The U.S. Supreme Court’s divisions deepened over its nine-month term that culminated this week with a ruling powered by its 6-3 conservative majority granting former President Donald Trumpsubstantial criminal immunity for actions taken in office.
A term during which the court constrained the U.S. government’s ability to regulate industry – following recent terms when it rolled back abortion rights, expanded gun rights and rejected race-conscious collegiate admissions – laid bare ideological fractures that mirror a profoundly divided nation
Those rulings and others have moved American law sharply rightward.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused her conservative colleagues of embracing a dangerous expansion of presidential powers in ruling that Trump, now seeking a return to the White House, is immune from prosecution for some of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack by his supporters.
Trump is the first former U.S. president to be criminally charged and the first to be convicted. He is now the Republican challenger to Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election, a rematch from four years ago.
“The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” Sotomayor wrote in a dissent, joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
US Supreme Court’s divisions deepened in term capped by Trump immunity ruling | Reuters