Another reminder that all roads now lead to the Supreme Court is provided by Trump’s immunity case.

TFD – Delve into the intricate dynamics of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and its far-reaching impact on legislative challenges and political polarization. Explore the nuances of navigating the legal landscape amidst ideological divides. Join us as we dissect the influence of the Supreme Court and its implications for contemporary politics.

A significant change in power will be highlighted by the Supreme Court’s hearing on former President Donald Trump’s immunity claim on Thursday. The six justices on the high court who were selected by the Republican Party have emerged as the most reliable source of influence shaping the course of the country in this sharply divided era, in which neither party has been able to hold onto power in the White House or Congress for an extended period of time.

Historian Jeff Shesol, the author of an authoritative account of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s courtroom encounters during the Great Depression, said, “There is an argument to be made that the Supreme Court is the central character in our national story right now because they are setting the terms by which the other branches, the states, and the American people operate in a much more assertive way than perhaps they ever have.

The conservative majority has consistently steered policy on a wide range of social, racial, and economic issues toward the preferences of the Republican Party, whose presidents nominated them and whose senators provided the vast majority of votes to confirm them. This is true even though Chief Justice John Roberts famously compared the court to an impartial “umpire” during his confirmation hearing.

Liberals have applauded some of the court’s decisions in recent years, especially before Amy Coney Barrett replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020 and gave the majority a sixth vote. And even after Barrett’s elevation, the court has decided against Trump in a number of cases, most notably by dismissing red-state lawsuits meant to void the results of the 2020 election.

However, the conservative movement has achieved far more significant triumphs at the Supreme Court in the twenty-first century than it has through legislation or executive branch actions. Conservatives have, in fact, won victories on a number of issues thanks to decisions made by the GOP-appointed majority, issues that Republicans had little chance of advancing through congressional or presidential action. These issues range from repealing the constitutional right to an abortion to scaling back federal voting rights laws and state and federal gun control.

Paul Pierson, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of the upcoming book “Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era,” said that the cumulative policy changes brought about by the rulings of the GOP-appointed justices over the course of the last 20 years have been “way more extensive than any administration, even within unified control of government.”

Democrats now view navigating the Supreme Court majority as an existential struggle, and the last few weeks of the court session are a constant source of concern as they wait for rulings on the most important cases of the year. Another heated period of litigation is expected this year when the court renders decisions in divisive matters, such as whether or not a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for actions made while in office.

However the court ultimately decides to rule on Trump’s claim, its deliberate handling of the case has once again shown many observers its unparalleled power, significantly lowering the likelihood that he will go on trial in his federal election subversion case before November.

Despite having played a key part in creating the court’s conservative majority, Trump’s relationship with it has been complicated. In probably the most significant policy case of his presidency, the court in 2018 upheld his ban on visitors from Muslim-majority nations, with the five GOP-appointed justices (at that point) outvoting the four appointed by Democrats. But that same 5-4 court also struck down, on procedural grounds, his efforts to add a question on citizenship to the census, and his attempt to end former President Barack Obama’s program providing legal protection to young people brought to the US illegally by their parents. In each case, Roberts joined the four Democratic-appointed justices to deny Trump.

Furthermore, the court has earned Trump’s contempt by ruling against him in a number of cases involving investigations. For example, it granted Manhattan prosecutors access to his financial records, and it granted the bipartisan House committee that looked into the riot on January 6, 2021, the records it requested from the White House. The court also rejected the unlikely lawsuit that Republican state attorneys general and members of Congress, supported by President Trump, filed in an effort to void the results of the 2020 election in four states that Joe Biden won.

More recently, the court handed Trump a significant victory by declaring that the 14th Amendment’s ban on office-holding by officials who participated in insurrection could not be used by individual states to exclude him from the ballot in 2024. However, the controversy surrounding the court’s handling of Trump’s claim of immunity has not coincided with the outcome of that case, which was determined unanimously.

