Heidi Li Feldman
I have just stayed up far too late reading the appellate panel
opinion in Carroll v. Trump (II), which upholds almost every one of trial judge Lewis Kaplan’s evidentiary rulings, and thus affirms the jury’s $5 million damages award to Carroll for Trump defaming her. The 2nd Circuit panel opinion is meticulous and exhaustive, just as Kaplan’s rulings were meticulous and fully explained by him.
But… 1/ #LawFedi
Heidi Li Feldman
Because the current U.S. Supreme Court is demonstrably both corrupt and extremely solicitous of Trump, it cannot be trusted, and especially not in a case Trump lost. No matter how solid the lower appellate court opinion and the trial judge’s rulings, Roberts et al might well invent a new legal principle to get Trump off the hook. 2/
Heidi Li Feldman
Thus, this case, Carroll v. Trump illustrates how a Supreme Court that has abandoned judicial craft undermines the legitimacy of the entire federal court process. If the Supreme Court cannot be trusted to abide by settled law, including the law of civil procedure and evidence, neither lower court judges nor litigants can assume that their proper conduct counts for anything. 3/
Heidi Li Feldman
The Supreme Court’s unprincipled decisions and its favoritism toward certain powerful people (e.g. Trump) or positions urged by some influential parties (e.g. Heritage Foundation or Federalist Society) remove a background condition for rule of law in any appellate framework: the assumption that appellate courts will not simply disregard the law to achieve particular laws. 4/
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.