No One Is Above the Law
What Cooper v. Aaron, Walker v. City of Birmingham, and United States v. Nixon Still Demand of Every Lawyer
July 2026
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At America’s 250th anniversary, the nation faces an urgent constitutional question: what happens when government officials ignore court orders? This article discusses three landmark cases shaping compliance with judicial orders, explores the broad problem of executive defiance, and examines what these precedents demand of lawyers as officers of the legal system.
In 1958, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in an extraordinary institutional posture: the Court’s decision in Cooper v. Aaron identified each of the nine sitting justices by name at the outset of the opinion.1 The act was deliberate and unmistakable in its message: the Court speaks with one voice, and that voice is law. The crisis was a defiant Arkansas governor using the National Guard to block Black students from entering a public school.2 The constitutional principle at stake was whether government officials could simply choose which court orders to follow.
Nearly seven decades later, that precedent is no longer merely historical. Federal courts continue to issue orders that executive branch officials publicly criticize and sometimes resist, reviving the central issue Cooper decided: whether compliance with a binding judicial order is optional.3
This article examines three cases: Cooper v. Aaron, Walker v. City of Birmingham, and United States v. Nixon. It focuses on the legal framework they establish and what that framework requires of government officials and of lawyers today. The analysis that follows is grounded in settled doctrine and the judiciary’s own findings. It is not a political argument. The same legal standards apply regardless of which party holds power and always have.
Cooper v. Aaron (1958): The Foundation
The legal crisis of 1957 began at a school. Following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board developed a plan to desegregate Central High School.4 Governor Orval Faubus responded by deploying the Arkansas National Guard to block nine Black students from entering.5 President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and ordered compliance.6 The Arkansas legislature then passed a series of laws designed to circumvent Brown entirely, and the school board sought judicial relief from its own desegregation obligations.7
The Supreme Court’s response was unanimous and historic. In Cooper v. Aaron, the Court rejected the premise that state officials could nullify or evade federal constitutional rights through resistance to judicial decrees.8 The Court anchored its holding in the Supremacy Clause and in the duty imposed by the oath requirement of Article VI.9 It also invoked Marbury v. Madison, reaffirming that it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is, and that constitutional adjudication cannot be treated as optional by officials charged with enforcing the law.10
The Court’s words remain as clear today as they were in 1958: “No state legislator, executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his oath to support it.”11
Cooper is often remembered as a case about state defiance. But its logic is broader: the Constitution is binding on officials of each branch of government, and adhering to constitutional adjudication is not a matter of discretion for the parties to a case. If officials “pick and choose” which judicial orders to follow, the rule of law is undermined until it fades.
Walker v. City of Birmingham (1967): Comply First, Challenge Later
Nine years after Cooper, the Supreme Court confronted a different form of defiance. In the spring of 1963, civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, planned a series of marches despite a city-obtained injunction prohibiting them.12 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders made a deliberate choice to march anyway, arguing that the injunction was unconstitutional on its face.13 They were arrested and jailed for contempt.14
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Walker v. City of Birmingham held that, as a general rule, even an arguably invalid court order ordinarily must be obeyed unless and until it is stayed, modified, or reversed through proper legal channels.15 In the rare circumstance where the issuing court plainly lacks jurisdiction, a party may contend the order is void, but Walker emphasizes that the ordinary and lawful course to be followed in most circumstances is to seek prompt judicial relief, including a stay, rather than unilateral disobedience. Notably, the Walker majority did not find that the Alabama state court lacked jurisdiction to issue the injunction; it therefore declined to address whether the outcome would differ had the court been wholly without jurisdictional authority and instead held that the petitioners were obligated to challenge the order through orderly judicial review rather than open defiance.16
Typically, the proper remedy for an unconstitutional injunction is to seek a motion to modify, an appeal, or a request for a stay.17 A party cannot, ordinarily, decide on its own that an order is wrong and proceed as though it does not exist.18 While the Court created a general rule outlining the lawful path for contesting an injunction, it did not set out an exhaustive account of every conceivable exception.
The dissent by Justices Warren, Brennan, Douglas, and Fortas argued that the injunction at issue was so plainly unconstitutional that it should not command compliance.19 That tension between the duty to obey judicial orders pending appellate review and the concern that compliance may lend the coercive force of contempt to a patently unconstitutional decree is real, and an educational account should recognize it. But the majority holding remains the controlling framework: if each subject of an injunction could independently determine its validity and act accordingly, judicial enforcement would collapse.20
Walker thus closes an “escape hatch” that rhetoric can create: the belief that moral certainty substitutes for legal process. In the Court’s words: “No man can be judge in his own case, however exalted his station, however righteous his motives, and irrespective of his race, color, politics, or religion.”21
United States v. Nixon (1974): Not Even the President
If Cooper established that officials are bound by constitutional adjudication and Walker held that disagreement does not excuse defiance, United States v. Nixon resolved the final claim of exceptionalism: that the president is beyond the reach of judicial process.22
In the course of the Watergate investigation, the special prosecutor subpoenaed White House tape recordings.23 President Nixon refused, asserting executive privilege and contending that the judiciary could not compel production.24 The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision with one justice recused, rejected an absolute privilege claim and required compliance with the subpoena.25
The Court acknowledged that executive privilege exists and can serve legitimate constitutional purposes.26 But it held that the privilege is not absolute and cannot defeat a demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a criminal proceeding.27 In practical terms, the decision stands for a central rule of law proposition: a president may argue, appeal, and seek relief through lawful mechanisms but may not treat judicial process as optional.
