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I would think the latest one where SCOTUS ruled that the president was a king except in matters where the SCOTUS decides they aren't counts as a constitutional crisis.


Constitutional crises are not a matter of opinion but of occurrence, arising from an actual power conflict between arms of the government that is caused by a conflicted reading of the constitutional text. Basically, if the system just ticks on, it's not a constitutional crisis.

If "I think this is a very bad decision" was cause for a constitutional crisis, any state with more than three digit population would be in constitutional crisis perpetually.


> Constitutional crises are not a matter of opinion but of occurrence, arising from an actual power conflict between arms of the government that is caused by a conflicted reading of the constitutional text. Basically, if the system just ticks on, it's not a constitutional crisis.

This happened as recently as 2021-01-06; strong evidence that the military subverted the president to call the National Guard into Washington DC and secure the electoral count.


That's close. Both the excessively long lame duck period (2 months for Congress and 2.5 months for the President) and disunity between the President and the rest of the executive branch have also been fodder for crises in the past (Marbury v Madison, Andrew Johnson's impeachment).


If Trump didn't back down it could have definitely been a constitutional crisis.

I'd say it was narrowly averted though.




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