On the evening of January 6, 2021, retired North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin had a nine-minute conversation with former President Donald Trump. This call followed weeks of efforts by Martin to find any legal means to keep Trump in power, during which he peddled fringe theories of election fraud and constitutional law to state officials and the Supreme Court.
Just 20 days after the insurrection, Martin had another intimate audience with another powerful right-winger: He taught a three-day seminar on constitutional law with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for Regent University Law School in Virginia, where Martin was the dean at the time.Â
This link between a Supreme Court justice and such a close legal adviser to Trump’s Big Lie efforts has not been reported previously, and it adds to mounting questions about Alito’s sympathy for Trump heading into the election.Â
Despite evidence at the time that Martin was part of the Trump campaign’s legal brain trust and fed Trump radical ideas about the Constitution, Alito taught the three-day seminar with him again in 2022.
Martin and Alito did not respond to The Intercept’s questions for this story.Â
“It was and continues to be a shock to the system knowing that the upper echelons of the legal community used their legal talents to subvert the will of the people,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, “and that Supreme Court justices of all people are friends with these individuals.” Â
Martin’s continued access to Alito even after January 6 also illustrates just how little scrutiny Martin ever faced. While other prominent Trump legal advisers like John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani have faced sanctions for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Martin has never publicly accounted for his role. He’s still a law school dean, now at High Point University, a private university in North Carolina, which also did not respond to The Intercept’s questions about Martin’s relationship with Alito.Â
Martin remains active in prestigious legal organizations, including the American Law Institute and American Bar Association committees, where he recently sat on a judicial ethics panel and moderated another about election law. He was at the Republican National Convention in July, and a far-right group recently floated Martin as a potential Supreme Court nominee.Â
Crossing Paths
In 2019, after more than 20 years on the North Carolina Supreme Court and four as its chief justice, Martin stepped down and moved into legal education. He took over as dean of Regent Law, which is part of the Christian university founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. In a blog post announcing a new constitutional law center — named after Robertson — Martin wrote that its purpose was to promote originalism and other “first principles in constitutional law,” while “educating and cultivating the next generation of Christian lawyers.”
During Martin’s first year, Regent added Alito as a “Senior Lecturing Fellow,” along with 11 other prominent conservatives such as Ken Starr. Some of these new Regent lecturers had clear connections to Martin, including two fellow retired North Carolina judges and the general counsel of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, who clerked for Martin after law school.Â
Arch-conservative Alito was a natural fit to teach at Regent, where another Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, was already on the faculty. Â
In the years before starting at Regent, Alito wrote decisions that chipped away at the Obamacare contraception mandate and weakened public-sector unions. During the Trump administration, Alito joined decisions that favored presidential authority, like the 5-4 ruling affirming the “Muslim ban” despite Trump’s many statements about its discriminatory aims.
More recently, Alito faced calls to recuse from cases related to the January 6 insurrection after it came out that an upside-down American flag — a common “Stop the Steal” symbol — was flying outside his house in January 2021. Alito declined to recuse, largely blaming his wife and a dispute with neighbors for the flag incident. “My wife is fond of flying flags,” he wrote in May 2024 to members of Congress. “I am not.”
Alito also had some history with Regent Law, where he keynoted the school’s 25th anniversary banquet in 2011. But he and Martin had few clear ties before teaching together, beside an advisory board they joined together at Duke Law School in January 2019.Â
In the summer of 2020, Justice Alito strongly dissented against the court’s decision that it was illegal for employers to discriminate against gay and trans workers. Shortly after the election, he delivered a politically charged speech to the Federalist Society, criticizing the lack of tolerance for opposing views in many law schools.
Between Trump’s defeat in November 2020 and the insurrection on January 6, Martin was notably active, according to The Intercept. Records show that Martin promoted a radical theory about state legislatures having absolute authority over the selection of presidential electors, which influenced influential state legislators like Mark Finchem of Arizona.
Martin played a key role in pitching a lawsuit based on this theory to the Supreme Court in a case called Texas v. Pennsylvania. However, the case was dismissed for lack of standing, and a milder version of the theory was rejected by the Court.
Despite the controversy surrounding his involvement in the Big Lie, Martin continued to teach seminars with Justice Alito. Public scrutiny over his role in developing baseless Supreme Court briefs and his association with election deniers led to his departure from Regent University and subsequent appointment as the founding dean of a new law school at High Point University. The American Law Institute, a highly influential legal organization in the United States, welcomed Martin as a member in 2009. The organization issued a press release regarding Martin’s move to High Point University, where he was appointed as the founding dean of the School of Law. Berkeley Law School’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, praised Martin in his capacity as the president of the American Association of Law Schools.
Following Martin’s appointment at High Point, there was media speculation about his role advising Trump after the 2020 election. Progressives in North Carolina raised concerns, with a billboard stating, “MARK MARTIN BETRAYED OUR CONSTITUTION.”
Both Regent and High Point have avoided addressing questions about Martin’s involvement with Trump after the 2020 election. A spokesperson for High Point stated that Chief Justice Martin has not supported any betrayal of the Constitution or insurrection.
Despite the controversies, Martin remains active in the legal community, appearing on the cover of legal magazines and participating in panels on judicial ethics. Alito, on the other hand, has made controversial decisions and aligned himself with the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
As the Supreme Court’s role in future decisions becomes crucial, the connection between Martin and the legal strategies of the Big Lie remains a point of interest. Could you please rewrite this sentence for me?
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