The broader principle is older than Nixon itself: “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity.”28
Together, these cases form a coherent framework: Cooper rejects nullification by officials; Walker rejects self-help defiance as a substitute for appellate process; and Nixon rejects presidential exemption from judicial process.
How Court Orders Work: The Legal Framework
Understanding the present moment requires understanding the mechanics of court orders and the recourse the law provides to parties and courts (including contempt sanctions, appellate remedies, and stays) when compliance is refused.
Injunctions are court orders requiring a party to act or refrain from acting.29 In federal practice, emergency and merits-stage injunctive relief commonly includes temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and permanent injunctions.30 Under Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a court issuing a preliminary injunction must find that the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits, that the plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm absent relief, that the balance of equities tips in the plaintiff’s favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest.31 Once injunctive relief is issued, compliance is mandatory unless and until the order is stayed, modified, or reversed.32
A stay is the legally proper mechanism for pausing a court order pending appeal.33 A party that believes an injunction is wrong must seek a stay from the issuing court; if denied, the party may seek relief from the appellate court and, in appropriate cases, the Supreme Court.34 Unilateral noncompliance is not a de facto stay. Noncompliance is defiance.35
Contempt is the principal mechanism by which courts enforce compliance with their orders, empowering courts to impose sanctions, including fines, compensatory awards, and imprisonment, on parties who refuse to obey.36 Civil contempt is typically coercive and designed to secure compliance, while criminal contempt is punitive and designed to punish past acts of defiance.37 Federal courts have substantial contempt authority, including by statute.38 But the contempt power has practical and institutional limits, including the reality that enforcement of those actions often depends on executive branch actors.39
The Framework Tested: A Contemporary Illustration From the Courts
Recent litigation has returned the executive branch noncompliance to the center of constitutional practice, not as theory, but as a matter of documented judicial findings.
In Abrego Garcia v. Noem, the federal government removed a Salvadoran national to El Salvador notwithstanding a court order that prohibited his removal to that country. The Supreme Court then issued a mandate40 directing the government to “ensure that Abrego Garcia’s case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly removed to El Salvador.”41 Rather than comply fully, the government disputed the scope of that mandate, arguing that it retained discretion over the manner and means of compliance and that the mandate did not compel the individual’s physical return. The district court rejected that framing, outlined the mandate’s requirements, and described each step the executive branch was obliged to take.42
Whatever one’s views of the underlying policy disputes, the legal through-line guarding the rule of law against erosion by noncompliance is the one that Cooper, Walker, and Nixon insist upon: the place to contest a judicial order is in court, through motions, stays, and appeals, not by treating compliance as optional. When government actors respond to adverse rulings by arguing, in effect, that the issuing court lacks jurisdiction, remedial authority, or power to require compliance in the manner ordered, the argument runs directly into the constitutional structure those cases reflect.
Another modern pressure point has appeared in the context of executive actions directed at specific law firms. In 2025, President Trump issued multiple executive orders directing federal agencies to take specified actions affecting particular firms, including steps related to security clearances and contracting relationships.43 Some observers have raised the concern that such orders, by targeting firms that have represented clients adverse to the administration, risk chilling the willingness of lawyers to accept representation disfavored by the executive branch, a result that would itself implicate the rule of law principles this article examines.44 Those orders, like all exercises of executive power, remain subject to judicial review, and any resulting judicial relief carries the same baseline rule: absent a stay or reversal, orders must be followed.
The Enforcement Gap: The Unanswered Question
Our current political environment requires confronting what the three cases in this article did not fully resolve: what happens when the party subject to a court order controls the enforcement mechanism. Cooper worked in practice because President Eisenhower chose to enforce it.45 Nixon worked because the Court required compliance and the president ultimately complied.46 Both cases assumed that someone with power would act. Neither squarely resolves what happens when the executive branch is itself the defiant party and simultaneously controls key instruments of enforcement, which is what is happening in 2026.
