There’s a realistic chance the U.S. Supreme Court throws out Ghislaine Maxwell’s child-sex-trafficking conviction and 20-year sentence. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I don’t think she’s more than 50 percent likely to prevail, or even, say 30 percent. But Maxwell has a shot, and her chances are far better than the typical Supreme Court appellant’s.

Maxwell’s last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court has nothing to do with her actual sex trafficking of minors. Her primary legal argument concerns not whether she received a fair trial or her substantive guilt. It’s all about basic, anodyne principles of contract law: DOJ made a deal — a bad one, maybe, but a deal — and then went back on its word, Maxwell contends.

Maxwell’s appeal springs from a vital inflection point in the sprawli

See Full Page