Doesn’t anybody remember Nixon?

“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

That claim by former president Richard Nixon, justifying his criminal activity in a 1977 interview with David Frost, has been universally mocked as absurd. It was so legally outrageous that Nixon had never bothered taking his argument to the Supreme Court to rule on his claim.

A three-judge Appeals Court ruled in Donald Trump’s case that a president is not above the law. In any sane world, today’s Supreme Court justices would have just let that decision stand. Instead the court has decided in essence to rule on whether Nixon’s claim of presidential immunity is valid, regardless of the criminality of a president’s actions. We’re in a whole new world.

PAUL SHANNON Somerville