The broad problem of executive defiance is not new, however. Worcester v. Georgia presented an early test.47 There, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee Nation against the State of Georgia, yet President Andrew Jackson declined to use federal power to enforce the decisions.48 The quote often attributed to President Jackson, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it,” is historically disputed, but the enforcement gap the quote gestures at is real.49 Georgia defied the Court, and the executive branch let it stand. The Cherokee were removed. The consequences of that failure were not abstract; they were borne by people who depended on the rule of law and were abandoned by the branch charged with upholding it. That history frames the question the current moment poses: when the executive itself resists judicial authority, what recourse remains?
The remedies available when the executive resists court orders are real but imperfect. Congress retains appropriations power, oversight authority, and the remedy of impeachment.50 Courts can continue to issue orders and findings. Political accountability through elections remains a foundational check. None of these remedies are fast. None are certain. None change the underlying legal premise: absent a stay or reversal, court orders bind the parties before the court, including government officials.51
The enforcement gap does not diminish the legal obligation. It amplifies it. When formal enforcement mechanisms are strained, the obligations of officials, as well as the responsibilities of lawyers, become more salient, not less.
The Lawyer’s Obligation: Rule of Law in Practice
Cooper tied the duty of compliance explicitly to the oath every official takes upon assuming office.52 That oath to support the Constitution is not ceremonial. It is a legal commitment.53 When an official defies a court order, the official is not merely breaking a rule; the official is repudiating the constitutional structure the oath presupposes.
Lawyers occupy a different but related role. A lawyer is not only a client’s representative but also an officer of the legal system.54 That dual role is not a platitude; it is reflected in the profession’s enforceable ethics rules, including rules that restrict counseling or assisting unlawful conduct and rules that prohibit conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.55
The lesson for lawyers advising government clients is straightforward. Advising that court orders are optional, or that jurisdiction can simply be denied as a reason for noncompliance, is not merely aggressive advocacy. It collapses the line between legal argument and institutional defiance. The lawyer’s proper advice is the advice Walker requires: comply with the order, seek a stay if you disagree, and pursue challenges through the legal system that exists for precisely that purpose.56
Lawyers are not bystanders to constitutional moments. They are participants. And when enforcement mechanisms strain, the profession’s willingness to speak clearly in private to clients and, where appropriate, in public becomes part of how the rule of law is sustained.
Conclusion
Cooper v. Aaron rejected official nullification of constitutional rights enforced through judicial decree.57 Walker v. City of Birmingham held that disagreement with a court order is not a legal defense; the proper response is a stay, an appeal, or a motion, and never unilateral defiance.58 United States v. Nixon held that not even the president may treat judicial process as optional.59 These cases were decided in moments of genuine constitutional strain, including a governor standing in the schoolhouse door, civil rights leaders facing contempt sanctions, and a president resisting criminal process. In each instance, the Court held the line. In each instance, the constitutional system held, not because law enforces itself, but because institutional actors ultimately treated judicial orders as binding.
As the United States marks 250 years since July 4, 1776, the question these cases answered is being asked again: what happens when officials treat judicial orders as negotiable rather than binding? The enforcement gap is not a theoretical risk. It is a recurring feature of American constitutional history, visible in President Jackson’s refusal to enforce Worcester v. Georgia, and in the present day disputes documented by federal courts in cases like Abrego Garcia v. Noem.60 But neither the law nor professional obligation have changed. Court orders remain binding unless stayed or reversed, and lawyers remain obligated to say so.
Court orders are not suggestions. Compliance is not optional. The Constitution does not change based on who holds the Oval Office, the statehouse, or the courthouse. And it falls to lawyers, as officers of the legal system, holders of a professional oath, and the people trained to know better, to say so clearly and to insist that lawful challenge occurs through lawful process.
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Notes
citation McCain Kellar, “No One Is Above the Law: What Cooper v. Aaron, Walker v. City of Birmingham, and United States v. Nixon Still Demand of Every Lawyer,” 55 Colo. Law. 52 (July 2026), https://cl.cobar.org/features/no-one-is-above-the-law.
1. Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958) (opinion identifying the chief justice and each associate justice by name at the outset).
2. Id. at 8–9 (describing Governor Faubus’s deployment of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent enrollment of Black students at Central High School).
3. See, e.g., Abrego Garcia v. Noem, No. 8:25-cv-00951-PX, Mem. Op. at 2–3 (D.Md. July 23, 2025) (describing the Supreme Court’s mandate and subsequent litigation concerning the government’s obligations), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-mdd-8_25-cv-00951/pdf/USCOURTS-mdd-8_25-cv-00951-1.pdf.
4. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 7; Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
5. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 8. See also Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights 320–21 (Oxford University Press 2004).
6. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 9; Freyer, The Little Rock Crisis: A Constitutional Interpretation 114–15 (Greenwood Press 1984).
7. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 9–10.
