Subject: Re: contempt deadline
That's his logic.

Yep. Well, it's not his logic. It's logic from the very first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as laid out in a case from 1809.

But I guess the current administration has no regard for judicial precedent or the law itself when that precedent or law goes against what they want to do.

And, as usual, you misstate an argument you don't like. It's not the ultimate disposition of the TRO that matters. It is the power of the court that must be respected. A court's orders must be followed until a higher court reverses them. The government would have suffered no irrepairable harm by returning the planes to the US. Once a higher court decided to overturn the order by finding the case needed to be filed in a different court*, the people could have been deported. But the deportees DO suffer an irrepairable harm by the order being ignored. As the government is now arguing in a related case, those deportees are out of the control of the US and any who should not have been deported can no longer argue their case against deportation.

Once again, the real issue becomes one of following the law. You don't get to pick and choose which laws you follow. You don't get to decide not to follow a law you don't like. And in the situation of judicial orders - whether coming before or after a trial - those orders have the force of law behind them.

--Peter

* And once the finding was made in a higher court, the plaintiffs would most likely have been able to obtain a substantially identical TRO on an expedited basis in the "right" court based on the record established in the "wrong" court.