Department or Program

Politics

Abstract

In his second term, Donald Trump’s use of unprecedented executive authority has tested constitutional limits in ways that have exposed growing fractures within the conservative legal movement (CLM), particularly as the movement’s members debate the legality of his actions. Although the CLM has always contained internal fragmentation and fragile coalitions, recent public disagreements amongst conservative legal elites invoke the questions motivating this thesis: do debates in conservative legal circles over the constitutional limits of executive authority reveal substantive and identifiable coalitional fractures? If so, how is the CLM’s ideological and coalitional landscape shifting? Finally, what can the nature and direction of these divisions tell us about the development of legal movements? To answer these questions, I examine conservative legal discourse surrounding ongoing Supreme Court cases addressing executive authority over tariff enactment and hiring and removal powers. Drawing on amicus briefs, law review articles, op-eds, legal blog posts, and Federalist Society roundtables, I analyze how competing factions within the CLM are interpreting and responding to Trump’s executive actions. I argue that these debates reveal three increasingly distinct yet cross-cutting coalitions: 1) a faction with its roots in the early CLM, committed to judicial restraint and becoming a progressively more visible force of opposition to Trump, 2) a political faction that defends Trump and judicial activism in support of conservative policy aims, and 3) a Christian faction that is allied with the political faction in support of Trump, in addition to smaller factions activated on a context-sensitive basis. By tracing how long-standing and long-latent ideological tensions have become newly salient, this project explains why fragmentation within the CLM is both predictable and intensifying at this moment, while also offering a methodological contribution by operationalizing how and why ideas move from “off the wall” to “on the wall.”

Level of Access

Open Access

First Advisor

Engel, Stephen

Date of Graduation

5-2026

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Number of Pages

230

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