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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

#451

Post by jasonlotito »

treeFall wrote: post #185
lolinder wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give the majority opinion its own voice: > The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energ…

Then it sounds like Sotomayor is being extreme by conflating domestic political assassinations as an "official act." Does she not understand the difference?

A president could put a bullet through a political rivals head and say he was "to the best of his ability, preserving, protecting, and defending the Consitution of the United States" if that political rival was calling for the "termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" and was preparing to do it.

I could see the argument being made that yes, that's an official act. You'd have to argue why it's okay for a President to abandon their oath of office.

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

#452

Post by _heimdall »

Buttons840 wrote: post #259
lolinder wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give the majority opinion its own voice: > The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energ…

> "The President is not above the law." What does that even mean if it's impossible to prosecute the President? What does that even mean?

I believe the best clarificstion there is that you have to consider the person and the office separately. When acting as the president and largely executing his duties as defined by Congress and the Constitution, he can't be charged. If the person does something outside of the office's powers then immunity doesn't hold.

Meaning, if the president shoots a random bystander on the street they can be charged with murder. If the president orders a military strike as part of an official operation and done through proper channels, they can't be charged if it later turns out the intel was bad or the strike went wrong in some way.

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

#453

Post by KingOfCoders »

criddell wrote: post #394
alphabetatheta wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible take. The Supreme Court case severely limits even the use of evidence to prosecute a President. The majority ruling says that as long as something is done in "official" capacity the intentions don't matter. EDIT: This ruling probably retroactively clears Nixon from Watergate. It would make it illegal to use the tapes as evidence against him.

Does it say anything about the person who carries out the order from the President? If a member of Seal Team 6 did assassinate a political rival of the President, would they also be immune from prosecution? To me it sounds like the kind of order they would refuse.

Just pardon everyone in the United States that act on your orders every morning after you get up before breakfast.

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

#454

Post by impossiblefork »

throw0101b wrote: post #6

One summary: > In a ruling on the last day before the Supreme Court’s summer recess, and just over two months after the oral argument, a majority of the court rejected the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning. As an initial matter, Roberts explained in his 43-page ruling, presidents have absolute immunity for their official acts when those acts relate to the core powers granted to them by the Constitution – for example, the powe…

This summary sounds much more tolerable than my initial reading, and I think what constitutes the discrepancy is the absence of the statement

> In a ruling on the last day before the Supreme Court’s summer recess, and just over two months after the oral argument, a majority of the court rejected the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning. As an initial matter, Roberts explained in his 43-page ruling, presidents have absolute immunity for their official acts when those acts relate to the core powers granted to them by the Constitution – for example, the power to issue pardons, veto legislation, recognize ambassadors, and make appointments

which I can't find in the linked article, but which is of course in what you've linked to.

In those enumerated things I think the ruling is quite tolerable, but the decision is much broader than that, and this presumptive immunity, etc. becomes quite burdensome.

It's going to be like the state secrets privilege, and that has already allowed people to get away with torture, even people whose identities are well known, and where there is clear, unambiguous evidence that they were involved.

What Roberts says almost makes it sound alright, but it definitely isn't.

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

#455

Post by lumb63 »

lolinder wrote: post #179
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…

To give the majority opinion its own voice: > The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energ…

I think and hope that the results of this ruling will be less extreme than the dissent warns. It could potentially be very bad, though. The word “official” is doing a lot of lifting in this ruling. If it is not interpreted too liberally, then perhaps not that much is “official” and thus immune. If it is interpreted the other way, then this could be bad.

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

#456

Post by BadHumans »

asdff wrote: post #447

Can anyone pencil out the real danger of this position? Sotomayors opinion seems to posit that a president can receive a bribe and pardon someone for that and this is an official, immune act. However, I don't think soliciting a bribe would be considered an official act of the POTUS, and by what I have been able to understand from this opinion would still be subject to prosecution. I also think that this opinion seems…

With the Court killing the Chevron Deference, they have given themselves all the power to decide what is an official act and what isn't. Anything not spelled out in plain terms will be interpreted by them and nothing is spelled in plain terms.

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

#457

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #447

Can anyone pencil out the real danger of this position? Sotomayors opinion seems to posit that a president can receive a bribe and pardon someone for that and this is an official, immune act. However, I don't think soliciting a bribe would be considered an official act of the POTUS, and by what I have been able to understand from this opinion would still be subject to prosecution. I also think that this opinion seems…

[deleted]

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

#458

Post by lizardking »

grotorea wrote: post #268

It's interesting that even in the Roman Republic the immunity ended after the end of your term, and you could be prosecuted for official acts taken during it. And even let to Caesar fighting to keep himself in office at all times to avoid inevitable prosecution. https://theconversation.com/from-caesar-to-trump-immunity-is...

This is what has Netanyahu fighting for his political life at the moment.

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

#459

Post by jmyeet »

jimbokun wrote: post #360
janalsncm wrote: post #241

Maybe we can stop acting like the Founding Fathers were political geniuses. They created a system where the only real recourse against a president is political, and a political system where political recourse is essentially impossible. A two party system is the logical conclusion of a first past the post voting system, which they have created. It is a bug, and fixing it is also effectively impossible.

They wrote the document defining the currently longest running continuous government in the world. Is the Constitution perfect? No. But it's still fair to call them geniuses for what they accomplished. Also, you are arguing the Founders interpretation of the Constitution is the same as the current Supreme Court. I'm not sure they would agree, but there's no way we can ever know.

The Founding Fathers created a government that:

- Led to a bloody civil war that was the most deadly war in human history (until WWI), over 600,000 Americans dead, just ~75 years later;

- Largely wiped out the indigenous people of North America;

- Enshrined chattel slavery;

- Denied the right to vote to women (and in fact all non-white people); and

- Has been involved in, responsible for and/or complicit with many coups in the rest of the world [1].

Maybe it's not the best thing to celebrate.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

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

#460

Post by beaeglebeachedd »

janalsncm wrote: post #443
beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 10th amendment was supposed to restrain the federal government to a few enumerated powers. It was gutted via interstate commerce being everything, and you can't give it up because people will start screaming about the civil rights act or the EPA or something. President, as envisioned by founders, should barely even matter outside of war.

> the civil rights act How would you square the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause with enumerated powers?

The 14th amendment is a restriction on government. Civil rights acts on private entities involved in intrastate trade.

CRA also expressly allows racism unlike the 14th. For instance the civil rights act allows a business to preferentially treat an Indian in a near reservation (but off res) business while outlawing discriminating say in favor of blacks near a historically black neighborhood.

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