running clock has always been the goal and it seems optically trump got losses but in function he still won while the laws won't be gutted by overreach that could be used to shield a future dem president
When the SC has a procedural/fact issue they send it back down to address. Sometimes *shockingly* used on cases where they don't want to decide the actual merits because shit would hit the fan.
Haven't read the decision yet but the lower courts are usually the fact finder and appellate courts will kick appeals back to them to apply law they thought was improperly applied or ignored. It's pretty common. One of my partners had an appellate judge asking questions on one of his cases yesterday suggesting he wanted a remand back to the trial judge to address an issue.
dblplay1212 basically different court levels serve different functions and if one of the lower courts fucks up on one of their functions the higher court can't ignore it.
Courts did not apply the proper standards. Likely the same rulings will occur and Trump will eventually lose when the proper standards are applied. SCOTUS rejected Trump's suggestion for an extremely high standard.
I haven’t read these cases, so somebody can correct me if this is inapplicable here, but generally speaking, appellate courts can decide that a specific argument is not valid, while not reaching an ultimate decision on whether the action is valid. For example, the court may be saying that Trump’s particular argument is not valid, but there may be other arguments or evidence not currently before the Supreme Court that could turn the tide, so they can’t affirmatively say one way or another. Huge caveat to the above that I am wholly ignorant to the facts of these cases, so I could easily be way off.
Appellate courts very rarely decide what the facts are of a case. I handle a lot of comp cases. The comp judge decides the facts. The person was hurt on this day, injuries this and that. Quit his job or didn't quit his job, etc. The appellate court, if appealed, is looking at largely at how the trial judge applied the law to the facts or whether the facts needed to reach a conclusion even existed. For example, if the judge says I'm ruling the injury compensable, because of X case law the appellate court may say "that's not what that case means. Here is what it means now go back and apply what we just said to your decision and see if it changes it." Or they might say the facts you said applied did not exist and so your decision is wrong or the fact you accepted was hearsay and you need to ignore it and issue a new opinion.
I mean I assume Trump can still make normal objections to the subpoena now unless he's estopped if he did not already assert them.
I haven't read the opinion but of note is that sometimes lower court issues are obvious and it obviously needs to be remanded. Sometimes the justices go looking for errors to avoid having to make a ruling on the merits. Thus, the punt.
I guess if the choice was a punt in terms of the near-term political impacts of the case or granting sweeping executive privileges and immunities that have never before been recognized, I'll take this as a win.
It's a loss for Trump only in the sense that Presidents won't be able to make (some) of the ridiculous arguments that his team made at the lower levels and there's at least a possibility of accountability in the future. It's a loss for the House because the court didn't find their arguments persuasive enough to grant them access to the returns (and essentially called their subpoena a fishing expedition). Institutionally, it's a loss for executive power but factually and practically, Trump comes out on top. Need to read Vance and not a crim guy so hopefully someone else in here can shed light on the timeline RE the grand jury.
Posted this in the Trump thread but figured I’d copy it here. So after a quick skim, it seems the Vance case broke down like this: The majority: When it comes to state criminal prosecution, the president has no absolute immunity from subpoena nor a heightened standard of need to be proven for one to be issued to third parties. The court did not buy that the distraction of the president’s time, nor the potential damage to reputation for simply being investigated were sufficient reasons to give absolute immunity. The court also did not extend a heightened standard because it did not find article II presidential functioning issues to third party subpoenas, nor did it want to extend the same protections given to the president’s official documents to his private papers. However, other defenses may still block a subpoena which were not considered previously by the lower court but need to be. Remanded to only consider these other defenses. The concurrence: no absolute immunity, but similar to federal prosecution, states must show heightened need for subpoena as decided under Nixon to equally protect article II powers ofPresident. Remanded to consider both the heightened need and other possible defenses not considered. The dissent: no absolute immunity, but the court must protect against states improperly using subpoenas to infringe on powers given to thefederal government by not allowing subpoenas on presidents without first considering how the subpoena will affect the ability of the president to function. This also includes subpoenas on third parties which would not affect directly thepresident, because in reality the president could easily hand over any document to his attorneys so as to also not take away from his time. So, if you could subpoena third parties because it won’t affect the president’s ability to function, why couldn’t you just subpoena the president? And what would happen if it’s not just one subpoena but multiple? To require this would make the president equal in his ability to defend against subpoena as all other citizens, but the position needs more protection to function. So “a prosecutor should be required (1) to provide at least a general description of the possible offensesthat are under investigation, (2) to outline how the subpoenaed records relate to those offenses, and (3) to explain why it is important that the records be produced and why it isnecessary for production to occur while the President is still in office.” Remanded to consider under this test.