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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

#131

Post by skhunted »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #104
treeFall wrote: post #98

>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…

in practice, not really much of a change. Did FDR stand trial for interning Japanese people? Ok, ok he died too soon. Would he have ?

There’s a huge difference between “I think I can get away with this” and “The Supreme Court says I have absolute immunity”.

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

#132

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

yongjik wrote: post #121

IANAL 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.)

Honestly the decision is written in a fairly accessible style. You could try to read it

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

#133

Post by dooglius »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #104
treeFall wrote: post #98

>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…

in practice, not really much of a change. Did FDR stand trial for interning Japanese people? Ok, ok he died too soon. Would he have ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States?use...

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

#135

Post by OgsyedIE »

hartator wrote: post #111
margalabargala wrote: post #92

Earlier 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.

Art. 1 sec. 8 does not say that and no other part of the U.S. constitution mentions war.

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

#136

Post by mindslight »

alsaaro wrote: post #46

Curious how an ostensibly "conservative" court can ignore the concept of enumerated powers, the constitution clearly does not grant immunity to the President, so the conservative court invents immunity when none is explicitly granted. Indeed, the concept of immunity is recognized in the American constitution for legislators in a limited way, so this isn't an oversight by the framers corrected by Robert's conservative…

Because they're not conservative. They are radical reactionaries, to use the word that Moldbug himself coined. Essentially Republicans got tired of things changing despite their conservatism, got angry, and now it's not enough to slow change - they want to rewind us to the values of the 1980's or even the 1950's. This perspective is why they refer to any post-y2k mainstream social values as "activism".

The Democrats have now become the conservative party. Both in the abstract of wanting slow cautious change, and in the concrete principles that have long been held as conservativism - belief in American institutions, strong foreign policy to spread those institutions, the rule of law, and now even fiscal responsibility with having led the pull up from ZIRP!

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

#137

Post by danielmarkbruce »

treeFall wrote: post #98

>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…

It's extreme to the point of silliness. If a court decides that would fall under "official acts", we are already doomed.

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

#138

Post by klyrs »

haroldp wrote: post #83
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #4

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…

Obama ordered drone strikes that intentionally killed at least two Americans. One he copped to, one he denied was intentional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla... To my mind, that is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to be hamstrung by a fear of prosecution. (Trump ordered drone a drone strike that also killed Abdulrahman's eight-year-old Amer…

Yeah, this pearl-clutching about presidents being tried for criminal acts is loathsome. I think quite a lot of people believe that quite a few past presidents are guilty of war crimes, and that there should be real consequences for those crimes. My knowledge of history in this regard more or less begins with the Vietnam War: since 1955, I am not aware of a single president who hasn't ordered acts that are crimes against humanity. And throughout that time period, our crimes against humanity have brought ruin to much of the world. Perhaps presidents should fear the law.

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

#139

Post by jjk166 »

kibwen wrote: post #23
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If presidents could be prosecuted for their official acts then the next time the other party takes over they will just immediately find various crimes their predecessor “committed” (there are probably 10s of 1000s of them).

If presidents break the law, they should be prosecuted. I don't care who you are or what party you're with.

The issue is that presidents can be prosecuted even if they likely didn't break the law. It would be possible to just keep throwing bullshit charges at a former president either until one sticks or until their resources to fight off an unending string of legal battles is exhausted. It does make sense that the bar to prosecute someone should be higher when they are particularly likely to be the subject of malicious prosecution and the fear of such would interfere with them carrying out their duties.

The issue is that blanket immunity for official acts is not just raising the bar, it's launching it into orbit. Not only can a president not be prosecuted for questionable decisions or on scant evidence, they can not be prosecuted when their crimes are heinous and obvious so long as it is plausibly within their domain.

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

#140

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

afavour wrote: 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?

Do you mean beyond what's written in the decision itself? Do you have a specific criticism of what was written by the justices themselves?
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