Paul J. Larkin
House Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet and
Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government
Hearing on Nationwide Injunctions
April 1, 2025
Written Statement of
Paul J. Larkin
John, Barbara & Victoria Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow,
The Heritage Foundation
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and members of the committee:
My name is Paul J. Larkin. I am the John, Barbara, and Victoria Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony on the legitimacy and wisdom of so-called “nationwide injunctions”: viz., orders that award relief, not only to the parties in a lawsuit, but also to strangers to the litigation.REF The practice of entering such injunctions in cases not certified as class actions has bedeviled each of the five presidential administrations in this century.REF That practice also is mistaken as a matter of law and unwise as a matter of policy.REF
I. Nationwide Injunctions Are Mistaken as a Matter of Law
Most of the Constitution’s text addresses the creation, selection, empowerment, and regulation of the Article I and II branches. Those provisions grant exclusive lawmaking authority to politically elected officials: members of Congress and the President. Articles I and II create the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President; they identify and limit who may hold such offices; and they define the powers that each one may exercise, with the most important one being the creation and implementation of the “Law” of the United States.
Article I vests “[a]ll legislative Powers herein granted” in Congress, which textually distinguishes what Congress can produce from the type of orders or judgments that courts may enter, and Article II vests in the President the “executive Power,” which includes the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The Framers spent far less time at the Convention of 1787 on the Article III branch, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/courts/report/nationwide-injunctions-unlawful-and-unwise