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      Supreme court declines to expedite decision on Trump’s immunity claim in 2020 election case

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      The US supreme court on Friday rejected a request by the special counsel to expeditiously decide whether Donald Trump has immunity from federal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, before a lower appeals court issued its own judgment.The one sentence denial means the case is returned to the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, where a three-judge panel is scheduled to hear oral arguments in January, and the case against Trump remains frozen pending the outcome of the appeal.In declining to leapfrog the lower court and fast-track the appeal, the supreme court handed a crucial and potentially far-reaching victory to Trump as he seeks to delay as much as possible his trial, currently scheduled for next March in federal district court in Washington.The decision almost certainly slows down Trump’s federal election interference case. Even if the DC circuit rules against Trump quickly, the former president can first ask the full appeals court to rehear the case, and then has 90 days to lodge a final appeal to the supreme court.Trump was indicted in June by the special counsel Jack Smith for conspiring to impede the peaceful transfer of power, but sought to have the charges thrown out by contending he could not be prosecuted for actions he undertook as president that were related to his official duties.The filing contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment, ranging from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that not only was Trump entitled to absolute presidential immunity, but that the immunity applied regardless of Trump’s intent in engaging in the conduct described in the indictment.This month, his motion was rejected by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan. That set the stage for Trump, who had always expected the motion to fail, to lodge an appeal that would stay the case while the DC circuit considered the matter.Obtaining the stay was always part of Trump’s strategy – he is seeking delay because if he wins re-election before the trial occurs, he could arrange to have the charges dismissed – and his lawyers were counting on a lengthy appeals process that would buy the time.The strategy, according to people close to Trump’s legal team, involved Trump going to the supreme court and securing additional weeks or months of delay – only after weeks of delay before the DC circuit.But prosecutors attempted to preempt Trump’s ploy by asking the supreme court to bypass the DC circuit and resolve the immunity question directly. In court filings, the special counsel suggested keeping the March trial date was in the public interest.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe request from prosecutors that the nation’s highest court rule on a case before judgment by an appeals court – and force Trump to contend with the Supreme Court plank of his delay strategy months earlier than he anticipated – was unusual but underscored the gravity of the moment.On Friday, the court essentially sided with Trump, who had argued the day before for the special counsel’s petition to be denied, arguing on procedural grounds that prosecutors had no basis to appeal a trial court ruling that was favorable to them and where the government had not suffered any harm.The denial, appellate experts said, underscored the peril of allowing trial prosecutors to help frame issues before the supreme court, instead of having the solicitor general’s office – which normally argues on behalf of the government – refine arguments to the sensibilities of the justices.The emergency petition on the Trump immunity question did not involve the solicitor general’s office. Although the filing was signed by former deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben, it also included the special counsel himself and two of his deputies, JP Cooley and James Pearce. More

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      Trump shouldn’t be eligible to run again. But America’s highest court may disagree | Margaret Sullivan

