The U.S. Supreme Court today: Where organized crime is institutionalized, corruption is legitimized, and sedition is excused
Corrupt and partisan, right-wing High Court justices are breeding corrupt and partisan landmark decisions
Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. . . .
With fear for our democracy, I dissent. (Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor in Trump v. United States, July 1, 2024)
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court—in an unprecedented moment in American jurisprudence and in complete defiance of the principle, “no one is above the law”—gave a violent mobster a gift that is tantamount to absolute immunity from prosecution. The Supremes have declared that this one man, a recently convicted criminal who will be sentenced on July 11, is above the law.
Regardless of the claimed intent and lack of distinction between “official” and “unofficial” acts, this 6-3 decision was clearly tailor-made for one person, the corrupt and dishonest Donald Trump, who lies about everything and cares only about himself.
The ruling essentially absolved Trump of all “official” sins past, present, and future—even though he is unrepentant for those crimes he has already committed. And, notably, he has also publicly announced his intention to violate the Constitution and the rule of law if given another opportunity to do so.
This dark, new reality has the feel of a judicial version of Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933 with expectations of an upcoming American version of The Night of the Long Knives, a purge of the enemies of the Third Reich. Trump has all but promised that he will have his own version of that, too.
In addition, today’s events by the Supreme Court invite a sequel to Oscar-winning screenwriter Abby Mann’s 1961 motion picture, Judgment at Nuremberg, a fictional portrayal of the real prosecutions of Third Reich judges whose decisions enabled and unleashed Hitler’s murderous Holocaust and “crimes against humanity.”
In the movie, the chief judge of the three-judge panel, played by Spencer Tracy, stated:
This trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men — even able and extraordinary men—can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. . . .
There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the protection of the country, of survival. The answer to that is: Survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. And it isn’t an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth . . . and the value of a single human being!
With my own fear for our democracy, I dissent, too.
* December 1, 2023: U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss.
* February 6, 2024: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit—Karen L. Henderson, J. Michelle Childs, and Florence Y. Pan ruled unanimously to uphold the lower court decision.
* July 1, 2024: The U..S. Supreme Court overturned the appellate decision, 6-3, and remanded the case back to the lower court.