Re: Trump v. United States

Dear Mr. Chief Justice:

Mr. Chief Justice, what have you done? Better yet, why? Have you grown weary of democracy? Of checks and balances? Are you trying to turn the clock back to colonial times? I’m having trouble finding a justification, grounded in the Constitution, the rule of law, and our founding principles, for this shocking decision. But I suppose I should have expected something like this given your court’s past record.

Let’s examine that record. Since you became Chief Justice in 2005, your court has allowed billionaires to use dark money to put their flunkies in Congress, on the federal bench, including your court, and even succeeded in putting one of their flunkies in the White House. You gutted voting rights and allowed racist state legislatures to return to Jim Crow-style voter suppression. You erased half of the Second Amendment, thus allowing America to be the easiest place in the world for homicidal, suicidal and mentally unbalanced people to get their hands on deadly firearms. You refused to put an end to partisan gerrymandering thereby allowing a minority of superannuated, uninformed, bigoted white men to run our states and fill Congressional seats with delegations that do not fairly represent their states. You won’t allow colleges to have reasonable admission policies to inspire racial diversity on their campuses. You favor the Christian nationalists who want to obliterate the separation between church and state and create a Christian-style theocracy. You’re chummy with Wall Street and indifferent to Main Street. Then came the big one. You took away a vital right which existed as settled law for 50 years, and now the lives, safety and reproductive freedom of tens of millions of women are in jeopardy. For an encore, you took away a key responsibility which for decades has belonged to the experts at the administrative agencies, and shifted it over to judges. And now this.

And please, Mr. Chief Justice, do not boast about saving the Affordable Care Act. One good decision out of a dozen or more bad ones is nothing to be proud of. In baseball, one hit in twelve at bats produces a batting average of .083, which is pathetic on both the baseball diamonds and the courts of law. And while we’re in the baseball metaphor, please stop calling yourself an umpire. Umpires don’t change the strike zone depending upon which team is at bat.

I wish you could offer a reasonable explanation for writing such a twisted, arcane and opaque roadmap on Presidential immunity when there has never been the need for one these past 235 years.

I wish you could offer a reasonable explanation for writing such a twisted, arcane and opaque roadmap on Presidential immunity when there has never been the need for one these past 235 years. Since our founding, America has instinctively known what falls within and without official Presidential acts. Should there be a dispute, courts could always address the specific issue without having to publish an expansive Guidebook to Presidential Immunity.  It’s not only totally superfluous, but it’s also bad law and a dangerous weapon in the hands of a rogue President who wants to become a dictator. I think Machiavelli would be proud.

Even when Richard Nixon tried to pull his executive privilege stunt during Watergate, the Supreme Court heard the case and ruled on it – expeditiously, I might add – without adding on a bunch of unnecessary guidelines. But on this case, potentially another one-off case like Nixon’s, you dawdled and did what you and your like-minded colleagues have vehemently criticized in the past – unelected judges writing a new law, one neither requested nor called for.

Moreover, the clearly foreseeable consequence of your foot-dragging and bench-legislating was the delay of Trump’s remaining trials until after the election, which has many wondering if that was your primary intention all along. Mr. Chief Justice, never in my lifetime have I imputed devious, intentional, politically partisan motives to Supreme Court justices, but after Mr. Trump’s three justices joined you along with those other two colossally unethical and unhinged justices, I now must truly wonder. It’s clear your Supermajority wants to dominate the court for generations to come because there is so much law you six want to change, and time is running out on some of you. That, however, can’t happen if Democrats occupy the White House. You need Donald Trump back in the White House to appoint two youngsters to replace Thomas and Alito, and perhaps even a third to replace you.

The delay you’ve created will keep Trump out of courtrooms between now and Election Day, and possibly forever, despite widespread public curiosity about whether its former President committed crimes by provoking an insurrection and trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Moreover, your ruling should help Mr. Trump’s campaign because he will lie, claim total vindication, and potentially gain more backing as a result. Even if he loses the election, your ruling has supplied him with enough monkey wrenches to toss into the gears of the criminal justice system to shield him from accountability for many years to come, perhaps even for the remainder of his life.

Consequently, your court ruling presents two possible scenarios, both not good for our country.

…your court ruling presents two possible scenarios, both not good for our country.

One scenario is for him to win the election, and with the blank immunity check he’s been handed, he will surely try, and possibly succeed, in staying in office for the rest of his life, enriching himself while depriving his many perceived enemies of their life, liberty and property. And if your court tries to get in his way, he will either replace you or ignore you because he has an army and you don’t. The other scenario is that he loses the election and is given a get-out-of-jail-free card for the remainder of his life as his litigious lawyers keep him out of courtrooms and on the golf course.

So, let’s review. Your court has no regard for stare decisis; your court denies the equal protection of the law to those minorities legally entitled to protection; your court regularly syphons power away from the federal Legislative Branch and the administrative agencies within the Executive Branch, and gives it to the states, to the Office of the President alone, and to the Judicial Branch; your court is aiding and abetting the dismantling of the separation of church and state; your court has usurped women’s reproductive health choices by allowing male-dominated governments to take control over women’s bodies; and now this. Constitutional law, sir, is in chaos. Checks between the three branches are becoming increasingly unbalanced. Constitutional Law textbooks are now becoming obsolete on an almost annual basis.

If Mr. Trump wins the election, you’ve given him a tool no other President in history has ever wanted or needed, but a future Trump presidency will use, or I should say abuse it because he has already announced that he will be a dictator starting on day one of his presidency. If he succeeds in destroying democracy, there will be only two ways to restore it. One, he dies, and sensible heads once again prevail. The other is a successful coup d’etat by Madisonian democrats.

Your tenure as Chief Justice has left me and millions of loyal Americans to cry out for the Supreme Court to be expanded from nine to thirteen justices, and for some type of limits on how long a justice may actively serve before moving on to senior status. I once thought life tenure for judges was stroke of genius by the founding fathers because, among other things, it would serve as check against rogue Presidents and Congresses. They never imagined a rogue court enabling a rogue President who wants to bring monarchial-style government back onto American soil. And all you really had to do was say “No President is above the law.” Full stop.

Mr. Chief Justice, my fondest hope is for my grandchildren to grow up in a thriving democracy fulfilling our vision of a more perfect union. Next, I’m hoping that within my brief remaining lifetime, I’ll witness a sensible Supreme Court reversing this absurd perversion of the law.

With fear for our democracy,

James H. Seals, Judge (retired)