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      Should there be a political price to pay for a president who refuses to engage in a peaceful transfer of power and incites a violent coup to stay in office?Common sense says yes.As does a majority vote of the Colorado supreme court. But since their stunning ruling this week that Donald Trump may not appear on their state’s primary ballot, many a lawyer and pundit is arguing otherwise.They say, for example, that it’s not the role of a court but of the voters to decide a matter of such import. They don’t seem to recall that the voters did decide in 2020 when they elected Joe Biden, but that Trump refused to accept that decision and did everything in his power to reverse it.Others allow that the constitution does provide that insurrection is disqualifying but they ponder whether Trump – without a legal conviction – really fits that definition. And in some cases, these critics twist themselves into verbal knots to express their doubt.“I generally say that Trump attempted to secure an unelected second term in office,” wrote Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. “Insurrection,” he notes, may be useful shorthand for Trump’s role but it’s too imprecise to accomplish what the Colorado jurists say it does.President Biden sounded sensible when asked by a reporter if Trump is an insurrectionist. “It’s self-evident … he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero.”But even Biden, hardly a disinterested party, admits another obvious factor: the US supreme court will make the ultimate decision.The smart money seems to be on the court’s ruling in Trump’s favor.Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for the Nation, predicted that the highest court will overturn Colorado 8-1, that the opinion will be written by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan, and only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will dissent.“John Roberts is probably standing outside Elena Kagan’s office like [actor John Cusack] with a jukebox right now,” Mystal quipped, alluding to the iconic pleading-for-attention scene in the 1989 movie Say Anything. “He needs her for cover for what he’s about to do … He’s playing a full 80s mixtape.”Other anti-Trumpers remain more hopeful, for some plausible reasons. One is that that conservative justice Neil Gorsuch, before he rose to his current lofty position, once wrote that states may and should protect the integrity of the political process by keeping candidates off the ballot if they are “constitutionally prohibited from assuming office”.I’m no constitutional lawyer but Trump’s post-election actions like inciting an insurrection and pushing a fake-electors scheme seem strong enough to fit that bill. But, of course, there are ways to justify the opposite.“A serious and careful opinion that reaches a reasonable conclusion,” was how the UCLA law professor Rick Hasen characterized the Colorado ruling. But he noted that, whether on the merits or on doctrinal grounds, the supreme court certainly can find grounds to disagree.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHasen calls it imperative that the court move quickly: “Voters need to know if the candidate they are supporting for president is eligible.” A later determination of eligibility, especially if it were to involve congressional Democrats, “would be tremendously destabilizing”.For me, it comes down to this. Trump is an anti-democracy candidate, and his actions, over the past eight years, have proven that, time after time.Too many Americans are so inured to his firehose of outrages that they don’t see as clearly as the Colorado jurists do that this man now should not be eligible for the leadership of the free world. Mainstream media’s horserace fixation, and rightwing media’s relentless propaganda, has made that blindness worse. (On Thursday morning, Fox News offered this mind-blowing chyron: “GOP leaders suggest removing Biden from red-state ballots over border crisis.”)Even if the Colorado justices don’t prevail, I am grateful to them for stating some obvious truths: that Trump has gone far beyond the limits of what’s acceptable in a candidate for highest office. That the checks and balances of the branches of government exist for a reason. That Trump doesn’t have to be convicted of insurrection, though he may eventually be, to be disqualified via the 14th amendment of the US constitution.After all he’s done – especially in the shocking wake of the 2020 election – Trump is clearly unfit for office.Whatever the outcome, having that recognized by a well-respected state court is a victory for common sense and integrity.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US supreme court urged to make ‘immediate, definitive decision’ on Trump’s immunity

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      Jack Smith has urged speed for the supreme court to take up the issue of whether Donald Trump is, as the former president claims, immune from criminal prosecution on federal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.On Thursday the US special counsel submitted a new file to the supreme court in Washington DC, reiterating his argument for urgency in their consideration of such a key element of the federal election interference case, in response to Trump’s latest move the day before.On Wednesday, Trump’s team asked the highest court in the US to stay out of the argument about whether he has immunity from federal criminal prosecution, after Smith asked the court last week to take up review of the matter.On Thursday, Smith submitted to the supreme court that in the public interest it should make an “immediate, definitive decision” on the “important constitutional question” of Trump’s immunity or lack of it in the federal election interference case.“The charges here are of the utmost gravity. This case involves – for the first time in our nation’s history – criminal charges against a former president based on his actions while in office,” the latest submission said.Smith’s filing added: “Enforcing federal criminal laws that prohibit such conduct is vital to protecting our constitutional processes and democracy itself.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSmith is the veteran prosecutor appointed as special counsel by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, in November 2022, to lead two federal investigations of Trump, the election interference case and the alleged mishandling of classified documents that were discovered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office. More

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      Is barring Trump from office undemocratic? Let’s assess point by point | Jan-Werner Müller

