Which Supreme Court justices threw Trump the immunity lifeline?
BY STEVEN LUBET, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/11/24 11:30 AM ETAccording to headlines, the Supreme Court has thrown former President Trump a “lifeline,” given him a “gift,” “bolstered” his strategy or handed him a “huge win” by agreeing to consider whether he is immune from prosecution for interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Indeed, the delay, with the oral argument in Trump v. United States set for April 22, and special prosecutor Jack Smith’s case suspended in the meantime, means that Trump may escape trial before the November election. But it is not quite accurate to say that the Supreme Court as a whole is responsible for providing him with the political advantage he was after.
In fact, it may be that only a minority of the justices favored hearing the case, with a majority voting to let stand the lower court’s denial of immunity. Justice Clarence Thomas, despite a glaring conflict of interest, might even have cast the deciding vote.
The Supreme Court’s acceptance of appeals — called a writ of certiorari — requires the votes of only four justices, but the actual total is rarely disclosed, nor are the names of the justices who voted for or against the review.
The result is a shrouded process in which the public never learns which justices are responsible for placing cases on the Supreme Court’s docket. The secrecy of certiorari votes has gone on for so long that it probably seems normal, but it is otherwise an anomaly in a democratic society.
It is understandably necessary for the justices to deliberate in private, but that does not require their actual votes to remain a mystery.
For its first 186 years, the Supreme Court had to accept almost every appeal that came before it. The court only gained discretionary control over its caseload when, at the urging of Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft, Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1925, which made the writ of certiorari the nearly exclusive means of review.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4522668-which-supreme-court-justices-threw-trump-the-immunity-lifeline/
