A Welcome Start on Nationwide Injunctions

The Founding Fathers designed Congress to be the first branch of the federal government. The decline of its exercise of legislative power in recent decades has created a vacuum, leaving the executive and judicial branches to war over which gets to arrogate to itself more of the powers that belong properly to the legislature.

Friday, the Supreme Court took a welcome first step toward reining in the imperial ambitions of federal district judges. The Court, in Trump v. CASA, Inc., bypassed for now the underlying issue in the case — Donald Trump’s effort to reopen the constitutional status of birthright citizenship — and ruled that federal district judges have no inherent power to issue nationwide injunctions. Instead, they may issue orders that apply only to the parties properly before them in a case...