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      The decision by the Colorado supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the Republican primary has received pushback from some predictable and some not-so-predictable quarters.The former president’s supporters of course consider him the great Maga martyr, temporarily hindered by nefarious elites from his rightful return and revenge; in this morality play, the US supreme court, besieged with accusations of being undemocratic, can now play the savior by putting him back on the ballot and making the people Trump’s ultimate judge.Some liberals also fuss about the political fallout of the decision, worried that barring Trump from running will provoke chaos and violence. And the left, suspecting a “liberal plot against democracy”, is not happy either: they reproach the liberals who welcome Trump’s disqualification for wanting to short-circuit the political process – thereby revealing deep distrust of democracy or at least defeatism about confronting Trump in an open contest. All these concerns are mistaken.The Colorado supreme court comprehensively refuted Trump’s claims, especially the ones bordering on the absurd. The justices patiently argued that parties cannot make autonomous, let alone idiosyncratic, decisions about who to put on the ballot – by that logic, they could nominate a 10-year-old for the presidency. They also painstakingly took apart the idea that the now famous section three of the 14th amendment covers every imaginable official expectation of the president. In terms clearly tailored to appeal to justices on the US supreme court, they explain that plain language and the intent of the drafters of the amendment suggest that insurrectionists – including ones at the very top – were not supposed to hold office again, unless Congress voted an amnesty with a two-thirds majority.The court’s majority also made the case that the House of Representatives’ January 6 report is not some partisan attack on poor Trump and hence could be admitted as evidence; they then drew on that evidence to show that Trump had clearly engaged in insurrection; they did not have to prove that Trump himself had led it (of course, he didn’t valiantly enter the Capitol to “save democracy” – his words – but tweeted the revolution from the safety of the White House).We know that few Maga supporters will be swayed by the evidence – in fact, the entry ticket to Trump’s personality cult is precisely to deny that very evidence. But it is more disturbing that liberals still think that prudence dictates that Trump should run and just be defeated at the polls.For one thing, the same liberals usually profess their commitment to the constitution – and the Colorado court has given an entirely plausible reading of that very document. Should it simply be set aside because supporters of a self-declared wannabe dictator threaten violence?Some liberals also appear to assume that, were Trump to lose in November 2024, their political nightmare would stop. But someone who has not accepted defeat before, doubled down on the “big lie”, and ramped up authoritarian rhetoric is not likely to just concede. Would the logic then still be that, even if the law says differently, Maga supporters must somehow be appeased?The more leftwing critique is the most interesting. Liberals are charged with having a Mueller moment again. By trusting courts to save democracy, they reveal how little faith they have in the people; they appear to hope that, magically, wise old men (it’s usually men) like Robert Mueller, acting for more or less technocratic “institutions”, will solve a challenge through law when it should be solved politically.The only question is: by that logic, are any measures meant to protect democracy but not somehow involving the people as a whole as such illegitimate? Had Trump been impeached after January 6, would anyone have made the argument that this was the wrong process and that he just should keep running in elections no matter what?Countries other than the US are more comfortable with the notion that politicians or parties expected to destroy democracy should be taken out of the democratic game. The threshold for such a decision has to be very high – clearly, there’s a problem if attempts to save democracy are themselves undemocratic. Here the Colorado decision is more vulnerable: as one of the dissenting judges pointed out, Trump might not have been given due process; even prosecutor Jack Smith, a master legal chess player, is not going after Trump for insurrection.Three factors can mitigate anxieties about undemocratic measures to save democracy, though: one is that, before a drastic decision like disqualification is taken, an individual has to exhibit a very consistent pattern of wanting to undermine democracy. Check, for Trump.Second, there has to be some room for political judgment and prudence: disqualification is not automatic and not for life; in theory, Congress could pass an amnesty for Trump in the name of democratic competition.Third, banning a whole party can rightly make citizens with particular political preferences feel that their voices are silenced; in this case, though, no one is removing the Republican party. And, of course, two Trump epigones remain on the ballot.
      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University. He is also a Guardian US columnist More

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      Americans are hoping the courts will spare them an electoral reckoning with Trump | Lawrence Douglas

