Not since 2000 has the Supreme Court been as centrally involved in a presidential election as it will be when it meets on Monday for a final decision day, closing a momentous nine-month term.  If the Court issues a ruling tomorrow on former President Donald Trump’s claim to total immunity to criminal prosecution, it will be a political bombshell as well as a judicial one – no matter how the case comes out.

In 2000, a deeply divided Court decided a ballot-counting dispute in that year’s presidential election, with the legal effect that Republican George W. Bush won the White House over Democrat Al Gore.

The Trump case now awaiting a decision will not decide the winner of this year’s Biden vs. Trump contest, but almost certainly will have a significant influence on that campaign in the weeks to come before the election is held on November 5.

It might even have an impact on whether Joe Biden and Donald Trump do become the formal nominees for the Presidency at conventions this summer.  The Republican convention starts July 15, the Democrats’ starts August 19.

Even if the Court does not grant Trump absolute legal immunity, a decision might still help him politically by further delaying his still-suspended trial on criminal charges arising out of the January 6, 2021, violent attack on the U.S. Capitol – the uprising that threatened to deny Joe Biden his victory in 2020.

It is generally assumed, among close observers of the Court and its practices, that it will decide the case of Trump v. United States before it recesses for the summer and that it will do so tomorrow.  It has been deliberating over the case in private for nine weeks, and it supposedly was doing so on an expedited schedule, although criticism over its pace has risen as the weeks passed after a public hearing by the Justices on April 25.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts did announce on Friday that the final decisions of the current term will be released on Monday but, as usual, did not say what specific rulings will be released.  There are three or four rulings remaining, depending no how the Court packages some of them.  The Trump case stands alone, though.

Here are the Court’s main options on the Trump immunity case;

• The Court could rule for Trump by granting him the full immunity he claims. That is widely considered to be a long shot, at most.
• It could decide that he has some degree of immunity to the four charges in the January 6 case.
• It could say, for example, that he cannot be prosecuted for any actions he took that were within the outer reaches of his official duties while he was in the White House. (He was still President after the 2020 election and remained in office until January 20, two weeks after the Capitol attack.)
• It could decide that he has no immunity to any of the four January 6 charges. That option, too, seems remote.
• It might pose new legal questions surrounding the January 6 case that it wants lower courts to sort out first, before the Court would decide the immunity case in a final way. (This could include a question about whether Trump’s case is affected by a decision the Court issued on Friday, narrowing the scope of a 2002 federal criminal law – the basis of two of the charges against Trump. Friday’s decision did not involve Trump directly; it involved one of the rioters who had joined in the Capitol assault.)

It is also possible that the Court would not decide anything about the immunity case at this time.   If it has not been able to put together a ruling on that question that has the support of at least five Justices, it could simply hold the case over until its next term, perhaps adding some new questions for lawyers to answer, to help further clarify the dispute.  (If it takes that option, it would so in a simple order, not a formal ruling that is fully explained.)

Another reason for not deciding now is that the Court’s majority might decide that, because the nation is now in the midst of this year’s presidential election campaign, the Court should not act on a case that might strongly influence voters, one way or another.  Of course, opting not to decide now no doubt could itself have an influence on the voters, because they would not know how the January 6 case would come out before they went to the polls.

The range of options is so wide because of the importance of this case and the core constitutional question it raises, and because the Court’s nine Justices are quite often split deeply along ideological lines.  (Few observers, if any, expect the Court to be unanimous in acting on the Trump case, however they rule or don’t rule.)

A fundamental question the Court will have had to ask itself is what role it should have, or should not have, in resolving such a high-profile controversy potentially affecting the most important election the nation ever holds — for the Presidency.  The Court’s conservative majority is quite devoted to what it calls the ”Purcell principle” – named for a 2006 decision in an Arizona case, Purcell v. Gonzalez, cautioning courts not to order changes in election rules close to elections because of potential confusion for voters.

Moreover, every Justices who has served on the Court since the Bush v. Gore decision in 2000 is fully aware of the widespread criticism of that ruling, with critics claiming that the majority there ruled as it did intentionally to hand the Presidency to George Bush.  That decision is often called, by critics, a “self-inflicted wound” on the Court’s reputation for integrity and impartiality.

No matter what the Court decides to do tomorrow about the Trump immunity controversy will surely draw that kind of criticism, from those who believe it will benefit or harm either Trump or Biden.

Any delay by the Court that keeps the immunity issue undecided right now has the very real potential for delaying a trial of the January 6 case until after the November election.  Whatever form that delay might take, it would benefit Trump by making certain that he would not face potential conviction in that case – or any other case — until after the November election.  (Trump’s conviction in a New York state court on charges of illegally influencing his 2016 election already seems to have had some effect on voters’ attitudes.)

Trump’s federal trial on the January 6 charges had been scheduled to start in early March – four months ago.  It might well have been close to finishing by now, had it gone ahead then.  However, the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, had to delay it after Trump appealed to higher courts her ruling that he was not entitled to immunity to the charges.

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, who is pursuing the January 6 charges, tried unsuccessfully last December to get the Supreme Court to hear the immunity issue, without waiting for further lower court action on Trump’s immunity, but the Justices swiftly refused, opting to wait until lower courts had ruled.

The Court at the end of February agreed to rule on the immunity question.  It held a hearing – the last of the term – on April 25.  Originally scheduled for one hour, the hearing lasted two hours and 40 minutes.  The transcript runs to 177 pages.

Since that hearing, the Justices have discussed the case in one or more private conferences.  After casting an initial, temporary vote on the immunity question, one Justice – who it was is not known to the public – was named to start drafting an opinion.  The process has continued for nine weeks, with perhaps many revisions of a lead opinion and, quite likely, several separate opinions.

If the decision is to be released in a final form, that would come soon after the Court goes to the bench Monday morning at ten.  Any opinions released at the time will be made public in reverse order of the seniority of the decisions’ main authors.  (As soon as a ruling is published, it will appear on the “Opinions of the Court” section, under the heading “Opinions” on the left side of the website, supremecourt.gov.  Social media also will report it promptly.)

Among other cases awaiting final decisions are two vitally important cases, testing the power of state governments to pass laws to regulate what is said or depicted on the Internet’s social media.

Once the opinions that are ready are released, the Court will then end the term and recess for the summer.  If it is going to order a new hearing in the Trump case, that would probably come in a simple order, made public later in the day Monday or on Tuesday.

Whatever occurs tomorrow or this week, the Court will not be finished with the legal saga surrounding Donald Trump.  Appeals to the Court are likely to be filed by Trump after he is given a sentence (at a hearing July 11) for his 34-count conviction in the New York state court case, and after further developments in other cases in lower courts.

Even though the Justices will soon be in recess, they can act on emergency appeals during the summer months.  Their next term opens October 7.

As of now, no dates have been set for Trump’s trials on criminal charges in cases in federal court in Florida and state court in Georgia.  Both have been unfolding on slowed schedules.  If the Court were to decide the Trump immunity case tomorrow, that still might not have come in time to hold the January 6 federal trial in Washington before the election.  Several pre-trial procedures remain in that case.