Donald Trump uses the slow legal system to his advantage. The Supreme Court is helping | CNN Politics
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The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s claim that he should be shielded from criminal prosecution keeps the justices at the center of election-year controversy for several more months and means any verdict on Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 vote will not come before summer.

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s claim that he should be shielded from criminal prosecution keeps the justices at the center of election-year controversy for several more months and means any verdict on Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 vote will not come before summer.

The country’s highest court wants the final word on the former president’s assertion of immunity, even if it may ultimately affirm a comprehensive ruling of the lower federal court that rejected Trump’s sweeping claim.

For Trump, Wednesday’s order amounts to another win from the justice system he routinely attacks. The justices’ intervention in the case, Trump v. United States, also marks another milestone in the fraught relationship between the court and the former president.

Cases related to his policies and his personal dealings consistently roiled the justices behind the scenes. At the same time, Trump, who appointed three of the nine justices, significantly influenced the court’s lurch to the right, most notably its 2022 reversal of nearly a half century of abortion rights and reproductive freedom.

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    45·
    9 months ago

    No less than three of the current Supreme Court “Justices” were on Bush’s legal team in Bush v. Gore.

    • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      231·
      9 months ago

      Quite. And Bush v. Gore was in 2000; in 2001, just four months into office, Bush appointed Roberts to the DC appellate court, which was a very cushy appointment for a lawyer who’d never even been a judge.

      Then, in 2005 when a Supreme Court seat finally opened up (Sandra Day O’Connor retired) Bush gave it to John Roberts. Surprise, surprise.

      But wait, there’s more. When Chief Justice William Rehnquist happened to die during Roberts’ SCOTUS confirmation hearings, Bush gave Roberts the Chief Justice position.

      In other words, in just four short years after Bush v. Gore, John Roberts rocketed from being nothing but a very well-connected lawyer straight up to Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court – with nothing more than a brief stint as an appellate court judge in between on his resume, and he even got that with zero prior experience on the bench.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      9 months ago

      It’s insane that in the US people know the political leaning of their supreme court justices. I don’t know of any other country where that’s the case.

      • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
        4·
        9 months ago

        In Germany, the judges of the Bundesverfassungsgericht might have political leanings too, but they can only have that position for up to 12 years (after which they can’t be reelected) and have to abdicate when reaching the age of 68.

        • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          Yeah, I think it would take another tumultuous period for America before they could reform. Plenty of corruption in US and other places happen due to legal and logical sophistry.

      • Cataphract
        2·
        9 months ago

        That’s quite interesting. Didn’t know that wasn’t the normal and now I have something to look into. It seems like the political leanings is the only thing that’s ever talked about so will be interesting to see how they do it else where.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          12·
          9 months ago

          Didn’t know that wasn’t the normal

          This is most Americans whenever this sort of thing comes up. Most Americans are very unaware of anything that happens beyond US borders, and assume that the way things happen in the US is normal worldwide. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world is exposed to news and other media from the US as well as many other countries.

          If you live in Australia you get British media, Aussie media and US media. If you live in the UK you get UK media, American media and European media.

          Even in non-English countries, Hollywood media is everywhere, even if it’s translated to other languages. Hollywood offers a distorted view of the US, but it’s still media made with US ideas and biases, so it exposes the rest of the world to how the US thinks. The closest most Americans get to foreign media is an occasional break-out hit like Squid Game.

          It’s frustrating how isolated the US is, because decisions made in the US affect the whole world. But, when the people making those decisions don’t know much of anything about the world outside the US, they often don’t know that there’s a better (or at least different) way.

          • Cataphract
            21·
            9 months ago

            Jesus Fucking Christ dude, I was talking about judges and you took this opportunity to rant for multiple paragraphs about media. It’s the fucking internet, I can get news from multiple sources and not just “squid games”. Commenter above talked about German judges political leanings, as I’m sure plenty of other countries do as well after researching further on it. UK and Australia are the outliers (with Canada, still looking into them) and have their own sets of problems, instead of talking about those you’ve decided to make an anti-US shitpost.

            Britain’s only transgender judge has quit after claiming she can no longer do the job without politicizing the judiciary. Master Victoria McCloud said her publicly known status as someone who transitioned from a man to a woman meant she was “now political every time I choose where to pee”. “I have reached the conclusion that in 2024 the national situation and present judicial framework is no longer such that it is possible, in a dignified way, to be both ‘trans’ and a salaried, fairly prominent judge in the UK,” she added. (link)

            Man successfully sues Judge Salvatore Vasta for wrongful imprisonment, He said Judge Vasta denied the plaintiff procedural fairness and had engaged in a “gross and obvious irregularity of procedure”. (link) Judges to be protected against civil lawsuits after Salvatore Vasta sued over wrongful imprisonment, The federal government is preparing to introduce reforms granting greater protections to inferior court judges after a landmark case in which a wrongfully imprisoned man successfully sued Salvatore Vasta. (link)

            So why is the Australian appointment process devoid of scrutiny, allowed to unfold in the shadows of cabinet confidentiality and undisclosed “consultations” with state governments, the chief justice and maybe a few legal peak bodies? So, absent a public confirmation process, how does the attorney general divine where a potential appointee sits on these issues of public and legal policy? This is done indirectly through a review of previous judgments or writings and speeches delivered by a candidate. Peers in the legal profession will be canvassed and the opinion of the high court chief justice will be gained – although this might be to assess if an appointee would be happily greeted by the current judges rather than obtaining a view as to the candidate’s outlook on specific legal issues. State governments are asked to submit names for consideration but normally the states won’t be given an opportunity to comment on the final shortlist.

            Being able to appoint high court judges is one of the great prizes of winning federal elections. The court shapes Australia. It decided that native title survived British colonisation, ruled on whether the commonwealth could nationalise the banks, and whether persons denied refugee status could be indefinitely detained. No prime minister will ever give away the power to make these appointments and none to date have seriously entertained even lifting the curtain to allow public to glimpse the process. (link)

            Australia urgently needs an independent body to hold powerful judges to account, It is a vacuum that has allowed sexist, racist and other troubling conduct to go largely unaddressed. Unlike, for instance, the legal or medical professions, or the public service, these avenues for accountability are not designed to provide an independent, standing institutional response when an individual has a complaint about the conduct of a judge — be that on or off the bench. Removal of a judge can only occur if both houses of parliament agree to it. It is an all-or-nothing option subject to partisan influences, political opportunism and argy-bargy. There has never been a federal judge removed in Australia.

            The allegations of incompetence, rudeness, and bias against federal circuit court judge, Sandy Street, and incompetence, rudeness and unfairness against Judge Salvatore Vasta, that emerged over the course of last year provide us with two others. For months, there was no institutional response to the conduct of these two judges. This was despite a number of complaints, including from the Law Council of Australia. Finally, the chief judge of the Federal Circuit Court, Will Alstergen, indicated that the judges had agreed to undertake mentoring. He also defended the current Federal Circuit Court complaints procedures. Also last year, a Northern Territory judge, Greg Borchers, was found to have made comments that contained negative racial stereotypes. It was conduct the then Law Council of Australia President Arthur Moses branded “disparaging, discriminatory and offensive, insulting and humiliating to Indigenous Australians based solely on their race”. (link)

            Looking into it further, seems like they all have their failings and political stances are included in all of them. Your high horse just has a nice robe thrown around it’s wooden legs so no one can see what’s going on. If you want to continue talking about “judges” I’m all for it, coming to see your wall of text about US media is just fucking sad. “now I have something to look into, will be interesting to see how they do it else where”.