The relationship between the president and the Supreme Court

This resulted in some rulings which are  very conservative: 

Case study Trump & the Supreme Court 

However,  while Presidents can change the composition, they have virtually no influence over any one of the nine Justices who make a decision, including the ones they have appointed. Justices have life tenure, so the president can make no threat of removal against them. 

Trump Transforms the Judiciary?

The numbers tell a clear story. There are a total of 816 active federal judges comprising the supreme court, the 13 appellate courts, and 91 district courts. In just one term Trump was able to appoint 28% of those judges due to past and continuing vacancies. Most importantly, he appointed 33% of America’s nine supreme court justices and 30% of the appellate judges. The vast majority of his appointments were white males – not one of his 54 appellate judges is Black. But what really stands out is the age of his appointees. The average age of his appellate judges was 47 (five years younger than those selected by Barack Obama). Six of those were in their 30s, and 20 were under 45. By contrast, of the 55 appellate judges picked by Obama – in eight years, not four – none were in their 30s and only six were younger than 45.

Trump’s judicial appointments will shape American jurisprudence for decades to come. The Federal Judicial Center has found that this age disparity means that Trump judges will serve 270 more years than Obama’s judges, and they will decide thousands more cases. Moreover, the average tenure for a supreme court justice has increased from 15 years in the early 1970s to 27 years in more recent years, due in large part to the younger age of the justices at the date of appointment.

The Trump legacy of judicial appointments is most apparent in the recent behavior of the supreme court. A new term has been coined – the shadow docket – which refers to the sudden uptick in emergency requests filed by the government. In the 16 years preceding the Trump presidency only eight such requests were filed, and, of those, only four were granted. By contrast, during Trump’s four-year term, 41 such applications were made, of which 24 were granted – a 70% success rate that supported Trump’s policies. These cases are heard without full briefing, without oral argument, and often result in a single-sentence order as opposed to a full reasoned opinion.

One such decision overturned, by a 5-4 order, a Wisconsin trial court order allowing an extension for the receipt of absentee ballots. The last-minute supreme court decision issued the day before the election caused chaos and confusion. A second example of how the now safely pro-Trump court supported his policies involved his administration’s rule prohibiting migrants from seeking asylum in the US before seeking it in the countries through which they had travelled. The lower court suspended enforcement of this unprecedented rule, but the supreme court allowed the ban to take effect immediately even as the case proceeded through the lower courts. Another particularly disturbing example involved four death penalty cases where a lower court halted four executions because the use of pentobarbital to kill the prisoners would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In a 5-4 ruling, issued after 2am, the stay was overturned and at least one of the executions carried out – the first federal prisoner to be executed in 17 years.

Most recently, in yet another emergency appeal, the supreme court by a 5-4 margin, refused to block the newly enacted Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, allowing that rule to be enforced for the foreseeable future. This emergency request was brought by abortion providers after the very conservative fifth circuit court of appeals, to which Trump had appointed six judges, stopped the trial court from holding a hearing as to whether the new law could take immediate effect. A month later a trial judge blocked the law from taking effect and the fifth circuit promptly reversed. The Department of Justice is now appealing that decision to the supreme court.

In 2022, President Biden publicly criticized the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v Jackson, calling it a “tragic error.” This decision overturned the constitutional protection for abortion established in Roe v Wade in 1973. Biden urged voters to elect more Democrats to Congress in the midterm elections of 2022 to strengthen abortion rights. He stated that Congress could create a law guaranteeing the right to abortion, which all states would have to follow. Additionally, he directed the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure access to reproductive health clinics and protect the privacy of users. (See Executive Orders) This situation highlights the ideological conflict within the court and suggests that the president may influence future decisions by the justices, who might consider his criticisms.

The case, Biden v Texas (2021), forced the Biden administration to abandon his more liberal approach of allowing asylum seekers to cross the border to process their claims and to return to more restrictive policies.

Presidents can propose a change to the Constitution to reverse a Supreme Court decision. Some have even suggested expanding the court by adding more justices. The Constitution does not set a specific number of justices, so a president could quickly increase the total by two or three to gain a majority. However, the idea of expanding the court has never been carried out. Franklin Roosevelt was the last president to seriously consider this in 1937.

In the landmark case Trump v. United States (decided 1 July 2024), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that former presidents possess broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts committed while in office. 

In a 6–3 decision divided along ideological lines and authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the conservative majority established a three-tiered framework defining the limits of presidential legal liability.

Absolute Immunity: Presidents have total immunity from criminal prosecution for actions that fall within their "core constitutional purview" and exclusive executive authority. The Court explicitly ruled that Trump’s discussions with Justice Department officials regarding potential election fraud fell into this category. 

Presumptive Immunity: Presidents are presumed immune for all other "official acts" falling within the wider perimeter of their responsibilities. This presumption can only be overcome if prosecutors prove that bringing criminal charges would pose absolutely no danger or intrusion into executive branch functions. The Court categorised Trump’s pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to alter election certification as a presumptively immune official act. 

No Immunity: Presidents enjoy zero criminal immunity for purely private or "unofficial" acts.

Louisiana v. Callais (28 April 2026) — The Dismantling of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act

In a 6–3 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the conservative majority severely weakened Section 2, which protects minority voters from discriminatory redistricting maps. 

Ruling: The Court struck down a Louisiana congressional map that featured two majority-Black districts, declaring it an unconstitutional "racial gerrymander". [1, 2]

• The New Limit: The Court ruled that race cannot be the primary factor when drawing or mandating equitable voting maps. Furthermore, it established that a state’s redistricting map can only be challenged under Section 2 if litigants can prove intentional racial discrimination. 

• The Impact: Civil rights advocates and dissenting Justice Elena Kagan noted that the ruling effectively allows states to racially gerrymander as long as they frame the lines as permissible partisan gerrymandering, making Section 2 nearly inoperable

Trump v. Cook / Trump v. Slaughter: These cases test whether the president has the absolute constitutional authority to fire independent agency heads and Federal Reserve governors (such as Fed Governor Lisa Cook) without standard statutory "for cause" protections. 

The Birthright Citizenship Challenge: The justices are deciding the legality of Trump’s high-profile executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, with several justices expressing skepticism over whether a president can bypass the 14th Amendment via executive decree.

The power of the Presidency has expanded greatly since the drafting of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has tended to allow this expansion. However, Trump is pushing the boundaries of presidential power farther than most modern presidents. The Supreme Court cases that will determine his ability to overturn birthright citizenship and to extend his power to dismiss heads of independent federal agencies will test how far the Court will permit Trump to go.

Has Trump changed the Presidency?