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Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

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Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#31
post #8

I'm dismayed by this ruling but I'm curious: can someone defend it? I'm able to understand the counter-perspectives to my own on many hot-button issues (2nd amendment, abortion bans) but this one seems very nakedly bad. But maybe I'm just not seeing the counterpoint?

This is like qualified immunity (usually for police), but applied to POTUS.

You want public servants to be able to do their jobs without fear of time-wasting litigation.

But, if you grant blanket immunity, the poilice (or POTUS) are free to do whatever they want.

We're quite clearly tilted way over into "do what they want" territory.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#32
post #10

"Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity, If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backs…

[flagged]

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#33

[flagged]

So since 1886? https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/

> In 1906, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co. that headnotes have no legal standing and therefore do not set precedent.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#34
post #10

"Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity, If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backs…

A president can still be impeached and removed, they may not "serve their debt to society" but the harm can be stopped by the states.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#35
At least with this one they've rescued us from doing national politics like a banana republic. You can't arrest Presidents for doing things they had the total latitude to do as Presidents. We can't have the courts deciding whether Presidents had good or illegitimate reasons for any arbitrary decision that they made during their presidency. It's madness.

If a president took a bribe for a position, prosecute him for taking a bribe (if it's not a gratuity, because Congress has declared tipping politicians legal.) But if he could have made the same decision because he liked someone's tie - it's nothing but second guessing, by a likely hostile later administration.

These people appoint all their campaign staff and big donors to government jobs. If that's legal, then any reason for anything they do which is left up to their discretion is legal. If it's not legal, have Congress make it not legal.

-----

edit: gaganyaan, you are wrong. If you think that the entire point is that a president cannot be prosecuted for taking a bribe, you should reevaluate your understanding of the entire point.

> Under Monday’s decision, a former president could be prosecuted for accepting a bribe, but prosecutors could not mention the official act, the appointment, in their case.

> Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the rest of Roberts’ opinion, parted company on this point. “The Constitution does not require blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which Presidents can be held liable,” Barrett wrote.

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#36
post #15

Immunity for things they do as part of their official duties. I suppose it’s reasonable but the question will now turn to what is actually an official duty. The opposite holding, where they are liable for everything, would be untenable. Could Obama be prosecuted for ordering drone strikes that unintentionally killed two Americans? It seems like that world would hamstring the president far too much. I don’t know if th…

>I suppose it’s reasonable but the question will now turn to what is actually an official duty. I'm fairly sure there's a full and complete list of these is explicitly in the Constitution.

> I'm fairly sure there's a full and complete list of these is explicitly in the Constitution.

Roberts disagrees in the decision (p. 17):

> Distinguishing the President’s official actions from his unofficial ones can be difficult. When the President acts pursuant to “constitutional and statutory authority,” he takes official action to perform the functions of his office. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 757. Determining whether an ac- tion is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s authority to take that action.

> But the breadth of the President’s “discretionary respon- sibilities” under the Constitution and laws of the United States “in a broad variety of areas, many of them highly sensitive,” frequently makes it “difficult to determine which of [his] innumerable ‘functions’ encompassed a particular action.” Id., at 756. And some Presidential conduct—for example, speaking to and on behalf of the American people, see Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U. S. 667, 701 (2018)—certainly can qualify as official even when not obviously connected to a particular constitutional or statutory provision. For those reasons, the immunity we have recognized extends to the “outer perimeter” of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are “not manifestly or pal- pably beyond [his] authority.” Blassingame v. Trump, 87F. 4th 1, 13 (CADC 2023) (internal quotation marks omit- ted); see Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 755–756 (noting that we have “refused to draw functional lines finer than history and reason would support”).

> In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. Such an inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of of- ficial conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose, thereby intruding on the Article II in- terests that immunity seeks to protect. Indeed, “[i]t would seriously cripple the proper and effective administration of public affairs as entrusted to the executive branch of the government” if “[i]n exercising the functions of his office,” the President was “under an apprehension that the motives that control his official conduct may, at any time, become the subject of inquiry.” […]

> Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law. For in- stance, when Fitzgerald contended that his dismissal vio- lated various congressional statutes and thus rendered his discharge “outside the outer perimeter of [Nixon’s] duties,” we rejected that contention. 457 U. S., at 756. Otherwise, Presidents would be subject to trial on “every allegation that an action was unlawful,” depriving immunity of its intended effect. Ibid.

* https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#37
post #19

Immunity for things they do as part of their official duties. I suppose it’s reasonable but the question will now turn to what is actually an official duty. The opposite holding, where they are liable for everything, would be untenable. Could Obama be prosecuted for ordering drone strikes that unintentionally killed two Americans? It seems like that world would hamstring the president far too much. I don’t know if th…

> the question will now turn to what is actually an official duty Fortunately, the past rulings of this court have made the jurisprudence abundantly clear: If Biden orders Trump to be assassinated, that's unofficial, and he can be prosecuted. If Trump orders Biden to be assassinated, that's official, and he has complete immunity. Easy, right?

Please don't take HN threads into political flamewar hell, or any other flamewar hell. That's what we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

#38
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. There are reasonable disagreements on where Presidential authority begins or ends on many topics, and you want the limits to be either through separation of powers (e.g., the Judicial Branch can bring an end to actions, the Legislative can i…

> Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. Hrm. Surely the implication you're outlining here is that the President will be breaking the law while carrying out "the roles of the office"? Is that not a concern?

The next sentence addresses that—there are reasonable disagreements to the extent that some actions are legal or not.
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