Is Donald Trump above the law?

Legal experts say the US President's willingness to defy America's judiciary threatens a constitutional crisis.

- Stefania Palma

Mr Donald Trump's attacks on American judges and his apparent willingness to flout judicial orders are stoking fears of a constitutional crisis in the world's most powerful democracy, say the US President's critics.

On March 18, America's most senior judge made the decision to weigh in, with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuking the President for suggesting a judge he disagreed with should be impeached.

Without naming Mr Trump, he suggested the President's threats were "not an appropriate response" to his disagreements with rulings — a pointed criticism of a US leader who has endured his own chequered history in the courts.

Justice Roberts' comments marked a stunning display of tension between the judiciary and the executive, two of America's three branches of government, alongside Congress.

The Chief Justice's intervention came at a moment of acute peril for the US judicial system, said legal scholars, following weeks of attacks on judges by Mr Trump and his allies.

"The rule of law in our country is dancing along the precipice, (which) overhangs a chasm of lawlessness and breakdown," said Yale Law School's Professor William Eskridge.

"Whether we fall over the edge depends on whether the current administration openly defies or even stealthily evades" legal precedent, he added.

So far, Mr Trump appears willing to keep testing the limits of his power versus the judiciary's.

After Justice Roberts' statement, a federal judge in Maryland ruled that billionaire Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency "likely violated the United States Constitution" in shutting down the US Agency for International Development.