They suggest the possibility of non-compliance with court orders. However, Miller might simply be saying that the Supreme Court will end the “lunacy” by reversing unlawful rulings by “the craziest unelected local federal judges.”

Will it? I expect a mixed bag of rulings by the Supreme Court. Some of the decisions that offend Miller will be overturned; some will not be.

And when/if the administration’s lawyers are unable to persuade all of the three Trump nominees plus Justices Alito and Thomas to uphold a particular edict, this outcome is at more likely to be a victory for law than a case of judicial lawlessness. Either way, the Trump administration should comply. I think it probably will.

In defending judicial review and supremacy, I don’t mean to deny that partisanship and anti-Trump animus are driving some of the district rulings against administration policies. I have already said there is truth to this view.

Nor do I mean to deny the problems that partisan district court judges can cause with their nationwide injunctions and sweeping temporary restraining orders. The overturning of these orders on appeal does not represent a complete cure. (There are some reforms that might help prevent or limit the damage.)

But the problems caused by an absence of judicial review of executive compliance with the law, or lack of compliance with the outcome of such review, would be far greater. It would enable the president to override the laws passed by Congress and the Constitution of the United States with no remedy.

One can make a case that the president, not the judiciary, should be the ultimate arbiter of what is lawful under the laws of the U.S. including the Constitution. It’s not a case to which I subscribe. Nor is it the way the American experiment in a nation of laws, not men, has operated, with considerable success, for more than two centuries.

I see no reason to abandon our traditional approach to resolving challenges to presidential authority just because Trump wants to get things done in a hurry. Arguably, Trump’s hurry is an argument in favor of the traditional approach — an argument that should, perhaps, be especially appealing to conservatives.