In a famous letter written Dec. 25, 1820, Thomas Jefferson complained that “the Judiciary of the U.S. is the subtle corps of sappers & miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.” Donald Trump and his administration now have reason to hold similar beliefs.

Jefferson was irked that the U.S. Supreme Court was giving the federal government too much power; now the Trump administration finds itself blocked by the courts in its efforts to take power from the federal government and to return that power to the people and their state and local governments.

The problem the current administration now faces is an outbreak of what astute commentator Jonathan Turley has called “injunctivitis”—the practice of federal district courts issuing decrees countermanding many of the White House’s executive orders and the actions of executive branch agencies. Lately these have included the president’s declaration ending “birthright citizenship,” cutting off funding for Harvard University, ending support for National Public Radio, closing federal agencies, deporting suspected criminal illegal alien gang members and many other matters.

In many of these cases, the federal court orders have been “nationwide injunctions,” meaning rulings that cover the entire country and parties not before the courts, and which go far beyond the normal, limited jurisdiction of judges assigned to particular districts. Many, if not most, of the judges issuing these nationwide injunctions have been appointed by Democratic presidents, and many of their rulings appear to flow more from the judges’ differences with the president over policies than from a neutral application of the governing laws.

A Supreme Court ruling on the legitimacy of “nationwide injunctions” issued by district judges is expected within the next few weeks Several bills are also before Congress to forbid district judges from attempting to exercise this power, pursuant to the legislative branch’s constitutional power to limit the jurisdiction of lower federal courts. There are even some calls, for example from distinguished law professor and columnist Glenn Harlan Reynolds, for the president simply to ignore judicial rulings he believes to be unconstitutional. There are precedents for the president to make his own determination of constitutionality, and there is nothing in the Constitution itself that makes the courts the exclusive arbiter of legality. (Indeed, the president’s oath to uphold the Constitution and to “take care” that the laws be faithfully executed seems to imply some discretion in that regard).

So far, Donald Trump has been careful to follow judicial rulings, and, indeed, his administration has succeeded in getting some of the more outrageous ones reversed by appellate courts. There is no doubt that if he chose to substitute his lawyers’ determinations for those of hostile district judges, the mainstream media would declare a constitutional crisis and calls for impeachment would reverberate from Democrats.

In truth, however, we are already in the throes of such a crisis, as government by the judiciary is not at all the design put forth by the framers. They envisioned “energy in the executive” as a major policy-making force. While the most important branch of constitutional government is the legislature, since it was directly responsive to the people, the framers simply did not conceive of either an unbounded judicial check by a politicized judiciary (which was famously thought to be, in Hamilton’s words, “the least dangerous branch”) or by what we have now, the agencies, which amount to an all-powerful extra-constitutional fourth branch of government, also called “the administrative state.”

Donald Trump has a powerful claim to be acting to restore the original constitutional order, in his and his agents’ efforts to root out waste and corruption (particularly in the agencies, some of which, during the last administration, appear to have been virtual money laundries for favored nonprofits and other cronies). If Chief Justice Roberts really believes that there should be no such thing as “Obama judges,” or “Biden judges,” or “Trump judges,” he and the Court now have an opportunity to restrain judicial arbitrariness.

It is time for a powerful statement from the Supreme Court, perhaps even one that reinvigorates the now nearly discarded “political question” doctrine, which was one means of preserving the discretion that the Constitution originally guaranteed to the executive and legislative branches and to the states.

Ours is supposed to be a government of laws, not men, but for about 70 years, at least, our courts and law schools have been dominated by legal philosophies praising innovative judges and leading to massive arbitrariness and uncertainty in the law. Thus, we have dubious resort to the courts for the resolution of nearly all social and political disputes, and a litigation explosion that too often renders even private parties uncertain of property and contract rights. Wonderful as the law and legal profession are, we are dangerously over-lawyered, and it is long past time to end the kind of lawfare still waged against this president.

Either the Supreme Court will now shoulder the responsibility necessary to preserve the Constitution, or Congress will reign in rogue district courts, or Donald Trump will have to do what Franklin Roosevelt once suggested, namely, to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.