Yesterday the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court decided to step in and rescue Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations, agreeing to hear his claim of broad immunity and to delay his federal trial on charges of election interference stemming from his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. But it’s much worse than that. We agree with Timothy Snyder that this is no simple stalling tactic. By taking up the question of whether a single American citizen is above the law — simply by entertaining a question that shouldn’t be — the right-wing justices are undermining the legitimacy of the Court itself, and the very notion of a nation of laws.
The Supreme Court is attempting to end its own life as an institution above politics. If it has been doing moving in this direction for some time, this week it came to a head.
This can only be read as a blow to democracy itself. With this stay now in place, it’s unlikely that any trial could be concluded by (and even more likely that it will be delayed entirely until after) Election Day. Of course, at that point, should Trump win re-election, the case would not move forward at all: the Justice Department would be unlikely to pursue a case against a newly elected president, and of course in his second term Trump could stop the proceedings entirely. Which, of course, is the plan.
For more on these questions of justice and accountability in the Trump era, we’ve chosen some of our favorite posts below.
“If not justice, then certainly accountability. There just has to be a reckoning. There just has to be. You can’t reset unless you truth-tell and demand that people are held accountable for what they have done. And if they’ve broken the law, they should be held accountable for breaking the law. To the extent that they’ve broken norms, ethics, values, they should also be held accountable for that.”
“It’s the job of prosecutors to use the instrument of the law, and they’ve been very careful, and that’s their job. They can’t persuade people who have fallen under the thrall of a cult leader. But it’s all the more important to have these indictments. One thing when you study other countries, we are the outlier not because we have these indictments and these cases. We’re the outlier because the object of them is the frontrunner for a presidential nomination. That’s very unusual.”
“The people who committed crimes in this administration need to be prosecuted. Some of the crimes are so severe that they are violations of the Geneva Convention. They are crimes against humanity. We need Nuremberg-style trials… No one should be let off the hook here; no institution or individual should be viewed as beyond reproach.”
“The problem with Nazi Germany, the problem with the Soviet Union, the problem with apartheid South Africa, was that the crimes committed under the auspices of those regimes or in those countries were legal. The actions that were taken were lawful. They could not be prosecuted in the courts because you cannot retroactively apply laws. So you have to find other ways of redressing those crimes. I think that the bulk of crimes committed by, in the name of, or in favor of the Trump administration are just crimes.
They’re just illegal acts in this country that can be prosecuted by regular courts. What I think is essential is to pursue every possible case of that. I really hope, and I fear that this will not be the case, but I hope that the hypothetical Biden administration won’t be tempted to let sleeping dogs lie and be very restrained in seeking legal recourse. I think that would be a mistake, but I also think that truth and reconciliation commissions would be a mistake.”
Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
This post was originally published on The.Ink.