In the circumstances, the court did not exceed the limits of proper discretion.
Still, some lawyers critical of Mr. Obama argue that by publicly grouping a large number of undocumented immigrants who are not subject to American law and granting them a special status, the president has gone far beyond the limits of prosecutorial discretion and crossed the line into legislative fiat.
The grounds for discharge were that the court had exceeded its jurisdiction by punishing as a contempt an act which it had no power to so punish, and that even if the act punished was susceptible of being treated as a contempt the action of the court was arbitrary, beyond the limits of any discretion possessed, and violative of due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.
The debate on in vitro fertilization for gay couples is one example; the limits of parental discretion and decision making about a child's sex and gender identity is another.
Suffice it to say, for now, that although the constitutional limits and the abuse-of-discretion standard are not identical, in this case the $2.5 billion the Ninth Circuit believed survived de novo constitutional scrutiny would, in my judgment, also satisfy abuse-of-discretion review.
The SEC's case against Cuban raises questions focusing on the scope of this nation's insider trading laws, the strategic litigation decisions made, the significant costs of defending one's good reputation, and the proper limits of governmental prosecutorial discretion.
With the exception already stated, there is ample evidence to support the judgment; the punishments imposed are not excessive; the court kept within the limits of its reasonable discretion and did nothing which injuriously affected the substantial rights of the parties.
But critics like Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, said they believed the idea also posed risks of limiting the discretion of federal judges and giving the Justice Department too much power.
Though Mr. Trump's emergency declaration flunks the common-sense test, it might actually pass legal muster, because the relevant law — the National Emergencies Act of 1976 — includes no definition of "emergency," and courts might be loath to second-guess this president for fear of limiting the discretion of future ones.
