“During the Supreme Court’s immunity arguments, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed more concerned with hypothetical future scenarios than the here and now. Is there anything that forces you to limit yourself to the question before you? If they can’t do that in this case, we risk losing our right to hear Trump’s other trials before the 2024 election..”
—Lori G., Kansas City, Missouri
Hello lori,
The only thing that limits the Supreme Court is the late justice William BrennanThe “rule of five”. With five votes, liberal justice saying, you could achieve anything. And with six “conservative” justices on the current court, they can afford to lose one of their own and still form a coalition. right-wing majority. This imbalance is good publicity for court packaging but, returning to your question, I don’t think that deviating from the question posed is the biggest problem in Triumph against the United States. Rather, the problem is the delay that the court’s processing of the case has already caused the defendant.
First of all, we must remember that the question presented is: “Yes, and if so, to what extent a former president enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct allegedly involving official acts during his term in office.” This is a fairly broad topic, which is not limited solely to the case of Trump. And that breadth is not unusual. In theory, the court is concerned with the implications of the rule it makes in the future, as opposed to the details of the case before it. This is how the Republican-appointed judges probably calmed down in avoiding the discussion of the accusations against the de facto leader of his party (who has pleaded not guilty in all four of his criminal cases). Instead, they focused on higher notions. Like Neil Gorsuch, Trump appointee saying in the audience, they are writing a “forever” rule.
Of course, the court doesn’t always do that. Remember Bush vs. Gore, which tilted the 2000 elections towards the Republicans. The court noted there: “Our consideration is limited to the current circumstances, since the problem of equal protection in electoral processes generally presents many complexities.” The April 25 hearing in the Trump case showed that today’s judges (some of whom worked as lawyers on Bush’s side of that 2000 case) think that presidential immunity also “presents many complexities.” But here we are, on the brink of a dizzying sentence for the history books (one that, once again, may happen to benefit republicans).
Whatever judicial philosophy the court claims to follow in Trump v. United States, the judges cannot ignore the impact their decisions had in delaying the process of this case. Those options include decreasing in December address the issue of immunity from the beginning at the government’s request; granting Trump’s appeal in February instead of letting the case go to trial in March (it could have already been tried); establishing a quiet hearing at the end of April (the appeal could have already been resolved as well); and now, embarking on crafting an immaculate decision “for the ages,” as the clock ticks toward an election whose outcome could lead Trump to crush this very case if he returns to the White House.
The problem, then, is that the court treats this case in some respects as if it were normal and, at best, ignores the reality that lies within. Regardless of whether we have a “right,” as you say, to Trump trials before the election (and I’m not so sure we do, for reasons I can explain another time), the Supreme Court’s actions have made that such a trial in his Jan. 6 case is increasingly unlikely.
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This article was originally published in MSNBC.com
