The DOJ offered Judge (Loose) Cannon a life-line: back of the important atrocity in your ruling (or we’ll take the matter over your head). She didn’t take the opportunity to clean up the mess she made, so now DOJ will ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to treat Cannon’s decision like the piece of corrupt legal dreck that it is. (Or at least to speedily undo the indefensible and dangerous way that Cannon is acting not like a judge, but like Trump’s loyal servant.
People often mention that 6 of the 11 justices on the 11th Circuit are Trump-appointed. The concern is that Cannon gives us an indication of what kind of corruption we should not be surprised to see coming out of a Trump-appointed majority on the Court.
I cannot claim to have deep and reliable knowledge of what “Trump-appointed” means regarding judges, but my strong guess is that Cannon is not typical. My guess is that the Trump-appointed judges generally involve people of some judicial quality whose views align well with those of the Federalist Society. But people who actually know something about the law and care about the judicial process being a worthy one.
Among the five dozen cases that Trump brought and lost in the courts trying to overturn a legitimate election, I believe that eight of them were Trump-appointed judges. Their allegiance to the law and the Constitution, not to the Trumpian criminal who was the first to refuse to accept his legitimate defeat, and they tossed Trump’s meritless cases out.
Judge Cannon’s decision is at least as meritless. (Neal Katyal — an exceptionally good authority on such things — was atypically scathing in declaring Judge Cannon’s two rulings the very worst he’d ever seen (“and that’s saying something,” Katyal said.))
On both the facts and the law, Cannon’s judgments are so deeply flawed that no group of justices — however conservative — would want to have left standing, as a wound on the American legal system, what with its explicit preferential treatment for Trump because he was President, and with its patently ridiculous refusal to accept the irresistible arguments of the DOJ about urgent matters of national security.
Maybe it’s the optimist in me, but I’m betting heavily that the 11th Circuit will give DOJ — and the rule of law — what it needs. (I hope the Court does it speedily, but I don’t know how the timing will get determined.)