A Republican-appointed judge took a dig at the Supreme Court in a lengthy footnote that accused the bench’s conservative supermajority of attempting to “redesign” the presidency in its recent Trump ruling.
Judge William G. Young, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1985, criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump’s immunity case Friday.
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Writing in a footnote of a case in North Carolina, Young described the conservative justices as “eschewing historical analysis sought fundamentally to redesign the relationship between the sovereign people and the first citizen of the Republic” with their July 1 ruling. Young, a veteran Boston judge, was brought in to preside over the case because it involved claims of sexual harassment against judicial officials in North Carolina.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that former President Donald Trump was immune from criminal prosecution for official acts that he took to overturn the 2020 election, but not unofficial acts. The case has since returned to the lower court in D.C. for Judge Tanya Chutkan to decide whether the acts at the center of the case are official or unofficial.
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Young’s criticisms are not the first of its kind. He joins the growing chorus of federal judges who have spoken out against the High Court.
Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative who himself was a Supreme Court contender under President George W. Bush, has been among the most vocal Republicans who have blasted the Supreme Court in recent years. Luttig called the court’s immunity decision “abominable” and argued that it represented the “un-souling of America.”
“The Supreme Court cut the heart and soul out of America with this abominable decision, of constitutional interpretation or, should I say, so-called constitutional interpretation,” he said last month.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who served under the Bush administration, told Politico last month that while he understood the importance of the decision, he had some concerns that a president could abuse those powers.
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“A president needs to be able to make these kinds of decisions on behalf of the country without fear of prosecution,” Gonzales said. But he added, “If the president can order the Department of Justice to prosecute someone in any event, that’s a different story. And that’s the one thing that I do have some concerns about.”
In his Friday footnote, Young said that the federal judiciary appears to be “at a hinge moment where we need every trial attorney we can get.”
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Thanking the attorneys in the case, Young wrote “I urge each of you to continue in trial work” while praising the Supreme Court for recent rulings affirming the use of jury trials.
“I have been a trial judge longer than most of you have been alive and have taught trial advocacy and evidence for over forty years. Each one of you did a fine professional job,” he wrote.