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      “This is how dictatorships are born.” Such was Donald Trump’s response to news that the Colorado supreme court had ruled that the former president is disqualified from holding office and so should be removed from the state’s Republican primary ballot.Anytime Trump speaks of “dictatorships” these days we should pay attention. He has all but declared his intention to engage in dictatorial rule should he win in 2024. It isn’t clear, then, whether his statement, in a fund-raising missive fired off minutes after the news broke, was meant as a condemnation of the ruling or a prediction of how he would handle such legal setbacks should he be returned to the White House.The specter of a dictatorial Trump using the presidency to deform the rule of law into a tool of political punishment explains why millions of Americans continue to cling to the hope that our court system will spare us an electoral reckoning with Trump. Biden continues to suffer from inexplicably weak polling numbers while Trump has managed to turn criminal counts into a fund-raising juggernaut. None of this translates into Trump’s defeating Biden in the national popular vote in 2024. But, as we all know, he doesn’t have to. Our grossly defective Electoral College could once again hand Trump the presidency.And so the hope that our court system will insulate us from the infirmities of our electoral system and our own failings as democratic citizens. Yet, however understandable, the hope will find no answer in yesterday’s ruling. This is not because the Colorado supreme court reached the wrong decision.Indeed, the ruling, which turned on the court’s interpretation of the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment, was brave and correct. A lower Colorado court had already concluded that Trump had engaged in insurrection on 6 January 2021, but had concluded that the 14th amendment’s bar against insurrectionists from holding office did not apply to the presidency.The Colorado supreme court had little trouble rejecting this latter conclusion. To argue, the court observed, that the 14th amendment, ratified in the wake of the civil war, “disqualifies every oath-breaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land” would be utterly nonsensical (italics in original).And so the court concluded that Trump is “disqualified from holding the office of the President” and instructed the Colorado secretary of state to remove his name from the presidential primary ballot.Admittedly, the seven-member court was divided, with three dissenters questioning whether Trump can be disqualified without having first been convicted of engaging in insurrection. The court itself stayed its own ruling until early 2024, anticipating Trump’s already announced appeal. And so this explosive issue will all but inevitably land in the lap of the US supreme court.How will the court act? In an ideal world, it would uphold the Colorado ruling and would do so unanimously. Only a unanimous decision, handed down by a court composed of three Trump appointees – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – and one, the ethically-challenged and ideologically-rigid Clarence Thomas, whose spouse was a committed ‘stop the steal” activist, could possibly weather the storm of protest and civil unrest that such a historic ruling would trigger.Alas, no such ruling will issue from this supreme court. This court will predictably toss out the Colorado decision, insisting that Trump’s name be placed back on the ballot. I say this not because the court is necessarily beholden to Trump, but because, already suffering from historically low and largely self-inflicted approval ratings (see its ruling in Dobbs, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion; and Bruen, elevating gun ownership to a fundamental right), it will hide behind judicial modesty, insisting that voters and not unelected judges, should have the final say about Trump’s fitness for office.Still, in refusing to intervene, the court will be unable to escape the damaging appearance of extreme partisanship. The court has already been asked to review Trump’s claim that he enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution, an argument, which, if accepted, would derail his Washington DC federal trial, tentatively scheduled to begin on 4 March 2024, for conspiring to defraud the United States by seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And it has already agreed to review the scope of the charge that January 6 insurrectionists obstructed an official proceeding, a matter also central to the federal case against Trump.While it’s hard to imagine the court accepting Trump’s unsustainably broad immunity argument, it’s easier to imagine it ruling in a manner that might work to the benefit of Trump’s tried and true legal strategy of delay, delay, delay. So while the supreme court might dodge a reckoning with Trump, there will be no escape for the American people.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College More

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      Colorado’s ruling to disqualify Trump sets up a showdown at supreme court

