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Welcome to Power, President Trump, Now Lawyer Up

January 23, 2017 - 11:45am

If nothing else, it’s been a wild ride. Nobody here at the Pacific Legal Foundation can remember a stranger election season. From June 16, when Donald Trump announced he was running for president, to the morning of Nov. 8, few of us understood that history was about to smack us on the side of the head like an errant golf ball on the 18th hole of the Trump National in New Jersey.

Along the way, there have been more than a few concerns about candidate Trump’s grasp on the complexities of the three-ring circus that is governing the greatest show on Earth. We had hoped that the last occupant of the Oval Office would have learned that a combination of a massive ego and a distorted sense of self-righteousness was not enough to govern. Here’s hoping that the new guy will be a quicker study on how to effectively manage both Congress and his own bureaucracy within the confines of his constitutional power.

But our greatest hope is that Donald Trump meant it when he said he would reduce the size of the bureaucracy, cut back on job-killing regulations, and make life for the average American great again. It’s a tall order and there will be many obstacles.

For starters, the liberal left and the environmental industry have been on a fund-raising orgy that makes the feeding frenzy in Shark Week look like a Sunday school picnic. For them, this has been better than the ozone hole, species destruction, toxic air pollution and global warming rolled into one. Just visit their websites and learn how you too can donate your last dollar to defeat “not my President” when he tries to destroy the last vestige of nature and the environment by building new coal-fired power plants in every orphanage and critical habitat in the world. The left is promising to lawyer up and sue the president for every breath he takes.

Has he read it? Does he understand it?
Has he read it? Does he understand it?

So, if the new president tries to roll back or replace regulations, he will be sued. If he tries to undo the last president’s midnight National Monument designations, he will be sued. If he looks cross-eyed at the snowflakes currently parading about the Capitol in strange costumes chanting for whatever it is they’re chanting for, he’ll be sued.

Naturally, there are many illegal Obama regulations that we’d love to see bite the dust. There is the massive federal power grab in the WOTUS rule. There is the brazen attempt to shut down coal-fired power plants with unprecedented, and illegal, air regulations. There are the rules that could only have been dreamed up in the head of a reanimated Franz Kafka -- like the designation of critical habitat for endangered species on land where the protected animals do not and cannot exist. Not even Kafka’s hapless land surveyor would have done that. Perhaps our favorite is Obama’s designation of 5,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean as a National Landmark based on a statute that calls for the smallest area necessary to be set aside to preserve threatened landmarks.

To be sure, we’ve filed lawsuits against a fair number of these “use-my-pen” Obama rules. And when and if President Trump rolls back the carnage of President Obama’s rule-making binge, we’ll be happy to join the fray to make sure the interests of farmers, ranchers, and home owners are protected from some of the Obama-appointed courts.

But any change, for better or worse, will be a long slog. In 2015, a judge on the Ninth Circuit wrote this, describing how changes President Bush, W,  tried to implement after taking over from President Clinton were still tied up in the courts after President Obama had been in office for almost 7 years:

“I write only to note the absurdity that we are in the home stretch of the Obama administration and still litigating the validity of policy changes implemented at the start of the George W. Bush administration.How can a President with a mere four or eight years in office hope to accomplish any meaningful policy change as the voters have a right to expect when they elect a new President if he enters the White House tethered by thousands of Lilliputian ropes of administrative procedure? The glacial pace of administrative litigation shifts authority from the political branches to the judiciary and invites th[is] type of judicial policy making …. This is just one of the ways we as a nation have become less a democracy and more an oligarchy governed by a cadre of black-robed mandarins.”

It will be a long haul indeed and the new president probably has no idea how tough this is going to be, even if he tries to do the right thing.

But we’re also not planning on sitting back and letting the new administration attempt to do things that violate our fundamental rights. We’re not sure if the new president yet understands that to protect property rights, one should not condemn an elderly woman’s home for a casino’s limousine parking lot. We don’t know if the president will be tempted by the example set by his predecessor to rule by decree, ignoring both Congress and the Constitution. We hope that won’t happen and that behind the president’s campaign bluster and within his appointees there is an appreciation of liberty, of property rights, and of the Constitution. That’s our hope.

