The potential legal justifications Donald Trump could use to ban Muslims from the United States: Two complementary pieces were published this week attempting to identify possible legal pathways that a President Donald Trump could take to keep Muslims from entering the United States. Matt Spetalnick and David Ingram at Reuters present a more skeptical take on the ban, noting that a direct ban on Muslims may be difficult to pass. However, there seem to be a number of alternate approaches that Trump could take to achieve the same result of achieving a ban on Muslims without calling it as such. “If a Trump administration cut off immigration from certain countries, rather than certain religions, it would not violate the Constitution,” according to UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo and former Justice Department official. (Read Trump adds new twist to immigration proposals, but legal doubts persist)

For a much more in-depth look at the same issue, and one which leans much more heavily to suggesting that Trump will be able to enact such a ban, see Sasha Abramsky’s piece in The American Prospect: “Using existing immigration statutes and legal precedents, President Trump would, in fact, have plenty of ways of making life miserable for Muslims currently living in or hoping to come to the United States… such an attempt would likely start… with an expansive interpretation of Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” Columbia University historian of US immigration policy Mae Ngai goes one step further, putting it quite bluntly: “If Congress wanted to exclude all Muslims, constitutionally they can. Congress can exclude anyone it wants to. Nobody has a right to enter the country.” (Read Don’t assume Trump’s bias is mere bluster)