Should the Supreme Court read Trump's Twitter?

President Trump talks a lot. Should everything he says be relevant in court?

That's an increasingly key question, as the president's personal rhetoric at rallies and on his busy Twitter account often diverges from the language of executive orders and other statements put out by his administration. When the resultant policies are challenged in court, judges are faced with a new conundrum of whether to consider Trump's personally expressed motives or official texts alone.

For example, in the court battles preceding Trump's issuance of the final, indefinite travel ban on visitors from eight nations, most of them majority-Muslim, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a previous version in part because of Trump's revealing rhetoric. The states of Washington and Minnesota "offered evidence of numerous statements by the president about his intent to implement a 'Muslim ban,'" the court noted, which showed the executive order was discriminatory in its intent.

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However, as a FiveThirtyEight analysis explains Monday, the Supreme Court would later disagree, with a majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledging Trump's comments but nevertheless concluding the final order was based on legitimate security considerations.

The question remains which approach will prevail going forward. "What's head-spinning about Trump is that there are a lot of cases where ... there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for doubt about his intentions," Richard Primus, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan, told FiveThirtyEight. Still, Primus predicted SCOTUS "will continue to insist on acting like they don't know the president's motivating attitudes," even though this could help Trump and any future presidents with similarly loose lips openly perpetrate abuses of power.

Read the full FiveThirtyEight breakdown of the implications of bringing Trump's tweets to court here.