The Supreme Court has made several rulings that have dragged down its review of the case; this week’s hearing takes place on the last day of oral arguments for the term. According to academics supporting the court, it is really operating at a faster pace than usual. Michael McConnell, the director of Stanford University Law School’s Constitutional Law Center, stated, “I think they’ve gone a little faster than normal.” “There are those who want them to launch them into space, but it’s not clear why they should either.”

However, detractors claim that the Supreme Court has already given Trump what he wants most—long trial delays that lessen the likelihood that he will be tried by a jury before November in special counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election meddling case. People who are doubtful of the Supreme Court’s decision in the immunity case frequently draw comparisons between it and the 5-4 Bush v. Gore ruling from 2000, in which the five justices appointed by the Republican Party defeated the four Democratic nominees to end the Florida vote recount and essentially declare George W. Bush the victor.

This court was conservative up until now, but it wasn’t a MAGA court: They hadn’t demonstrated any desire to help Trump get out of his problems or to hide his misuse of power,” stated Michael Waldman, the president and chief executive officer of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and author of “The Supermajority,” a book that will be published in 2023 about the modern Senate. “And I don’t blame them for concluding that the 14th Amendment prohibits a state from disqualifying a voter. However, the Supreme Court’s actions in the immunity case represent the most flagrant involvement in partisan presidential politics since, well, Bush v. Gore.

Waldman, a former White House speechwriter for Bill Clinton, points out that while the Supreme Court has already kept Trump’s election subversion trial on hold for months, there’s ample precedent for it moving forward quickly from this point. In a recent analysis, he noted that the court has moved very rapidly after oral arguments to decide other cases setting the limits of presidential power: The court decided Bush v. Gore, for instance, just three days after it was argued. It issued its unanimous decision forcing then-President Richard Nixon to turn over Watergate-related tapes just two weeks after it heard that case; Nixon resigned two weeks after the decision. Those examples, Waldman said, suggest the Supreme Court could easily return a decision in the immunity case by mid-May, increasing the chances that Trump will face a jury before he again faces the voters.

Waldman stated, “They don’t have to sit around for two months polishing their footnotes once they hear the case.” “[The justices’] attempt to act as though this isn’t a case about voters’ right to know whether someone attempted to overturn the Constitution before they can be elected again is dishonest.”

McConnell, though, argues that the substance of the court’s likely decision will render this debate about its timing moot. He predicts the Supreme Court will rule that Trump can’t be criminally prosecuted for actions that fall within his official responsibilities as president, but can for private actions beyond that orbit and will send the case back to the trial court to decide which counts in the indictment fall into which category. “It is going to take some time to sort through the indictment and figure out which parts are ok and which parts aren’t,” said McConnell, a former appellate court judge appointed by George W. Bush. “I think anybody who thinks the case is going to go to trial and be decided before Election Day is having a pipe dream.”

The immunity issue has put the court in a familiar position, where it will have a crucial role in defining the parameters of the parties’ rivalry, whatever and whenever it rules.

The GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court is a rock of steady influence in a politically turbulent times, which contributes to the court’s expanding authority.

Since 1968, no party has maintained unified control of the Senate, the House, or the White House for longer than four years in a row. Republicans have only maintained full control of these institutions for six years in the twenty-first century, while Democrats have done so for four. This has meant that each party has only been able to pass legislation based on brief spurts of action interspersed with protracted partisan impasse. On the other hand, the conservative majority on the court has consistently influenced decisions year after year. According to Waldman, the deeply ingrained conservative dominance on the Supreme Court has turned into “this kind of force field that we just take for granted.”

The court’s conservative majority has grown more unified, which is another important factor contributing to its increasing influence. Since 1970, most of the justices on the bench have been appointed by Republican presidents. However, for the majority of the previous fifty years, those nominations failed to produce an ideological majority that could be counted on; some turned out to be swing vote moderates (Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, both appointed by Ronald Reagan), or even liberals (David Souter, nominated by George H.W. Bush).

However, in the current era, every party has created a thorough apparatus to lessen the likelihood that nominees to the Supreme Court may surprise the party that makes the nomination. On the Republican side, the procedure has grown more formalized, with organizations under the direction of the conservative Federalist Society having significant influence over the choosing process. Pierson stated, “There is just a lot more thorough screening of Supreme Court justices.”

