After graduating law school, I had the privilege of spending a year clerking for a federal appeals judge. When discussing how to decide a case, I sometimes asked him if he thought about how his decision would affect future cases. He always would tell me, “I am not deciding the next case; I am deciding this case.”
In their questioning during the recent immunity case, several of the conservative Justices ignored this principle. For example, Justice Samuel Alito said multiple times he was not interested in discussing the facts of this case, but instead wanted to focus on potential future hypotheticals. Justice Neil Gorsuch said he thought the court needed to “fashion a rule for the ages.”
Based on these comments, it is reasonable to fear that the court might ignore the fact that this case was before them due to the behavior of former President Donald Trump, not some future president.
Whatever the line is concerning acts that might confer immunity on a president, Trump’s alleged acts concerning what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, are clearly outside of that line. The worst possibility is that their decision, much delayed already, could allow further delay in bringing the case to trial, and deprive voters of knowing whether or not the former president, who is also the presumptive current Republican nominee, has been found guilty of serious criminal offenses relating to one of the bedrocks of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.
Ira Rubinfeld, Springdale