Would you want to argue against famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz? It certainly seems from this clip that CNN’s Van Jones — an ex-Communist and senior fellow at John Podesta’s Center for American Progress — wants to make a half-hearted effort to do just that.
But the fact of the matter is that Dershowitz knows what he’s talking about on this issue and others like it. Dershowitz’s argument involves the constitutionality of Trump’s travel ban to and from six Muslim countries, which has been much discussed in the media since a federal judge in Hawaii blocked it in March. The case will now continue to the Supreme Court, where Dershowitz has previously argued cases. While Van Jones holds a law degree from Yale, he can’t hope to match Dershowitz in terms of legal credibility and expectations of how the Court will rule.
The case here comes down to whether the Court will consider whether Trump’s statements on the campaign trail have any bearing on the legal language of the executive order establishing the ban. As Dershowitz points out, the countries in the ban were originally specified by former President Obama, NOT Trump — Trump was only extending a request initially issued by the Obama administration, which implemented its own travel ban in 2016. Note that there was never any brouhaha about whether Obama’s order was considered legal, and barely any mention of it in the press at the time it was instituted — talk about unfair!
Watch as Dershowitz sets Jones straight with his more-often-right-than-wrong observations.
