Amicus: A Law Review

Consistent with the adopted mission of the program to offer analysis and discussion of the major stories in law, government, and the aspiration for justice in America, we begin this week with an extended review of the content—and the equally-important language—of the landmark ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, finally bringing to an end the from-the-start frivolous and unfounded civil challenge by former President Trump to the legitimate, fact-based, judicially-sanctioned investigation of the Mar-a-Lago documents crimes. To that same end, we also engage in some in-depth exposition of the guilty verdicts in the seditious conspiracy against the Oath Keepers insurrectionists—and examine the trials of their co-defendants and of the parallel leadership of the Proud Boys anti-government group scheduled to begin in the weeks and months just ahead. Complementing all of that is our assessment of the closing arguments in the state criminal trial in which the Trump Organization is charged with various tax fraud violations; the highly notable testimonial appearances before a federal grand jury investigating the January 6 riot of the former White House counsel and his deputy; the appellate arguments in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on whether the former President should be held personally liable for his defamatory statements made in response to allegations of his sexual assault in the mid-1990s; and the announcement of plans by the United States Supreme Court to review the legitimacy of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative (affecting tens of millions of Americans), recently suspended by rulings of lower federal courts finding it unconstitutional.

And, finally, we emphasize the significance of the two, major arguments before that same High Court in the coming business week—one testing the limits of First Amendment free speech (and religious exercise) doctrines in connection with the concomitant rights of the LGBTQIA community to be free from discrimination in contracting, and the other determining if, in the wake of two centuries of judicial involvement in resolving election-related challenges, the courts still have a role to play in deciding the processes and protocols of our federal elections—including disputes about the state electors designated to identify the future Presidents.