An op-ed on the Supreme Court, presidential immunity, and the precedent they set themselves
In 2022, the Supreme Court did something many legal scholars had considered unthinkable. It overturned Roe v. Wade — a precedent that had stood for nearly fifty years — and told millions of Americans that what they had built their lives around was, in the Court’s revised opinion, simply wrong. The majority didn’t apologize. They said the previous Court had erred, that the Constitution had been misread, and that it was time to correct the record.
Fine. That is their right. The Supreme Court is not a museum. It can revisit its decisions.
So here is a question nobody in power seems eager to answer: if the Court can overturn fifty years of abortion precedent in the name of correcting a constitutional error, why can’t it revisit — or at minimum, clarify — its 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States? The one that handed a former president sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for acts committed while in office?
