Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to hear the appeal of the presidential immunity claim is the ultimate example of the adage: justice delayed is justice denied. Faith in the Supreme Court’s impartiality can only continue to plummet after this inexplicable action.
In a decision which surprised legal experts, the Supreme Court has scheduled its oral argument for late April, giving the gift of time to a criminal defendant who is the master of manipulating time to his advantage. The presidential immunity claim was found to be meritless by the district and appellate courts in meticulously reasoned opinions. Yet after taking more than two weeks to issue a one-page ruling taking the case, the Supreme Court gave an additional gift of seven more weeks until oral argument.
As former Judge Michael Luttig stated, the Court’s decision will likely not issue before the end of their term, throwing the timing of an actual trial before November into doubt.
Faith in the courts has also been undermined by the Alabama Supreme Court, which recently decided to allow a wrongful death claim to proceed for the accidental destruction of IVF test tubes. This ruling has created chaos within the state, and is impacting reproductive health care across the country.
As fraught as the Alabama Supreme Court majority opinion was, the concurring opinion by Chief Justice Parker offered a glimpse of a future in which our courts rule based upon their religious beliefs, rather than principles of Constitutional law. LDAD board member and former Massachusetts Appeals Court Justice James McHugh wrote elegantly about this concurrence for The Fulcrum: Alabama, Religious Freedom and Frozen Embryos
We know that accountability is a fundamental underpinning to the rule of law. We are pleased to share with you an interview of three LDAD board members conducted by Renee Knake Jefferson, an author and Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, in her Substack column entitled Legal Ethics Roundup.
