SCOTUS could be responsible for the death of democracy: Sotomayor

US President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on February 28, 2017, as Trump addressed a joint session of the US Congress in the House of Representatives at the US Capitol in Washington, DC (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (left) exchanges words with President Donald Trump (right) on February 28. 2017, when Trump spoke at a joint session of Congress in Washington, DC (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

It was a profound exchange.

On Thursday, US Supreme Court justices heard extensive oral arguments on whether Donald Trump, as a former president, is completely immune from prosecution for actions committed while in office. It all started with a series of questions to Judge Samuel Alito’s special counsel Michael Dreeben.

Alito, more than an hour into the trial, began pressing Dreeben on whether prosecuting a president would undermine the stability of a country’s governance. It seemed easy to accept, the judge argued, that a “stable, democratic society” requires a losing candidate to leave office peacefully if he loses an election.

“Just as close,” Alito said. “Even a hard-fought one.”

Dreeben easily agreed, but when Alito asked what would change if the outgoing incumbent realized that he could not go into “peaceful retirement” after defeat but could instead be “prosecuted by a bitter political opponent,” Wouldn’t that lead the country to this ? also a destructive cycle of destabilizing democracy?

For the special counsel’s lawyer, the reasoning was “exactly the opposite.”

There are already mechanisms in place to conduct elections that are both legal and far more appropriate. Dreeben stepped to the window to remind the court that Trump had lost all but one of the lawsuits he filed challenging the 2020 election and that the outcome was not “decisive,” he said.

Alito’s argument appeared to strike a celebratory but dissonant nerve with Justice Sonia Sotomayor after the back-and-forth with Dreeben.

The judge turned to Dreeben and asked whether the “stable democratic society” required the “good faith of its officials” and that “good faith” would assume that those officials would faithfully obey the laws of the United States.

“Right,” said Dreeben.

But Sotomayor set aside that ideal situation for a moment and looked at the real world. He noted, “There is no such thing as a fail-safe system of government.”

“That means we have a justice system that has layers and layers of protection for accused defendants in the hope that the innocent go free,” she said. “We fail regularly.”

The justice continued:

But in the vast majority of cases we succeed and the innocent are released. Sometimes that is not the case, and we have some post-conviction remedies for that. But we still fail and we have executed innocent people.

However, Justice Alito went through step by step all the mechanisms that could potentially fail.

If it ultimately fails completely, it’s because we destroyed democracy itself, right?

Dreeben argued that the framers of the Constitution designed the separation of powers to prevent or at least limit the abuses of a democratic system.

“The ultimate test is goodwill and trust in democracy, and the crimes alleged in this case are the antithesis of democracy,” he said.

Trump is facing four felony charges in Washington, DC, related to his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Do you have a tip we should know? (email protected)

Related Posts