To the Editor:

Linda Greenhouse’s fine essay “The Supreme Court’s Loyalty Test” (Sunday Review, Dec. 22) describes the significance of the court’s ultimate decisions in the three Trump-related cases it just agreed to review. Those decisions, she says, will “give the country much-needed clarity” about whether the court is more loyal to President Trump than to the rule of law.

But the fact that the court decided to review the cases tells us that it is more loyal to Mr. Trump. The court has failed the loyalty test.

There was no good reason for the Supreme Court to review the rulings of the three federal circuit courts that rendered decisions against Mr. Trump. If those rulings had been left to stand, the documents (tax returns, financial returns, records of conversations) and testimony that would damage this president, perhaps fatally, would have immediately been produced. And the Democrats’ claim that witnesses and additional documents should be part of the Senate impeachment trial would have added substance.

There are reasons a Supreme Court should take a case. Those reasons do not exist here. All the court’s action does is delay until the middle of next year — perhaps after the Senate trial — the production of documents and people that the public is entitled to see and hear from. That delay may well save Mr. Trump his presidency.