Supreme Court must rebuke Obama's self-coronation: Texas AG

Article subtitle: 
When one man can rewrite the law, that's the definition of tyranny.
Article author: 
Ken Paxton
Article publisher: 
USA TODAY
Article date: 
Monday, April 18, 2016
Article category: 
National Issues
Medium
Article Body: 

The president of the United States of America has declared that unlawful conduct is lawful.

It sounds unbelievable when you say it out loud, doesn’t it? The president, the person we trust to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, has declared illegal conduct to be legal?

But in 2014, President Obama did just that. He declared that four million unlawfully-present immigrants were now lawfully-present. How? Because he says so.

Unfortunately for the president, the Constitution does not let him do that. And on April 18, Texas will lead a coalition of 26 states before the United States Supreme Court to stop President Obama’s illegal immigration policy.

This lawsuit should not be groundbreaking. It is a question that was decided at the nation’s founding. Can one person unilaterally change the law?

Of course not. Our Founders drafted the Constitution to make clear that the people, through their elected representatives in Congress, have the authority to decide immigration policy for the United States.

In 2011, President Obama understood this. When asked about immigration reform, he addressed his supporters honestly, explaining that “I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own ... But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

But in 2014, the president was singing a different tune. He announced to the world, with a flick of his pen on an executive order, “I just took an action to change the law.”

The president had it right the first time. He did not have the power to unilaterally change the law. He does not have the power to override the will of the people as vested in our Constitution.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Make no mistake, this is about more than just immigration. If this blatant power-grab goes unchecked, nothing would stop a president from issuing an executive order dissolving the rights of gun owners in violation of the Second Amendment, nullifying the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment or abolishing any other right that we hold dear.

Madison warned against one person deciding for the entire nation what the law shall be. It is the antithesis of who we are as Americans. In this country, the people, through their representatives, decide the law — not one person.

Or as President Obama once put it, “I am president. I am not a king. I can’t do these things just by myself.”

Exactly.

Ken Paxton is the Attorney General of Texas.