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      The Colorado ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot because he incited an insurrection on January 6 sets up another high-stakes, highly controversial political intervention by the US supreme court – a conservative-dominated panel to which Trump appointed three stringent rightwingers.Compromised in progressive eyes by those appointments and rulings including the removal of the federal right to abortion, the court was already due to decide whether Trump has immunity from prosecution regarding acts committed as president.Arising from one of four criminal indictments that have generated 91 charges, that case – concerning elected subversion if not incitement of insurrection – has produced intense scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and a hardline conservative also at the centre of an ethics scandal.Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is a hard-right activist who was deeply involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a defeat which according to Trump’s lie was the result of electoral fraud.With the Colorado ruling, calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from cases involving Trump will no doubt increase – and no doubt continue to be ignored.On Tuesday, the progressive strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Justice Thomas will get to weigh in on whether Trump engaged in insurrection for the same plot his own wife helped organise. Extraordinary.”Earlier, in a scene of extraordinary Washington pageantry, Biden addressed Thomas and the other justices at a memorial service for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the court.Speaking at the National Cathedral, the president delivered a passage that would within hours assume greater significance.To O’Connor, Biden said, the court was “the bedrock of America. It was a vital line of defence for the values and the vision of our republic, devoted not to the pursuit of power for power’s sake but to make real the promise of America – the American promise that holds that we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”Citing that need for equality before the law, some prominent observers said the supreme court should uphold the Colorado ruling.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified before the House January 6 committee and has written with the Harvard professor Laurence Tribe on the 14th amendment, called the Colorado ruling “historic”, “masterful” and “brilliant”.“It will be a test of America’s commitment to its democracy, to its constitution and to the rule of law,” Luttig told MSNBC, adding: “Arguably, when it is decided by the supreme court, it will be the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history.“… It is an unassailable … decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution.”But others were not so supportive.Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor from George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden on grounds of supposed corruption, told Fox News: “This court has handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections. And it’s very, very dangerous.“This country is a powder keg, and this court is throwing matches at it. And I think it’s a real mistake. I think they’re wrong on the law. You know, January 6 was many things, most of it not good. In my view it was not an insurrection, it was a riot.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t mean the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.“This is a time where we actually need democracy. We need to allow the voters to vote to hear their decision. And the court just said, ‘You’re not going to get that in Colorado, we’re not going to let you vote for Donald Trump.’ You can dislike Trump, you can believe he’s responsible for January 6, but this isn’t the way to do it.”Adopted in 1868, section three of the 14th amendment barred former Confederates from office after the civil war. But it has rarely been used. In Trump’s case, much legal argument has centered on whether the presidency counts as an office, as defined in the text. In Colorado, a lower court found that it did not. The state supreme court found that it did. That argument now goes to the highest court in the land.After the Colorado ruling, many observers also pointed out that Trump has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection, or charged with doing so. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection on January 6 but acquitted at trial in the Senate, where enough Republicans stayed loyal.What is clear is that thanks to Colorado, a US supreme court already racked by politics and with historically low approval ratings will once again pitch into the partisan fight. On Tuesday, Trump seized on the Colorado ruling as he has his criminal indictments: as battle cry and fundraising tool. His Republican opponents also slammed the ruling.Last month, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Eric Foner, an expert on the civil war and Reconstruction, spoke to the Guardian about 14th amendment challenges to Trump, including in Colorado. A successful case, Foner said, would be likely to act on Trump like “a red flag in front of a bull”.So, it seems clear, will anything the US supreme court now does regarding the Colorado ruling.On Wednesday a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on his own internet show he expected the court to act quickly, with “the next 10 days … critical in this case” and oral arguments likely by mid-January. His son and co-host, Jordan Sekulow, countered that a slow-moving case could not be counted out. More

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      Trump lawyers urge supreme court to reject fast-tracking immunity decision

