Why Are They Taking So Long?

100+ days later, we are still waiting

Credit: Getty Images

Today I thought I would be writing a piece in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. I am not. No decision was handed down. 

Once again, the justices have delayed their ruling, with any sense of urgency evaporating weeks ago. As the world waits, another decision day has come and gone without word on the most important case this term, and what some have called one of the most important decisions in American jurisprudence. With every delay, the court is giving the former president exactly what he wants: a silent pass on prosecution. 

The decision about Donald Trump’s claim of immunity, as preposterous as it seems to most legal scholars, is still known only to the justices — and the clock is ticking. 

Every day without a decision, the likelihood of Trump’s being tried for attempting to overturn a free and fair election dims. And any vestige of impartiality evaporates.

“It’s obvious the court has deliberately delayed everything. It could easily have issued a ruling much sooner,” Lawrence Tribe, a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard University, told Salon. 

One important decision was handed down today, so we know the justices are at work. In what seems to be the ultimate no-brainer (but this is where we are) the court upheld a federal ban on gun possession by suspected domestic abusers. Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. Trump’s claim that he is above the law seems as absurd as giving firearms to alleged abusers.  

Special counsel Jack Smith brought the indictment against Trump in August 2023, charging the former president with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Last December, a U.S. district judge refused to dismiss the charges on grounds of absolute presidential immunity. In February, the Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s decision. 

Trump then asked the Supreme Court to take up the case and offer “thoughtful consideration.” The fact that the court accepted the case rather than uphold the circuit court’s measured and thorough decision, written by three judges appointed by a Democrat and a Republican, is hard to believe. Harder still is the thought that the high court might entertain the idea that the president is above the law.

Americans are accustomed to a plodding Supreme Court, though it is certainly capable of acting quickly when needed. See Watergate and Bush v. Gore.  

So why has a case of such importance taken more than 109 days to decide? The answer from a Trump-packed court is becoming obvious. Slow-walking justice is justice denied. 

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Stay Steady,
Dan