the President is not the highest authority and is not above the law or the Constitution, and there is an intricate system of checks and balances built into the structure of the US government. The other answers, however, gloss over what I think this question is really asking:
What if the President acts like he is the highest authority and defies the court? What can the court do in that case?
If that were to happen, the court would issue orders directing government employees to follow the court’s ruling.The President could appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court,
but let’s just skip that and imagine that the President has either exhausted appeals or just declines to appeal and simply issues contradictory orders telling government employees to ignore the court.
At that point, the court could take a number of actions but I think the most likely course would be that it orders the President to show cause why he (or she) should not be cited for contempt. If appeals on that run out and the President ignores the order,
the court would cite the President for contempt. Enforcement of the contempt citation would, obviously, just start a new round of contradictory orders, appeals, hearings, and more orders.
The result would be a standoff. The court could continue issuing orders, but the court doesn’t have many tools of its own to force compliance with orders.
It relies on public officials to carry out enforcement orders, and those officials all ultimately fall under the authority of the Executive branch. They report up to the President.The term “Constitutional Crisis” is frequently used to describe things that really aren’t,
but a standoff like this really would be one. If it ever got to this point, the solution would have to be a political one: impeachment, amendment, or election.
If the President’s party has control of the House of Representatives and public opinion hasn’t turned against the President, then impeachment won’t happen, and if the President’s party also controls the Senate it might go the other way:
the impeachment would be of the judge(s). There’s also the possibility of the House and Senate kicking off the process of amending the Constitution to resolve the crisis. And, of course, the voters will eventually get to have a say on it in the next election.
