Many people think the newly constituted Supreme Court—with three Donald Trump appointees—is helping Trump undermine American democracy. The narrative that the court is “pro-Trump” gained steam after its recent ruling that Trump can’t be prosecuted for his “official acts” while in office.
Adam Serwer at The Atlantic warned that “the pro-Trump justices”‘ have given Trump “permission for a despotic second term.” Princeton Historian Sean Wilentz compared the ruling to the 1857 Dred Scott decision—which upheld slavery—and argued that the court “has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism.” And Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the immunity decision “an assault on American democracy” and proclaimed that it’s “up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.”
Yet here’s the funny thing about this “pro-Trump” narrative—the court’s cases tell a totally different story.
Let’s start with the Supreme Court‘s rejection of Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election results. Trump couldn’t even muster the four votes needed to have the justices consider his claims. In denying Trump’s petition, the court cemented Joe Biden‘s electoral victory.
Could there be anything more at odds with the narrative that the court is helping Trump take down American democracy than the justices rejecting his attempt to overturn the election?
Not long before, the court forced Trump to hand over his tax returns to a New York prosecutor. Instead of paving the way for Trump to be a despot, the court paved the way for a local prosecutor to pursue criminal charges against the then-sitting president of the United States.
Was the court’s ruling in this case pro-Trump?
And how about the 2022 case in which an eight-justice majority rejected Trump’s argument and gave the congressional Jan. 6 committee access to his presidential records. After this ruling, the committee helped develop the evidentiary record for the Department of Justice‘s prosecution of Trump.
Was this decision pro-Trump?
The court, moreover, hasn’t just ruled against Trump personally. It has ruled against him in numerous major policy cases. The court rejected Trump’s attempt to overturn DACA. It rejected Trump’s effort to limit LGBTQ rights. It rejected the Trump-endorsed litigation to overturn Obamacare. And it rejected Trump’s bid to add a citizenship question to the census.
Were these decisions pro-Trump?
The court has also ruled for Trump in big cases, to be sure. The court ruled that Trump couldn’t be removed from Colorado’s presidential ballot. And, again, the court ruled that Trump has immunity from prosecution for his “official acts” while in office.
Do these decisions make the Supreme Court pro-Trump?
Hardly. The Colorado case was a unanimous decision in which all nine justices agreed that a single local election official can’t kick a presidential candidate off the ballot. To have ruled the other way would have set off a destructive race to the bottom among local election officials on both sides of the political aisle.
And in the immunity case, the court rejected Trump’s argument for absolute immunity, including for his personal activity. The court’s ruling that presidents have immunity for “official acts” protects all presidents—including Joe Biden—from overzealous prosecutions after leaving office. The alternative approach—of allowing prosecutors from around the country to decide, in their own discretion, whether to prosecute United States presidents—is hardly an elegant solution.
This was a hard case and it’s far too simple to excoriate the ruling as favoring Trump. Just because a decision helps Trump doesn’t mean the court is pro-Trump.
The sum total of the court’s Trump cases shows that sometimes it rules for him and sometimes it rules against him. And that’s exactly what you’d expect from a court focused not on Trump the individual but on the binding precedent that will apply to all presidents.
None of this means the reconstituted court is getting everything right. It has made mistakes. Big ones. The hurried, gratuitous over-ruling of Roe v. Wade is one example. Striking down a New York gun regulation—in the middle of a national crisis of gun deaths—is another. Nor are the justices beyond partisanship, overreaching, or impropriety. They make mistakes and there’s plenty of room for legitimate criticism. But they are not rewriting the constitution so Trump can ruin our democracy.
The justices are doing their jobs, neither infallibly nor maliciously. They are focused on setting the right precedent governing future presidents, not helping or hurting a single person. The narrative that the court is pro-Trump is fundamentally at odds with the basic facts. It’s also deeply ironic. For it’s the critics, not the justices, who are myopically focused on Donald Trump.
William Cooper is an attorney and the author of How America Works … And Why It Doesn’t.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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