The Marquis of Queensberry Rules were devised in 1867 to define sportsmanlike conduct in the boxing ring. Honorable pugilists follow them to this day.

Donald Trump does not. He fights more like a common thug, with no holds barred and the occasional blackjack.

Unfortunately, many liberals, thinking that this is still a normal democracy, or wanting to set a good example, or just plain fearful and hoping to appease the dictator, follow the high-minded Marquis. After Kamala Harris’s defeat, President Biden worked hard to ensure a "normal" presidential transition to Trump—which this never could be.

You are kind of damned either way. Get down into the slime pit with Trump—or play fair and get hit below the belt.

I was thinking of what we might call the Queensberry Dilemma when I read of a couple of recent court decisions.

On February 8, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer, in response to a suit by 19 state attorneys general, temporarily enjoined Elon Musk and his henchmen from accessing sensitive Treasury Department systems. But on February 11, another federal district judge, Jeannette A. Vargas, modified Judge Engelmayer’s order to provide that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other high-level Treasury colleagues could have full access.

She wrote that the earlier order "did not suggest that Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior Treasury officials ‘posed a threat of disclosure of sensitive and confidential information, or that their access would result in systems that would be more vulnerable to hacking.’"

Perish the thought that Bessent and Musk might be in cahoots. The credulous, deferential Judge Vargas is a Biden appointee.

In an even more dubious decision, on Wednesday, District Court Judge George O’Toole Jr. allowed Trump to proceed with his proposed "deferred resignation" program, encouraging federal employees to leave their jobs in exchange for several months of severance. On February 6, O’Toole had issued a temporary restraining order in response to a suit by several governent employee unions, pending oral argunents.

After hearing arguments from the Trump Justice Department, O’Toole allowed the buyout to go forward. Astonishingly, the judge’s rationale was that the unions lack standing to bring the suit. If unions representing affected workers don’t have standing, who does?

Beyond the technical question of standing, the entire buyout program was invented out of whole cloth. It’s not at all clear whether the government even has the legal authority to make good on the promised deferred severance payments. The workers could take early retirement in good faith, and then get stiffed—a well-known Trump technique.

Judge O’Toole is a Clinton appointee.

Robert Frost once defined a liberal as the fellow who is so high-minded that he won’t take his own side in an argument. If even Democrat-appointed judges are going to look for ways to split hairs to seem ultra-fair and balanced, in the face of a wholesale assault on the Constitution, American democracy is toast.

MOST JUDGES, THANKFULLY, have not fallen into this trap. On Thursday, Judge Amir Ali, one of the last Biden appointees, issued a very forceful ruling ordering the Trump administration to restore funding for all USAID contractors.

"Defendants have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shock wave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs," Ali wrote.

"Absent temporary injunctive relief, therefore, the scale of the enormous harm that has already occurred will almost certainly increase," he added. Ali barred Trump officials from implementing any contract cancellations or stop-work orders while further litigation plays out.

So far, though there have been threats, the administration has followed most court orders, though some grants are still being illegally withheld. Even Trump has stopped short of saying that he would defy the courts. The major cases will end up at the Supreme Court.

There, one ray of hope is the year-end report by Chief Justice John Roberts, warning explicitly against threats to ignore court orders as a fundamental attack on the judiciary. After recounting the sordid history of defiance of court orders, such as the white South’s "massive resistance" to desegregation orders and personal threats against judges, Roberts added, "The final threat to judicial independence is defiance of judgments lawfully entered by courts of competent jurisdiction" by other branches of government. He added that "judicial independence is undermined unless the other branches are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees."

There is little doubt about who his audience was. Let’s see if Roberts is as good as his word. The Queensberry rules only work if both sides honor them.