"A bad high school student would understand this." That is what President Donald J. Trump had to say about the Ninth Circuit, which was charged in Feb. 2017 with determining whether a district court’s order blocking the president’s travel ban should be reversed. Coming less than a month into his presidency, it was just one of many critical comments made by President Trump about the nation’s federal Judiciary since he took office. As the tweeting public knows, the president has criticized federal judges for political bias, and has gone so far as to blame them for future terrorist attacks.

As much as these criticisms may seem unprecedented, friction between the judicial and executive branches of the federal government is not new.