During the tenure of both the previous 5-4 GOP-appointed majority and the current 6-3 “supermajority” solidified by Barrett’s confirmation, the court has occasionally issued decisions on matters of policy that are at odds with the prevailing viewpoint among Republicans.

In the 5-4 period, the court created a national right to same-sex marriage, narrowly maintained Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and gave homosexual and transgender people additional civil rights protections in the workplace. Surprisingly, the court in the 6-3 era rejected the theory put forth by some conservatives to give state legislators unrestricted power to award their state’s Electoral College votes, regardless of the result in the popular vote, and upheld a decision that Alabama had violated Black voting rights with its congressional maps.

But mostly, the court in this century has delivered a succession of seismic policy victories for conservatives. During the 5-4 era, it issued landmark decisions severely weakening campaign finance laws (Citizens United), effectively ending federal preclearance of state voting procedures under the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Shelby County), and preventing Obama from requiring states to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Since the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett, the court has virtually eliminated affirmative action in higher education, severely restricted the authority of states to regulate gun ownership, overturned Biden’s plan to offer student loan relief, and most dramatically, rescinded the constitutional right to abortion that had stood for 50 years. In both periods, the court has reliably ruled to lower the barriers between church and state, and to weaken the federal government’s regulatory authority, particularly on environmental issues such as climate change.

Cecilia Munoz, who served as the chief White House domestic policy adviser for Obama, said the addition of a sixth reliably conservative vote in Barrett has materially changed the calculation for Democratic presidents. While Obama was president, she said, the administration assumed that it would face lawsuits against virtually all of its major executive branch decisions. But the White House still believed, with a 5-4 balance, “it was not a foregone conclusion” that the court would strike down their plans, she said. With the 6-3 balance, though, “That hope has gotten thinner in recent years,” she added. “You can tell by the results of the court decisions over the past several years that it is fundamentally different. Even someone like the Chief Justice [Roberts], who famously controlled that first ACA decision, doesn’t have control of the court any longer.”

Democratic presidents find themselves in a scenario that many experts see as impasse due to the cohesiveness and ambition of the conservative majority. Both Obama and Biden have found it more difficult to get their agendas through Congress as a result of the filibuster; however, when they have attempted to respond by claiming executive authority to act unilaterally (as Obama did on immigration or Biden did on student loans), the court’s GOP-appointed majority has consistently ruled that their actions are invalid. Pierson stated, “This Republican court plus the filibuster does come pretty close to an effective blockade” on Democratic policy-making.

Although the conservative majority on some cases has rendered decisions that are more expansive than McConnell of the Constitutional Law Center felt was necessary, overall, McConnell feels that the court is not interfering more than previous generations in the national discourse. “People who had been applauding the Supreme Court for exercising its power are suddenly angry because they tend to lean more to the right than the left,” the man explained.

The oldest members of the court, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, are both in their mid-seventies, so this majority might continue to define the rules for a society that is rapidly changing in terms of both demographics and social structure long into the 2030s. Shesol, who worked for Clinton as a speechwriter in the White House, thinks that this majority’s long-term influence may even outweigh that of the conservative Supreme Court blocs that struck down decades’ worth of progressive federal, state, and local laws, such as those pertaining to the minimum wage and maximum hourly wage, from the turn of the 20th century until well into FDR’s New Deal.

Shesol stated, “I do believe it will be far greater in terms of its duration and impact than what the conservatives were able to accomplish in the 1920s and 1930s.” He then pointed out that FDR’s sizable Democratic congressional majorities enabled him to overturn the court’s anti-New Deal rulings until his protracted tenure in the White House gave him enough openings to tip the ideological scales in favor of his preferred course.

Nowadays, it is far more difficult for Democrats to legislatively overturn choices taken by this conservative majority due to polarization and widespread use of the filibuster. Republican attempts to overturn the Democratic achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society through legislation in Congress are unlikely, but as Shesol noted, “if you build a majority in the Supreme Court, you can tear the whole edifice down.