Deference as defense of law

The outcomes in two legal cases concerning Donald Trump have left many Americans wondering whether one of the country’s founding principle - that no one is above the law - still holds.

On Tuesday last week, the Department of Justice released part of a final report dismissing charges of criminal election interference despite detailing what department prosecutors saw as sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. Three days later, the judge in a New York trial that found Mr. Trump guilty of felony business fraud issued a sentence of unconditional discharge.

The decisions underscore the extraordinary legal challenges arising from Mr. Trump’s status as a former and future president. Yet the written records in the two cases also show that punishment is not the only expression of accountability. In democracies, the rule of law is often upheld in less tangible ways – through strict adherence to judicial decorum, impartiality, and restraint.

“This Court recognizes the importance of considering and balancing the seemingly competing factors before it,” wrote Judge Juan Merchan in his sentence ruling. He acknowledged the need to protect the executive branch from legal distraction and the Supreme Court’s expansion last summer of presidential immunity.

But the judge stopped short of dismissing the 34-count guilty verdict, as Mr. Trump had sought, arguing that “The sanctity of a jury verdict and the deference that must be accorded to it, is a bedrock principle in our Nation’s jurisprudence.” To set aside the judgment of ordinary citizens, he wrote, “would undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways.”

In his report on the investigation into electoral interference, special counsel Jack Smith crafted a detailed account of Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election results through deception. Yet he put constitutional norms above his own evident disappointment at halting the case.

“The election results raised for the first time the question of the lawful course when a private citizen who has already been indicted is then elected President,” he wrote. “The Department [of Justice] determined that the case must be dismissed without prejudice before Mr. Trump takes office.”

Quoting John Adams, Mr. Smith observed, “Our work rested upon the fundamental value of our democracy that we exist as ‘a government of laws, and not of men.’”

In his recent annual end-of-year report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts included a brief observation. “It is not in the nature of judicial work to make everyone happy,” he wrote.

Although Mr. Trump’s return to the White House on Monday likely marks the end of legal attempts to hold him accountable for past actions, the documents in those cases may yet help shape new democratic guardrails through future legislative debates – as happened after Watergate. They record the value of integrity in preserving the rule of law.