Trump cases bumping up against the Supreme Court could reshape the 2024 election

It has been clear for months that politics and justice would collide in the 2024 campaign, given the dual role played by former President Donald J. Trump as a criminal defendant and leading Republican candidate.

But in a way few expected, that awkward bump has turned into a head-on collision. It now seems clear that the courts – especially the Supreme Court – could shape the contours of the election in dramatic ways.

The nine justices have already agreed to review the scope of an obstruction statute at the center of the federal indictment accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. And they could quickly become entangled in both his efforts to dismiss those charges with sweeping claims of executive immunity and in an effort to get rid of a gag order that has halted his attacks on Jack Smith, the special prosecutor responsible was for the cause, was restricted.

The court could also be called to hear a series of civil lawsuits aimed at holding Mr. Trump responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

And in the latest turn of events, the justices now appear poised to answer a new and weighty legal question: whether Mr. Trump should be disqualified from state ballots because he participated in an insurrection on January 6, in violation of a constitutional amendment from the Reconstruction era. .

Taking up just one of these cases would put the Supreme Court — with a conservative majority, supported by three Trump appointees — in the special political spotlight it has received in the 23 years since it ruled Bush v. Gore and cemented the winner of the 2000 presidential race.

But some of the issues now facing the court could dramatically impact the timing of Mr. Trump’s proceedings, the scope of the charges he faces or his status as a candidate, with potentially profound consequences for his chances of winning the elections. . And the judges could easily get caught up in multiple questions at once.

“In this cycle, the Supreme Court will likely play an even bigger role than in Bush v. Gore,” he said David Beckerexecutive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group dedicated to improving election administration.

“At issue is not only whether or not Donald Trump is engaged in an insurrection, which would disqualify him from the presidency under the 14th Amendment,” Mr. Becker said, “but also issues related to presidential immunity and criminal proceedings in general.”

All of this comes at a particularly vulnerable time for the court. In the wake of his decisions on controversial issues such as abortion rights and affirmative action, critics have attacked the country for being guided by an overt political ideology. At the same time, some judges have come under withering personal scrutiny over their finances and ties to wealthy lenders.

“Most justices would certainly prefer that the court keep a low profile during the 2024 presidential election,” he said. Richard H. Pildesprofessor of law at New York University.

“In a highly polarized, social media-fueled political culture,” he said, “the justices know that nearly half the country is likely to view the court as illegitimate if the court rules against their preferred candidate.”

But while the court’s current majority has certainly favored some staunchly conservative policies, it has shown less willingness to support Trump’s efforts to bend the powers of the presidency in his favor or interfere with the mechanisms of the democratic process.

The justices largely ignored the series of lawsuits he and his allies filed in lower courts across the country three years ago seeking to overturn the last election. They also outright rejected a last-minute petition from the state of Texas to throw out the election results in four key battleground states that Mr. Trump had lost.

None of this, of course, is a guarantee of how the court will act on the issues it faces this time.

Even a decision by the Supreme Court to move slowly in considering the issues at hand could have major consequences, especially whether Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution for the actions he has taken as president. If this issue lingers in court for months, it could become more difficult to schedule his trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election before the general election season begins in the summer — and could even be postponed until after the election day.

In fact, there are so many moving parts in the overlapping cases facing Mr. Trump that it is virtually impossible to predict what issues will come up, how the justices will rule on the issues they are considering and what consequences their decisions could to have. as they flow downstream to the lower courts that hear the former president’s four criminal cases and his many civil suits.

It’s important to remember something else: Trump is interested in more than just winning arguments in court. From the beginning, he and his lawyers have pursued a parallel strategy of trying to delay his cases as long as possible — ideally until after the election has been decided.

If he can succeed in such a delay and win the race, he would have the power to simply order that the federal charges he faces be dropped. Regaining the White House would also complicate efforts by local prosecutors to hold him accountable for crimes.

The courts have shown that they, too, are aware that timing is an issue in Mr. Trump’s cases.

Judges are normally reluctant to pace proceedings based on outside pressure, but in the cases involving Mr. Trump, the courts found themselves in an unusual situation.

Setting too aggressive a schedule could infringe on the suspect’s right to have sufficient time to prepare for a complex trial. But by moving too slowly, we risk depriving voters of the knowledge they could gain through a trial before Election Day and giving Trump, if he were to win the election, the opportunity to end the prosecutions or to suspend them for years.

“It’s all extremely uncomfortable,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School.

With the courts so entangled in Trump’s legal and political future, the question has arisen as to how many ordinary people, not judges, will get to decide what happens in next year’s election. It also has a bearing on the extent to which court decisions will affect whether voters will be able to hear the evidence that prosecutors have painstakingly collected about Mr. Trump’s alleged crimes before making a decision on whether to give him will re-elect, leave unresolved.

Some election law specialists believe that the courts should generally respect voters and not interfere with the choices they can make.

“My view is that Trump is a political problem, and the appropriate response is politics,” he said Tabatha Abu El-Haja law professor at Drexel University.

But Edward B. Foleya law professor at Ohio State University, said elections should be governed by legal principles.

“It is common to think that voters, not courts, should determine who is elected president,” he said. “But it is also essential to remember that the law, including court decisions, structures the electoral choices that voters face when they cast their ballots.”

Adam Liptak And Maggie Haberman reporting contributed.