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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

#511
post #150

The essence, from the majority opinion https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf > nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. > And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. > Testimony or private records of the Pres…

> Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial Wouldn’t this have made it impossible to prosecute Nixon for Watergate?

Bit of a stretch to claim that was within his official duties.

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

#512
post #65

> 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. 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.

> 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.

Yes it does, by reserving for Congress the right to declare war. Obama's drone strikes were carried out under the 2001 AUMF against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

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

#513
post #487

It's remarkable the speed at which the court has discarded any semblance of legitimacy. Perhaps future administrations should simply ignore them and dare them to act.

[flagged]

Philosophical arguments aside, the fact that three justices appointed by Trump are then ruling on whether he should be granted immunity is in itself a conflict of interest that would not be allowed on any lesser court.

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

#514

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…

> Immunity for things they do as part of their official duties. How would attempting to overturn the results of a free and fair election be considered an "official duty"? If it is, then the Presidency became a dictatorship, leaving impeachment by Congress -- an extremely difficult bar -- the only recourse.

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

#515

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.

Would it? I am skeptical about this take and I am skeptical of Sotomayer’s take. What official capacity would Nixon have been undertaking? What official capacity would a seal team six assassination of trump be designated as? I’m also skeptical of her dissent strategy; dissents are key places to limit a ruling. Why not just say what seems crystal clear and say ‘nothing about this ruling should be taken to mean calling…

>Would it? I am skeptical about this take and I am skeptical of Sotomayer’s take. What official capacity would Nixon have been undertaking?

For the Nixon tapes, today's SCOTUS ruling would require the prosecution to convince a federal judge before trial that the value of the tapes in the criminal case greatly outweighs the general immunity from oversight presidents have when consulting advisors. Difficult, but not impossible. It probably would've given the same result in the Nixon case, because Nixon didn't use presidential powers to carry out the plan (just the cover up in the Saturday Night Massacre stage). If he had used an active FBI agent instead of a former one to place the bugs, then it might have been OK, according to today's ruling (see III.B.1 which grants immunity to Trump for his sham investigations using the DOJ).

>What official capacity would a seal team six assassination of trump be designated as?

The President is the head of the military and can direct them without consulting Congress. Congress is free to impeach him if he does so without authorization, but he'd have absolute immunity because this is a core power of the office.

Maybe you meant, "What reason could there be to justify that killing in the name of the nation or its people?" In which case, the President would never have to say. His motives are not even allowed to be investigated. See III.A from the majority opinion:

>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.

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

#516

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.

> Armed forces killing people is a state of war.

There hasn't been a single year of my life where US armed forces weren't killing someone somewhere in the world. The US military has been involved in armed conflicts around the globe in nearly every year since WWII but it hasn't declared many wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...

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

#517
I think a big problem here is that all existing laws and the system concerning presidents rests on one very important assumption. That the commander in chief is a decent, rational human being that carefully considers his actions and holds the interest of the United States and the Citizens in high regards.

It all falls apart and gets too complicated to regulate when the assumption is that you can't trust the person in office.

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

#518
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?

Everyone seems to be calling this "blanket immunity" but that's not right. It's immunity for official acts which are the prerogative of the president. Basically the president is allowed to do all presidential things without having to worry about whether it will be deemed illegal.

This doesn't mean that the president cannot be tried for some illegal act that was not their official duty. Murdering someone, for example.

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

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you mean that the US has the longest continuous running democracy - not just government [1] I think this true and I agree with you that the while the constitution is not perfect, it is still an incredibly impressive document. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-wor...

I find that list very questionable. I'm Swedish and while yes, we sorta got general voting rights for men in 1911, we didn't get truly general voting rights for men until 1918 and women 1919.

However, before that you could vote if you had enough captial. Is that democracy? That list says it isn't whilst saying that America, in which minorities and women could not vote, is a democracy. That seems like a line draw specifically to be able to say America is the oldest democracy, very disingenuous.

If you consider minorities and women to be people then America didn't become a true democracy until 1965.

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

#520
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the US shouldn't be able to conduct any kind of military operations against any country they haven't declared war on?

Correct.

So the US has to declare war on Russia and China in order to support Ukraine and Taiwan? Declaring war on those superpowers would be a serious act of aggression and start WW3.
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