Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday asked the Supreme Court to take up and rule quickly on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results.
Smith made his request for the court to act with unusual speed to prevent any delays that could push back the trial of the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner, currently set to begin March 4, until after next year’s presidential election.
Later Monday, the justices indicated they would decide quickly whether to hear the case, ordering Trump’s lawyers to respond by Dec. 20. The court’s brief order did not signal what it ultimately would do.
“Narrow Precedent”. I don’t see it happening because they have no loyalty to Trump, but it could.
They can vaguely rule that some unique aspects of the Trump case makes it different unique and that courts should not take it as jurisprudence for future cases. There’s more to it, obviously. Lower courts can “narrow” a SCOTUS precedent if it is defensible to do so by being able to defend their interpretation as non-contradictory to the SCOTUS precent (some subtle differences from the case law), but SCOTUS occasionally instructs that a decision should not be taken as precedent. Lower courts can ignore that (and afair, it has happened), but it leaves SCOTUS open to the idea of Biden being prosecuted in the future.