Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) introduced a resolution Friday urging the Supreme Court to “intervene” in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump before the 2024 election — a move that experts say is a political stunt that faces significant legal obstacles.
Citing the “All Writs Act,” by which the court “may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law,” the resolution calls on SCOTUS to intervene in the case “with all deliberate speed and possible urgency.”
The resolution argues for the court’s intervention on the basis that Americans need to make “informed decisions” in the upcoming election. It also echoes Trump’s oft-used complaint that the trial — and ultimately conviction — stemmed from the “politically motivated prosecution by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.”
I don’t know enough about this subject clearly, but has there ever been a similar situation where SCOTUS overturned a case like this? Not against a former president, obviously, but that shouldn’t be relevant. There have been other cases where political candidates have been convicted of violating state campaign finance laws. Has SCOTUS ever intervened?
I don’t think so, but they have also used their shadow docket more and more to do things that are unprecedented. It’s not 100% unbelievable.
Steve Vladeck wrote a book about that … The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.
In a CNN interview he also said that “for the first 200 years of the Supreme Court’s existence, Congress was regularly involved in conversations about the shape and size of the court’s docket, which kinds of cases the court was hearing, how much business it was conducting”. One wonders why that oversight stopped.