BU LAW Professor Jessica Silbey Says I Up to Individual Citizens to Save Democracy
In the month since President Donald Trump took office, he’s signed more than 70 executive orders, many of them designed to push the limits of the United States Constitution—or exceed them altogether. In their wake, a flurry of high-profile lawsuits challenging many of those orders—filed by civil rights organizations, unions, state attorneys general, and others—is making its way through the federal court system.
As of February 19, 28 of those lawsuits have at least temporarily paused some of the president’s initiatives. The Trump administration filed its first appeal to the Supreme Court over Presidents Day weekend….
“The courts preserve the basic structure of democracy so that we, the voters, and our elected representatives can argue and debate and hammer out the specifics,” Silbey says. “They’re not going to save us if we don’t do the hard work of preserving democracy.
” And by “we,” Silbey means state government, local government, individual citizens.
To read more, visit BU Today where this article originally appeared on February 20, 2025.