@tsarstepan,
tsarstepan wrote:
That process as depicted in the constitution is having the US Supreme Court to decree said congressional act or law as unconstitutional. The President LEGALLY and CONSTITUTIONALLY has no right to determine what is and isn't constitutional. That is LITERALLY the job of the US Supreme Court.
You may be right, but even if that's the case then the president can't comply with the law until the Supreme Court reaches its finding.
Instead, the president has the responsibility to defy the law until the Supreme Court has a chance to rule and, at that time, his or her defiance could be found to be incorrect.
Still, it could also be possible for the president or congress to continue defying the ruling of the Supreme Court, if he or she was truly convinced that both branches of government were acting in corruption and violation of the constitution.
Consider a historical example:
What if congress had blocked Lincoln from stopping the secession of states during the Civil War, from enacting the emancipation proclamation, etc.? Lincoln could have maintained the war effort against the Confederates and defied the Supreme Court if it ruled against him. He could have continued to defy those other branches of government until a sufficient counter-offensive was used to overthrow him; and at that point the right of secession could have been established along with prohibitions against slave-emancipation, effectively turning the USA into the CSA.
If that had happened, most people would say that Lincoln was right for rejecting attempts by congress and SCOTUS to support secession. They would say that because they believe it is fundamental within the constitution to stop slavery; i.e. not to allow it as a right at the state level. You could argue that until the 13th amendment was ratified, Lincoln had no right to emancipate the slaves by proclamation, but he did so as part of a war effort, which you could maybe also argue was not a legal war, but then if not what would have been the correct procedure for dealing with the rebellion properly?
Whatever the case, it would have been improper for congress to use legal means to expose personal information about Lincoln as a tactic for undermining his independent functioning as president. They would have to find grounds to impeach him and remove him from power. He could still have defied the impeachment ruling if he was convinced they were the product of botched/corrupt process, and even if the SCOTUS disagreed, he could maintain his stance and history would have had to judge his resistance by considering the biases of the other branches.
