>The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. I would consider this an extreme knee jerk take, but it's Sotomayor saying it. https://x.com/mikedebonis/status/180…
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
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think that’s the argument, yes. I think it’s facially a bad one when you consider all the examples of functional police that lack QI. Makes me skeptical that it’s a good faith argument.
AFAIK, QI no longer exists in England (not sure about Scotland or N.I.). And Germany never had it (civil cases for damages would be against the state, not the state representative).
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#213IANAL so could someone explain to me - does this ruling apply to the "porn actress hush money" trial or is it a separate issue? (I'd like to think that there's no way it's an "official act" of a president, but again, IANAL.)
The court is granting him blanket immunity on one count, and the rest the prosecutors need to clarify that the crimes were outside of the duty of his office.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#214>The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. I would consider this an extreme knee jerk take, but it's Sotomayor saying it. https://x.com/mikedebonis/status/180…
[0] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/seal-team-6-assassination-hy...
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#215Immunity 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 feel like you'd have a different opinion if it were you getting unintentionally killed!
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#216>The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. I would consider this an extreme knee jerk take, but it's Sotomayor saying it. https://x.com/mikedebonis/status/180…
My naive assumption is that ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival is not an official nor constitutionally authorized power, and thus would be prosecutable.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#217Perhaps the simple solution is that all presidents should serve 15 years in jail after serving their term. Then only extremely socially minded people would dare to do the job. There was a similar sci fi story I read. At the end of a war the rule was that all allied ( not enemy ) generals would be executed. The idea was that war was such a horrible concept that to lead one would require extreme sacrifice and social co…
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#218>The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. I would consider this an extreme knee jerk take, but it's Sotomayor saying it. https://x.com/mikedebonis/status/180…
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Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The President shouldn't have the legal authority to conduct any drone strikes without a declaration of war from Congress. We've been ignoring the Constitution for a very long time. What part of the Constitution are we ignoring? According to the Constitution, the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The Constitution does not say that war must be declared for the armed forces to operate. Thus, ord…
> The Constitution does not say that war must be declared for the armed forces to operate. It does. Armed forces killing people is a state of war. If not, it's policing then it's under the judiciary authority, not the president.
> It does.
Since the Constitution is a publicly available document, would you please point me to the spot where it says that? Thanks.