If Trump wants to use the military against his enemies, there’s little the courts can do to stop him

If Donald Trump wins a second term and follows through on ominous suggestions that he will use the U.S. military against his critics and enemies, legal scholars say there is little the courts can do to stop him.

Joseph Nunn, a national security expert for the Brennan Center for Justice, explains that “the principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street.”

The Insurrection Act in its current iteration was passed by Congress in 1807 but was largely a reincarnation of an earlier act passed in 1792 under President George Washington.

Both allowed sitting presidents to summon reserve or active-duty military units to respond to civil unrest with little oversight. Legal scholars say the Act’s authority is “not reviewable by the courts.”

“There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand,” Nunn concluded.

The Act’s origins under Washington hint at a weakness in the legislation: the Founding Fathers and the Act’s framers entrusted statesmen like Washington to wield such authority thoughtfully and with restraint.

But in the hands of an unprincipled actor like Trump, that kind of wide discretion is a recipe for disaster.