Leah Litman

Yes.

So the significant upshot of the Insurrection Act is it provides an exception to what's known as the Posse Comitatus Act.

That is the law that generally forbids the federal military from engaging in ordinary law enforcement operations.

Basically, it prevents the federal government from deploying troops to arrest people for violating federal law or an immigration offense or you name it.

So right now, we have already seen the disastrous effects of these surges of deployments of ICE officers, CBP officers, HSI officers.

And the concern is, what if you then add on or replace them with the federal military, which isn't trained to do ordinary law enforcement?

They're not necessarily trained in how to de-escalate situations.

So that is, I think, the practical on the ground effect of invoking the Insurrection Act.

It allows the president to use the military in ways that he has thus far not and basically been prohibited from doing.

So the Insurrection Act is an act.

It's a law.

And as a law, it lays out the circumstances and conditions under which the president can invoke the Insurrection Act.

There's really an open question about whether courts can review the president's determination that the prerequisites for invoking the Insurrection Act are indeed satisfied.

There's also the related question of if they can review that determination, will they give the president deference?

That is the benefit of the doubt and all of those kind of related questions.

And historically, courts

You know, the Insurrection Act is so rarely used.

The most significant precedent we have on it actually comes from an opinion of the executive branch, the Department of Justice, you know, back from the civil rights era.

And what that memo concluded is the Insurrection Act is really designed to allow the president to deploy the military force.

when state and local officers are affirmatively engaged in or facilitating the private violence that the president is concerned with.