The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate executive orders that sought to penalise four prominent US law firms, claiming that lower court judges exceeded their authority by blocking directives that fall within core presidential powers.

In its filing to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Justice Department said the judges "bent over backwards" to invalidate orders against Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey, "without considering their plainly constitutional aspects and applications."

The law firms, challenging the directives, argued that the Republican president retaliated unlawfully against them for representing his political opponents, clients challenging his policies, or employing lawyers involved in previous government investigations of the president.

Trump's executive orders aimed to restrict lawyers from accessing federal buildings and to terminate US government contracts held by clients of the firms. Judges ruled that the orders violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, issuing permanent injunctions against their enforcement.

The administration’s filing comes after the Justice Department initially moved to abandon its appeals on Monday, only to reverse course the following day. It marked the first detailed explanation of the legal rationale for seeking to reinstate the orders.