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump on Wednesday urged the US supreme court to reject a request from the special counsel to expeditiously decide whether he was immune from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, contending prosecutors lacked standing to bring the petition.The argument from the ex-president was that prosecutors had no basis to appeal a lower court ruling that was favorable to them, and should instead defer intervening in the case until a federal appeals court issued its own judgment first.“This Court’s ordinary review procedures will allow the DC Circuit to address this appeal in the first instance, thus granting this Court the benefit of an appellate court’s prior consideration,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the 35-page filing.“The Special Counsel urges this Court to bypass those ordinary procedures, including the longstanding preference for prior consideration by at least one court of appeals, and rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon. The Court should decline that invitation at this time.”The papers filed by Trump’s lawyers in essence amounted to an attempt to refreeze the case – and indefinitely delay the March 2024 trial date – after prosecutors sought to bypass the potentially lengthy appeals process by directly asking the nation’s highest court to resolve the matter.Trump’s main argument asking the supreme court to defer the petition was procedural, arguing the narrow cases where prosecutors could appeal a favorable lower court ruling were limited to when the government had suffered some harm, which did not apply to the special counsel Jack Smith.The filing added that the court’s preference should be to allow the DC circuit to issue a judgment first, consistent with ordinary practice and especially when the DC circuit had already agreed to consider the question on an expedited basis.Whether Trump’s line of arguments will prevail remains uncertain, insofar as Trump repeatedly cited the case of Camreta v Greene (2011), in which the court expressly ruled that the fact that the victor filed the appeal did not deprive it of jurisdiction to hear the case.Trump also accused the special counsel’s office of conflating the “public interest” in a speedy trial with “partisan interest”, alleging prosecutors of wanting to go to trial before the 2024 election in order to tie him up in court during the height of his presidential campaign for political reasons.The supreme court is likely to decide whether to grant the special counsel’s appeal in short order. If it does take the case, it could schedule oral arguments in January and issue a decision within weeks. If it declines, it would return to the DC circuit’s jurisdiction.Earlier this month, Trump asked the US court of appeals for the DC circuit to reverse a decision by the trial judge rejecting his motion to dismiss the indictment on grounds that he enjoyed absolute immunity for any actions related to his official duties while president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump legal team suspected the motion would fail, according to people familiar with the matter, but filed it in the knowledge that it could be appealed before trial and, crucially, that it would cause the case to be paused pending the outcome of the appeals process.Trump’s lawyers appeared to expect the DC circuit to take months to schedule oral arguments and issue a ruling. They only intended to take the matter to the supreme court after a possible loss, which could again take months to decide whether Trump could be prosecuted in the case.But prosecutors pre-empted Trump and forced him to contend with the supreme court plank of his delay strategy earlier than he expected, requesting a grant of what is known as certiorari before the DC circuit issued a judgment. Prosecutors also separately asked the DC circuit to expedite its consideration.The federal 2020 election interference trial is currently set for 4 March, the day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries or caucuses. Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, has been adamant that he does not want to be stuck in a courtroom.Trump has also made no secret that his overarching legal strategy, for all of his criminal cases, is to pursue procedural delays. If the cases do not go to trial before next year’s election and he wins a second term, then he could direct his handpicked attorney general to drop all of the charges.And even if the case did go to trial before November, the people said, Trump’s preference would have been for the trial to take place as close as possible to the election because it would have given his 2024 campaign ammunition to miscast the criminal case against him as political in nature. More

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      Joe Biden hails Sandra Day O’Connor as ‘American pioneer’ in eulogy

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      Joe Biden hailed Sandra Day O’Connor as an “American pioneer” who embodied principle over politics in his eulogy at the Washington funeral of the US supreme court’s first female justice.The president praised O’Connor for breaking down barriers in the legal and political worlds, transcending political divisions and weighing ordinary people in her decision-making in pointed remarks that contrasted sharply with his words about the current supreme court.“She was especially conscious of the law’s real impact on people’s lives,” he said. “One need not agree with all her decisions in order to recognize that her principles were deeply held and of the highest order and that her desire for civility was genuine.“O’Connor knew that “no person is an island” and that Americans – “rugged individualists, adventurers and entrepreneurs” – were inextricably linked, he said at the service in Washington National Cathedral.“And for America to thrive, Americans must see themselves not as enemies, but as partners in the great work of deciding our collective destiny,” Biden said.Tributes to O’Connor, who died on 1 December aged 93, were also delivered by chief justice John Roberts and O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor.Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor served until her retirement in 2006.She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.The supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022 and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden has said the current supreme court has done more to “unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history” but has rejected calls to expand it.Chief justice Roberts called her a “strong, influential and iconic jurist”.Jay O’Connor spoke of his mother as an indefatigable woman with “unearthly energy” who kept working long after she hung up her judicial robes.“We thank you, we love you, we will never, ever forget you.” More