Edited Version of Trump v. United States

Download the edited version from the 2024 Barnett/Blackman supplement.

I've now finished reading and editing the Court's 119 page decision in Trump v. United States. Even though the Court is deciding fewer and fewer cases, I feel like I am reading more and more, but learning less and less. This one was a tough slog.

I distilled the case down to about 33 pages for the 2024 Barnett/Blackman supplement. You can download it here. I imagine this case will appear in the next edition of the casebook, replacing Clinton v. Jones and Trump v. Vance. More likely than not, we will just include Chief Justice Roberts's majority and parts of Justice Sotomayor's dissent. Justice Thomas's concurrence has important implications for the Appointments Clause (which I will write about later), but it doesn't have much bearing on the presidential immunity issue. Were Justice Barrett the fifth vote, her concurrence would be quite significant, but as the sixth vote, it probably will not have much lasting impact. ConLaw students will probably not have much interest in the evidentiary issue that she thought important. Sometimes, less is more. I thought Justice Jackson's dissent had some insights into the framework behind punishment, though it was largely duplicative of what Justice Sotomayor wrote.

I feel like a bit of a slacker. The term is over, and I still haven't finished reading Jarksey (98 pages), Grants Pass (74 pages), NetChoice (96 pages), and Corner Post (70 pages). That totals more than 300 pages. I wrote several posts on Chief Justice Roberts's majority opinion in Loper Bright, but I haven't had time to write about the concurrences and dissents. Those will come soon.

Stay tuned.