The pace of the immunity case at the Supreme Court is overshadowed by a looming election

“There comes a point,” says Judge Felix Frankfurter wrote in 1949“where this court as judges should not be ignorant of what we know as men.”

The Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to schedule oral arguments in April to consider former President Donald J. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution seemed colored by the absence of that perspective. It established a plausible accelerated timetable for dealing with an issue of significant constitutional importance, one that would normally be resolved by the justices in a final opinion.

But the court’s order seemed to ignore the huge elephant in the room: the looming election that turns Mr. Trump’s trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election into a race against time. The schedule the court has set could make it difficult, if not impossible, to complete Trump’s trial before the 2024 election. Should Trump win the election, there is every reason to believe that the prosecution will be scuttled.

The judges weren’t the only ones who ignored the elephant. Jack Smith, the special prosecutor overseeing the prosecution, never cited the November election as a reason for the court to take swift action.

Instead he talked around the beast. “The public importance of the issues, the threat to the scheduled trial date and the need for a speedy and final resolution of the defendant’s immunity claims,” he wrote in December“counsel in favor of this court’s expedited review at this time.”

People who had argued for the Supreme Court to dismiss Mr. Trump’s appeal outright, either by refusing to review or summarily affirming an appeals court ruling against Mr. Trump, understand the court’s view of his own power and interests wrong. The justices appear to think that decisions of such constitutional significance, as in broadly similar cases involving claims of immunity by Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton, should be decided by the highest court in the land.

Although the two sides in the immunity case appeared to agree at various points in the trial.

In December, in asking the justices to skip the appeals court and hear the case immediately, Mr. Smith wrote that “it is in compelling public interest that the defendant’s immunity claims be resolved by this court,” adding that “only this court can decide definitively.”

Citing Supreme Court rules, Mr. Smith wrote that “this is a typical example of ‘an important issue of federal law that has not been decided by this court, but should be decided.’”

The judges accepted the petition of Mr. Smith dismissed it 11 days after he filed it, in a summary order with no dissenting opinions. The order conveyed a sense that the court was disinclined to treat the case as exceptional, foreshadowing Wednesday’s development.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit subsequently ruled against Mr. Trump, in a decision issued a month after the case was argued. That was also prompt by legal standards, but certainly not an example of lightning speed.

When the case returned to the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers quoted passages from Mr. Smith’s letter, saying the special counsel had been right to say the issue should be resolved by the justices.

“On this point,” they wrote, “the parties are in agreement.”

Sixteen days later, the court issued an order that reflected a sober compromise, which appeared to have been without the upcoming elections. Some judges may have wanted to hear the case in the normal way, which would have meant arguments would not be heard until October at the earliest. Other justices may have wanted to grant Mr. Smith’s request for arguments in March or uphold the appeals court’s decision.

As before, there were no dissenting opinions.

In cases that directly affected the elections – where voting mechanisms were at stake – the court sometimes acted with unusual speed.

In 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the court issued its decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush the day after the justices heard arguments.

In a second case involving Mr. Trump, an appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that he was ineligible to contest the state’s primary because he was involved in an insurrection, the justices have moved at a relatively rapid pace. But even there, the question of whether Mr. Trump can appear on the ballot was directly related to the election.

The court granted Trump’s petition for review in the Colorado case just two days after he filed it, and scheduled arguments for about a month later. Based on questions during the oral argument, Mr. Trump is likely to prevail. A decision could come within a few days.

The immunity case could also change the course of the elections, but indirectly. If the trial continues, voters will hear evidence that could influence their choices. If Mr. Trump were convicted, polls say his election prospects would worsen.