The Trump administration‘s floated discussion of suspending the writ of habeas corpus immediately drew strong condemnation in the legal community.

Late Friday, C-SPAN broadcast top White House adviser Stephen Miller saying the government was “actively looking at” suspending the writ, adding that it “depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” Then, CNN confirmed the seriousness of those comments by reporting that “two people familiar with the consideration” said President Donald Trump himself was involved in such conversations.

Miller’s comments made clear what the 45th and 47th president alluded to during a press briefing in late April — that the Trump administration is increasingly frustrated with court orders barring the summary deportation of undocumented immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

“[T]he short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop,” Georgetown University Law Prof. Steve Vladeck wrote on his blog. “To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.”

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The law professor went on to say Miller was “wrong” about the conditions necessary to revoke habeas under the U.S. Constitution.

“Well, the Constitution is clear,” Miller said. “And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion.”

Vladeck’s response to that claim goes on, at length [emphasis in original]:

The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough.

The writ of habeas corpus is a 900-year-old legal protection afforded to persons against authoritarian impulses of law enforcement and government executives which allows an advocate to argue someone is being illegally confined, detained or imprisoned. It is generally considered the bedrock of the American and British legal systems.

The writ also attempts to force the government to answer questions in court and account for its actions by forcing an administrative process on, for example, the detention and deportation of immigrants.