The District of Columbia court system is an unconstitutional mess. The idea that the president can only nominate candidates to the bench from a preselected list provided by a commission over which he has no control clearly violates the Constitution’s appointments clause.

But somehow the process of reappointment in the District of Columbia is even worse. There, a similarly bizarre committee (the Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure) evaluates judges whose terms have expired, after which it can usurp the president’s nomination and appointment powers as well as short-circuit the advice and consent function of the Senate.

In other words, this commission — and this commission alone — can decide whether judges will continue to serve despite what the president, the Senate, or the people the president and Senate serve want.

President Trump and Attorney General Bondi should consider taking action to remedy this constitutional abomination. //

Because both the nomination and appointment of judges are core Article II powers, having that power exercised by an independent body wholly outside the president’s control is constitutionally untenable. In many ways this is even worse than the unconstitutional judicial-nomination system in D.C. //

So what is to be done? In the case of the Judicial Nominating Commission, the remedy is easy enough: President Trump should nominate whomever he wants and appoint him subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

For those judges already on the bench and subject to reappointment, he might need to be more creative because the paper authorizing the reappointment does not traverse the White House at all.

One option in the case of a reappointed judge is for the attorney general to seek a writ of quo warranto. One of the ancient prerogative writs, it literally means “by what warrant” and is a way for a court to determine whether or not a holder of public office is legitimate. Rarely used — and almost always pursuant to state law — it is contemplated in the All Writs Act at the federal level. The limited precedent on the subject seems to indicate that the attorney general has the power to seek the writ. //

Law and order in the District of Columbia is a disgrace, in no small part because of its activist local judges chosen and reappointed through an unconstitutional process. As President Trump seeks to “make D.C. safe again,” he should act where he has the authority to do so and fix the broken reappointment process for the D.C. courts.