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.
I think Biden had said long ago that he wouldn’t do that no matter what; in this political environment it probably wouldn’t happen anyway.
By the way, appellate courts sit right below the U.S. Supreme Court and there are currently 13 of them.
Some legal experts argue there should be one supreme court justice per appellate court, because that was the ratio when the appellate court system was first established in 1891 – nine supreme court justices and nine appellate courts.