However, legal experts said Trump’s history of erratic and inflammatory statements, his frequent rhetorical disconnects with senior officials in his administration and his tendency to see crises that others view as completely contrived mean that challengers stand a strong chance of finding a judge willing to throw a monkey wrench into the president’s plans.

“Normally, any other time, you’d say it’s a no-brainer that the president wins,” at least with respect to the decision to declare an emergency, said Bobby Chesney, a University of Texas law professor. “But with this particular president, no bets are safe in assuming the courts will completely defer to him … Presidents traditionally get tremendous deference, but Trump is not going to get the same level of deference.”…

“From an originalist Constitution point of view, Congress probably shouldn’t have ever delegated this kind of power to the president in the first place, so they may be having second thoughts about having done that,” said John Eastman, a Chapman University law professor and former Justice Department official. “But the notion that this president shouldn’t be able to use powers that every other president has used, I think that’s just not a good use of the rule of law.”