But at the same time, we’re lawyers and we’re ready, whichever way the rules break this time around.

James Burling is Pacific Legal Foundation's director of litigation, and a principal attorney in PLF's property rights practice group. He has been with PLF since 1983 and is listed in Best Lawyer magazine as an expert in eminent domain law.

Comments

While there are many lawyers in New Jersey; however, the best lawyers in New Jersey are from Gaylord Popp, LLC. At Gaylord Popp, LLC, we provide you with expert guidance in all the areas that we practice. We will help you through workers’ compensation and Social Security disability as well as disability pension appeal and debt collection.

Lawyers are a necessary "evil" and the major problem in politics especially when they get their JD degree and go directly into a political position. Or my favorite, they work for a Not For Profit (community organizer ) (misnomer) or the ACLU then decide to enter the political arena with a vengeance to get even for being so dumb in law school, jealous of successful businessmen and women. Stop making difficult decisions on simple situation solutions then billing the crap out of everyone or rigging the system for a few

Now that we've declared war on China and trashed the TPP, recommend a quick shop at Walmart - before the shelves are bare.

Stop sucking the oxygen out of the room, step aside and lets get to work.

Shakespeare's "Henry V" WAS right: "Let's kill all the lawyers" (and it's best we start with ALL of these idiots "hiding out and slowly destroying California"... [Trump has All the "legal assistance" he needs Jim Burling,... and YOU & California are going to pay for it... Count on it!!!

Hilarious! . . . . . . nothing like seeing the uneducated, un-informed, clueless right demonize their own . . . . . . you have no idea who James Burling or the Pacific Legal Foundation are, do you . . . . . . . . . open mouth, place foot in . . . . . just another Trumpite, eating their own (hilarious, as are many of the other clueless commentators here) . . . . PATHETIC

BLM made a living hell for our law enforcement and they are represented by attorneys, where is the outrage now this. Attorneys are dangerous like alligators or bears in your backyard and now threaten our elected officials. We love Donald Trump and really don't want him on any such witch hunt. was watching some attorney smiling with glee on Fox News last night and he had plans of going after our 45th President and made the comment, yes please invite me back to your show. That creep made us feel uncomfortable.

If Congress had stopped being so obstructionist, Obama would not have had to resort to what he needed to do to get something accomplished. That agenda is what screwed us - not very democratic was it???????

Had Obama been honest, perhaps this never would have occurred. But I had a health plan and had my 2 daughters on it. i lost it because even though i am 57 and through menopause, Obama required that i pay for pregnancy services and prenatal care for my nonexistent babies. Further - pipelines, Benghazi, IRS and so many more LIES came from Obama. Am i happy so much has to be undone - of course not. OBAMA MADE HIS AGGRESSIVE PHONE AND PEN HIS ANSWER. TRUMP WILL DO THE SAME.

I'm curious as to why this man thinks regulations to reduce air pollution hurt average Americans. For the average American adult and child, protection from pollution brings better health, longer life, and less medical expense. This man is really on the side of companies that profit from polluting the air we breathe.

The very fact that we have allowed the legal profession to gain such a foothold by being able to sue people into bankruptcy is one of the worst problems that is faced by the United States. The simple fact that they must answer only to their own organization for their conduct is a recipe for a disaster. Immediate action to cut their compensation allowed by cutting the demand for them by placing heavy penalties for them if they file frivolous suits and asking for unreasonable compensation. It is sickening to watch the commercials from the South Florida area that promote intentional accidents in order to rip off insurance companies and individuals. No advertising should be allowed which is the way it used to be. "A good attorney does not need to advertise"

Makes sense , Mr. Burling. Of course, it makes sense to you and your kind! I won't bore you with bad lawyer jokes as I'm certain you've resembled most of them! Where were your lawsuits during the Obama years? Lawyers are always "ready" to screw anyone, anywhere, and at anytime! Probably the reason lawyers are so loved. bs

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