Justice Ginsberg has ordered a temporary stay of the Chrysler-Fiat sale.

This doesn’t mean a whole lot as yet. The decision can be easily reversed at any time and the deal allowed to go ahead. That may indeed be what will happen.

But the mere fact that the temporary stay has been issued is considered unusual, and an indication that the court is not simply going to be a rubber stamp for this particular act of presidential overreach.

A while back, Obama and his administration spoke of the displaced first-lien creditors in highly pejorative terms in their attempt to demonize them to the American people:

Last week Mr. Obama lambasted them as “a small group of speculators” who “endanger Chrysler’s future by refusing to sacrifice like everyone else.”

Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, sent reporters a statement calling the creditors “vultures” and “rouge hedge funds.” Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm piled on, taking aim during her radio address at a “few greedy hedge funds that didn’t care how much pain the company’s failure would have inflicted on families and communities everywhere.”

Ah, those nasty “speculators.” Never mind that our entire capitalist system is dependent on the existence of people who will take on added risk for added gain, that the risk assumed by these creditors was supposedly limited by the laws of bankruptcy, and that Obama is attempting to override them in the Chrysler deal to the benefit of his political supporters in the unions.

And never mind that the plaintiffs who are asking for the stay of Obama’s hand happen to be “families and communities”—in this case, Indiana teachers’ pension funds and people who may have been injured by Chrysler products. Little people of the kind Obama pretends to champion.

This lawsuit has the benefit of bringing these facts to the fore despite the Obama/Democratic rhetoric to the contrary—that is, if anyone except conservatives is listening. It would be an even bigger bonus if the stay were to be extended and the rights of these creditors protected, because it would end up protecting us all by safeguarding the sanctity of the contract system and protecting it from future power grabs such as Obama’s.

Here’s a sample of what the plaintiffs’ briefs had to say:

“The public is watching and needs to see that, particularly, when the system is under stress, the law will be honored and an independent judiciary will properly scrutinize the actions of the massively powerful executive branch,” wrote Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher, who sought a stay on behalf of three state funds that will lose out if the sale goes through. He said the deal could constitute a “sub rosa Chapter 11 reorganization plan” that violates the priority status of first-lien creditors in bankruptcy, and a misuse of so-called TARP funds.

Hear, hear.