Before the Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday on former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution, his stance was widely seen as a brazen and cynical attempt to delay his trial. The practical question in the case was thought to be not whether the court would rule against him, but whether it would act quickly enough to allow the trial to move forward before the 2024 election.

Instead, members of the court’s conservative majority treated Trump’s claim that he could not face charges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election as a difficult and compelling issue. They did so, said Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, by looking away from Trump’s conduct.

“What struck me most about the case was the tireless efforts of several of the judges on the conservative side to fail to focus on, consider or even acknowledge the facts of the actual case before them,” he said.

That’s what they said. “I am not arguing the particular facts of this case,” Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, but instead posited an alternative reality in which the grant of immunity “is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want.”

Immunity is needed, he said, to ensure that the sitting president has reason to “peacefully leave office” after losing an election.

Justice Alito explained: “If an incumbent who loses a very close and hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president could retire peacefully but that he could be criminally prosecuted by a staunch political opponent, wouldn’t he? “Will that lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson took a more direct approach. “If the possibility of criminal liability is ruled out, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be encouraged to commit crimes with abandon while in office?” she asked.

Supreme Court arguments are often dignified and serious, laden with impenetrable jargon and focused on subtle changes in legal doctrine. Thursday’s argument was different.

It featured “some amazing moments,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University.

Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell, said “the apparent lack of self-awareness on the part of some of the conservative justices was surprising.” He noted that “Justice Alito was concerned that a hypothetical future president would try to retain power in response to the risk of being prosecuted, without paying attention to the actual former president who remained in power and now seeks to escape prosecution.”

In the real world, Professor Karlan said, “it’s really hard to imagine a ‘stable democratic society,’ to use Justice Alito’s word, where someone who did what Donald Trump allegedly did before January 6 faces no criminal consequences. for their actions.”

In fact, he said, “if Donald Trump is a harbinger of presidents to come, and from now on presidents refuse to leave office and engage in efforts to undermine the democratic process, we will have lost our democracy regardless of what he decides.” the Supreme Court.”

The conservative justices did not seem concerned that Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, said his client was free during his presidency to commit illegal acts, subject to prosecution only after a House impeachment trial and a conviction in the Senate. (There have been four presidential impeachments, two for Trump, and no convictions.)

The liberal justices asked if he was serious, posing hypothetical questions.

“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and orders the military or someone to assassinate him,” Judge Jackson asked, “is it within his official acts that he can obtain immunity?”

Sauer said “that could very well be an official act” that is not subject to prosecution.

Justice Elena Kagan tried it too. “What about,” she said, “if a president orders the military to stage a coup?”

Sauer, after quite a bit of back and forth, said that it “could well be” an official act. He admitted that “it certainly sounds very bad.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, who participated in the case despite his wife Virginia Thomas’s vigorous efforts to overturn the election, was not so sure.

“In the not-too-distant past, the president or certain presidents participated in various activities, coups or operations like Operation Mongoose when I was a teenager and yet there were no prosecutions,” he said, referring to the efforts of the Kennedy administration . to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba.

Professor Murray said she was surprised by that comment, apparently presented “as evidence that there was a long history of executive involvement in coup attempts”.

Justice Alito also turned to history. “What about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II?” he asked. Could that, he asked, have been charged with conspiracy against civil rights?

Prompted by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, Sauer added another requirement for holding a former president accountable. Not only must there first be an impeachment trial and conviction in Congress, but the criminal statute in question must also specify clearly and in as many words, as few do, that it applies to the president.

That seemed like too much to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the member of the court’s conservative wing who seemed most concerned about the breadth of Trump’s arguments.

Returning to “Justice Kagan’s example of a president ordering a coup,” Justice Barrett outlined what she understood to be Mr. Sauer’s position.

“Are you saying he couldn’t be prosecuted for that, even after a conviction and impeachment process, if there wasn’t a statute that expressly referenced the president and made it a criminal offense for the president?”

Correct, said Mr. Sauer.

The court will issue its ruling sometime between now and early July. It seems likely to say that at least some of Trump’s conduct was part of his official duties and was therefore subject to some form of immunity.

The court is unlikely to draw those lines itself and instead send the case back to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court in Washington for further proceedings.

“If that is the case,” Professor Murray said, “that could further delay the prospect of a trial, meaning that whatever is ultimately decided about the scope and substance of presidential immunity, “The court will have effectively immunized Donald Trump from criminal liability in this case.”

There is a real possibility, Professor Karlan said, that “there will not be a trial until well into 2025, if at all.”

In sending the case back to the trial judge, he said, “separating the official from the private acts into some kind of granular detail essentially gives Trump everything he wants, whether the court calls it immunity or not.”