Kings answer to no one, and nobles answer only to kings. Supposedly egalitarian communist societies have nobility, too, the ruling class.
America was supposed to be different. Our founding fathers wanted a classless society, under rule of law, where everyone was treated equally (except slaves, women, and children, of course).
But that’s not what we ended up with. America has a ruling class and nobility, too, except it’s based on money instead of lineage. Our criminal justice system has always treated people with money and connections more favorably than people without money.
No one understands that better than Donald Trump and his lawyers. And a widely-derided recent Supreme Court decision nearly makes him a king by completely insulating him from criminal liability for “official acts.”
On Thursday, December 9, 2025, this hyper-partisan court nearly went even farther by extending that dubious doctrine to unofficial acts. Trump was convicted in New York State court of 34 felony counts of business records fraud, but the judge proposed no punishment at all, not based on what he did but who he is.
That wasn’t good enough for Trump; he wanted his criminal conviction wiped clean. The clear-cut process for that is to appeal through the state appellate courts, but Trump’s lawyer bypassed those courts and went straight to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That court should have said follow procedure and exhaust your state appeals first, before you come to us. The court did rule that way, but only by 5-4 (read story here). This ruling should have been 9-0, because there’s no debatable legal issue in this.
Chief justice Roberts and Justice Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in a ruling so obvious a first-year law student would know what to do. The usual suspects, Thomas and Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, went off the reservation.
To reiterate, the issue isn’t Trump’s guilt or innocence, but whether he’s entitled to go around established legal procedures because of who he is. The question before the court was whether his case would follow the normal appeal path, or bypass it because of who he is.
While this ruling went the right way, it was a close call, and shouldn’t have been. It’s more evidence that Americans can’t trust their courts to be a bulwark against power and privilege for the rule of law anymore.
Of course, we’ve had bad Supreme Courts before, and throughout America’s history, the egalitarian promises of the Constitution and underlying principles of our legal system have been as much aspirational as realized. Power, wealth, and privilege always assert themselves under every governing and legal system.
That’s why the principle that “no one is above the law” needs defenders and constant defending. Trump believes he’s an emperor, not a public servant. Some of our nation’s most powerful judges agree with him, and that’s a big problem.
