“What, if any, authority do Supreme Court justices have to stop Donald Trump from corruption and the destruction of our democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution? What power do they have over a sitting president?” – Ollie
Hi Ollie,
Supreme Court justices have a lot of authority over those things. To see how, let’s recall some of the court’s recent rulings.
Taking a step back, it’s worth remembering that Trump would not be in office today without the justices having approved his eligibility to run again in 2024. To clear the way for his second term, the Supreme Court had to overturn his Colorado state court disqualification for engaging in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Ultimately, it was voters who put him back in the White House, but the court played a role on the front end.
Relatedly, the John Roberts-led court also granted Trump broad criminal immunity in the summer before his victory in the 2024 election. That ruling in Trump v. United States applies to immunity for former presidents. Justice Department policy prevents the prosecution of sitting presidents, which the Supreme Court would probably block, anyway. But one of the several ways the immunity ruling is relevant to your question is that Trump returned to office knowing he would have that protection for his conduct during his second term. (We don’t know how far that immunity extends, exactly; it would need to be answered by any further litigation on the subject that comes to the court.)
Since he returned to office, the GOP-appointed majority has let Trump’s administration immediately implement many of his chosen policies and firings, with notable exceptions including the ruling against his tariffs in February.
The president has lashed out at the tariffs decision and the justices behind it. But — and this is important to the question of the court’s power — they’re appointed to the bench for life. They will serve long after Trump leaves office, barring retirements or deaths (or bad “Behaviour”).
Indeed, in some of his latest complaints about his tariffs defeat, the president has signaled that he understands he’s also poised to lose another important appeal over one of his signature proposed policies, in the birthright citizenship case. The court is set to decide that one in the next couple of months.
In an unprecedented move, Trump attended the April 1 citizenship hearing himself. There, he saw firsthand the power that the court wields, by way of the skeptical questions and comments that several justices had for John Sauer, the lawyer who argued the immunity case for Trump personally and now represents the Trump administration at the Supreme Court as solicitor general.
To be sure, the justices don’t have freestanding power to declare Trump or any of his actions corrupt. They exercise their authority through the specific cases that come to them. The more immediate body to halt the corruption of any sitting president is Congress, which wields the constitutional power of impeachment in the House and removal if the president is convicted in the Senate. Trump has already been impeached twice and acquitted by the Senate both times.
Of course, no one expects him to be impeached again so long as Republicans control Congress. That may be one of the reasons that Trump wants to keep the legislative branch in GOP control through the remainder of his tenure. That, in turn, raises the importance of the court’s recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which Republican-led states are citing in their efforts to make their congressional maps redder.
So, even if indirectly, the court’s redistricting decision could help to bolster Trump’s corruption, to the extent that it helps keep the legislative branch that wields the impeachment power beholden to him.
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