The judicial response to [Trump’s] executive order [on visas] has been both lauded as heroic and derided as lawless grandstanding. Our point is more sociological: This is the way judges behave when they do not believe, with the Court in Mott, that the president “is presumed to act in obedience to his duty until the contrary is shown” and when they do not presume with the Court in Luther that “the high responsibility [the president] could not fail to feel when acting in a case of so much moment, appear[s] to furnish as strong safeguards against a wilful abuse of power as human prudence and foresight could well provide.” This is how courts behave when they cannot begin with the premise Obama began with about Bush: that the president is a good man.

Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, “What Happens When We Don’t Believe the President’s Oath?”