8. Id. at 17–18.
9. US Const. art. VI, cl. 2 (Supremacy Clause); US Const. art. VI, cl. 3 (oath requirement); Cooper, 358 U.S. at 18 (linking the obligation of officials to their art. VI oath).
10. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 18 (citing Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803)).
11. Id. at 18.
12. Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 309–10 (1967); Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 737–38 (Simon & Schuster 1988).
13. Walker, 388 U.S. at 318.
14. Id. at 311.
15. Id. at 320–21.
16. Id.
17. Id. at 318–19. See also Howat v. Kansas, 258 U.S. 181, 189–90 (1922) (stating that an order must be obeyed unless and until it is reversed by orderly review, even if the order is later determined to have been invalid).
18. Walker, 388 U.S. at 320–21.
19. Id. at 325 (Warren, C.J., dissenting); id. at 344 (Brennan, J., dissenting, joined by Warren, C.J., Douglas and Fortas, JJ.).
20. Id. at 320–21.
21. Id.
22. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).
23. Id. at 686–87; Woodward and Bernstein, The Final Days 194–95 (Simon & Schuster 1976).
24. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 692–93.
25. Id. at 686 and n.1 (noting Justice Rehnquist took no part).
26. Id. at 705–06.
27. Id. at 706–07, 713.
28. United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882).
29. Fed. R. Civ. P. 65.
30. Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(a)–(b).
31. Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008).
32. Walker, 388 U.S. at 320–21; Maness v. Meyers, 419 U.S. 449, 458 (1975) (reaffirming that a party ordinarily must comply and seek relief through proper channels rather than unilateral defiance).
33. Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 421 (2009).
34. Id. at 426.
35. Walker, 388 U.S. at 320–21.
36. 18 USC § 401.
37. Int’l Union, United Mine Workers v. Bagwell, 512 U.S. 821, 827–28 (1994).
38. 18 USC § 401; United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 293 (1947) (recognizing contempt authority and addressing the duty to obey court orders absent a stay).
39. See 28 USC § 561 (establishing the US Marshals Service within the Department of Justice).
40. Abrego Garcia, No. 8:25-cv-00951-PX, Mem. Op. at 2.
41. Id. at 2 (quoting Noem v. Abrego Garcia, 145 S.Ct. 1017, 1018 (2025)).
42. Id. at 2–3.
43. Exec. Order No. 14230, Addressing Risks From Perkins Coie LLP (Mar. 6, 2025), as published in the Federal Register (Mar. 11, 2025) (FR Doc. 2025-03989); Exec. Order No. 14250, Addressing Risks From WilmerHale (Mar. 27, 2025), as published in the Federal Register (Apr. 3, 2025) (FR Doc. 2025-05845).
44. See, e.g., Letter from former attorneys general and former deputy attorneys general to members of Congress (Mar. 2025) (expressing concern that executive orders targeting specific law firms threaten the independence of the legal profession), https://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/News-Room/Current-News/Open%20Letter%20to%20the%20Legal%20Community%20Regarding%20the%20President%27s%20Attacks%20on%20the%20Legal%20Profession%20and%20the%20Federal%20Judiciary.pdf?language_id=1; American Bar Association (ABA), Statement of ABA President on Executive Orders Targeting Law Firms (Mar. 2025) (stating that punishing lawyers for client representation undermines the rule of law), https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/03/aba-rejects-efforts-to-undermine-courts-and-legal-profession/%5c.
45. Freyer, The Little Rock Crisis: A Constitutional Interpretation 114–15 (Greenwood Press 1984).
46. Woodward and Bernstein, supra note 23 at 422–24; Kutler, The Wars of Watergate 531–32 (Knopf 1990).
47. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 561 (1832).
48. Id.
49. Miles, “After John Marshall’s Decision: Worcester v. Georgia and the Nullification Crisis,” 39(4) J. S. Hist. 519, 527 n.32 (Nov. 1973).
50. US Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7 (Appropriations Clause); US Const. art. II, § 4 (Impeachment Clause).
51. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 18; Walker , 388 U.S. at 320–21; Nken, 556 U.S. 418.
52. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 18 (linking official duty to art. VI oath).
53. US Const. art. VI, cl. 3.
54. See Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U.S. 157, 168 (1986) (quoting Model Rules of Professional Responsibility language describing a lawyer’s role and duties, including that a lawyer “is an officer of the court”).
55. See id. at 165–66 and n.7 (quoting Model Code of Professional Responsibility language prohibiting counseling or assisting fraudulent conduct).
56. Walker, 388 U.S. at 320–21; Maness, 419 U.S. at 458.
57. Cooper, 358 U.S. at 17–18.
58. Walker, 388 U.S. at 320–21.
59. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 706–07, 713.
60. Abrego Garcia, No. 8:25-cv-00951-PX, Mem. Op. at 2; Worcester, 31 U.S. at 561.