Yesterday the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Trump v. United States, in which Donald Trump has been trying to argue that he is immune from prosecution for acts taken while he was President (as Eugene noted here). It has ordered expedited briefing (although not quite as expedited as special counsel Jack Smith requested), and we can hope for a decision before the end of June.
As I noted in a blog post three weeks back, there were serious arguments in favor of the Court granting this case to iron out some aspects of the D.C. Circuit's ruling against Trump. (On this point, see this essay by Jack Goldsmith.)
While the D.C. Circuit correctly rejected Trump's immunity claims in a hastily drafted (yet largely well-crafted) decision, there are questions about how presidential immunity claims should be conceived and the extent to which immunity claims prevent even the initiation of prosecution, as opposed to requiring the government to make certain showings (e.g. that given acts were not official acts, etc.). That said, I would have preferred that the Court had acted a bit more quickly than it did, but the Court is not always known (or celebrated) for speed. (It seems the "shadow docket" has its virtues.)
