CGTN Europe speaks to David Schultz, Hamline University Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies.
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00:00One of the controversial executive orders that President Trump has signed includes his plan to
00:04end U.S. birthright citizenship. David Schultz is professor of political science and legal studies
00:10at Hamline University in Minnesota. He cannot do that and the reason why he can't do that
00:15is that birthright citizenship is placed in the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution
00:21and the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the birthright citizenship as an essential component
00:27of the U.S. Constitution. And the reason why this is important is even though executive orders can
00:33do lots of things, executive orders cannot violate the law and they cannot violate the U.S.
00:38Constitution. So for Donald Trump issuing this executive order essentially is going to lead to
00:44as we've already seen significant legal challenges across the United States and under current law
00:49under current Supreme Court doctrine and precedent he would lose in terms of trying to end it.
00:55And that's not to say that it's not possible for the court to change their mind but highly
01:00improbable that that would happen. And this particular thing is all part of a wider immigration
01:05crackdown that President Trump's promised. What other legal challenges that might he run into?
01:11Well he's going to find other legal challenges also in terms of some of his border policies.
01:16For example he wants to be able to use U.S. troops to be able to to do policing along our border
01:22and that possibly violates a law that goes back to 1878 that prevents the use of military for
01:29policing purposes. Additionally if he's going to halt the asylum or if he's going to try to
01:37expedite deportations there's going to be a lot of court challenges and individual claims for
01:43for hearings that are going to be held. So a lot of what he's going to do is going to significantly
01:47get bogged down in the courts facing a lot of legal challenges. Now yes Congress could pass
01:53some laws to try to make things easier but still there are a lot of constitutional and legal
01:58obstacles behind what he wants to be able to do. And what about the U.S. withdrawing
02:04from the Paris climate agreement? Is that going to face hurdles as well?
02:09It will not because the United States never entered that as a formal treaty.
02:14To create a formal treaty domestically in the United States which is binding you would need to
02:19have the Senate approve it. What we what the Paris Accords are in the United States is considered to
02:26be an executive agreement and executive agreements can be entered into or broken almost at presidential
02:33will. Now at the international level the Paris Accords occupy a different status in international
02:38law but here as we saw what he did several years ago when he was president he pulled out he's doing
02:44it again here. It's not to say there might not still be legal challenges but it'll be easier
02:49for him to do that than it will be to do some of the other things that he's proposing. Generally
02:55presidents have more leeway to act in what we call international affairs or international events
03:01than they do in in domestic issues. So we've seen more than 100 executive orders
03:07signed already in just you know the opening hours of this presidency. How much of this is
03:13just making a statement and how much of this will actually end up being done?
03:19A lot of what he's issuing in terms of executive orders really read more like press accounts or
03:24press releases at this point. I mean there are things that are appealing to his base but lots
03:30of them don't really mean anything in terms of binding in law. Lots of them are just I don't
03:34want to call them wish lists but a lot of it really does not carry the force of law. Some of
03:39it's going to require congress to act some of it's going to require perhaps other changes in policy
03:46or procedures but I would say a certainly large percentage of what he's doing at this point
03:52is more playing to his political base and making statements as opposed to
03:57really making any significant let us say legal or policy change.