Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 1001 posts

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

#521

Post by ceejayoz »

qqtt wrote: post #486
riskable wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The President is ultimately largely beholden to Congress. The government cannot sink into a dictatorship without the explicit approval of the majority of Congress. This is nonsense. The President can just assassinate all of their political rivals in Congress that would hold them to account. Before this ruling there was an assumption that any such actions would be prosecuted after the President was no longer in offi…

This is not really true though. Congress is responsible for granting authority to the President regarding valid military targets. This is why drone strikes are only legal against targets recognized by Congress as security threats. It cannot realistically happen for the President to start targeting individuals outside of Congressional authority. For your hypothetical situation to arise, Congress would have to declare…

> For your hypothetical situation to arise, Congress would have to declare members of Congress themselves as valid military targets.

Or just add them to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix.

"As reported previously, United States citizens may be listed as targets for killing in the database. Suspects are not formally charged of any crime nor offered a trial in their defense. Obama administration lawyers have asserted that U.S. citizens alleged to be members of Al Qaeda and said to pose an "imminent threat of violent attack" against the United States may be killed without judicial process. The legal arguments of U.S. officials for this policy were leaked to NBC News in February 2013, in the form of briefing papers summarizing legal memos from October 2011."

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

#522

Post by insane_dreamer »

marcell wrote: post #469
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?

Generally the way to hold a president accountable is to impeach him and remove him from office. Under this ruling, the court system is generally not a way to keep him accountable. So it’s not that there is no accountability or way to “punish”, a rogue president, it’s just a different method of accountability than what applies to you and me.

This does put the President above the law.

Congress can choose to impeach, but they are not doing so based on the laws of the land, but based on their own determination (whether it is in their best interest for that President to be gone or not), which (unsurprisingly) is split along political lines (which is why it's so hard to actually impeach the president).

Therefore impeachment is not a means to hold a President accountable for illegal or anti-democratic actions, but rather it is a means for a united Congress to have some power over the President in the event he managed to piss off enough people from both parties.

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

#523

Post by gmd63 »

boole1854 wrote: post #505
cdme wrote: 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]

Show the part of the constitution that mentions immunity for presidents. I read it again this morning after the decision and found nothing.

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

#525

Post by tines »

nataliste wrote: post #499
riskable wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The President is ultimately largely beholden to Congress. The government cannot sink into a dictatorship without the explicit approval of the majority of Congress. This is nonsense. The President can just assassinate all of their political rivals in Congress that would hold them to account. Before this ruling there was an assumption that any such actions would be prosecuted after the President was no longer in offi…

If president has gone rogue and is assassinating members of congress (or rival candidates, why would they need legal immunity ? Assassinating opponents is already the action of someone that refuses to relinquish office and has de facto immunity. They don't need the validation of the Supreme Court to do this; nobody is going to charge them in the case that it'll bring a death sentence.

> why would they need legal immunity?

Because there's a gap between here and there, and we don't want to make that gap narrower than it already is. The president can now do a whole lot of illegal shit that falls short of "assassinating anyone at any time," and face no consequences. By allowing one we inch closer to the other.

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

#526

Post by kristjansson »

theshrike79 wrote: post #376
lapcat wrote: 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.

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

Not without timely notification of and authorization by Congress.

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

#527

Post by Novosell »

jmyeet wrote: post #459
jimbokun wrote: post #360

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.

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 co…

The Taiping rebellion started before the American civil war and lead to far more deaths. On wikipedia the estimate is 20-30 million. Outside of that, just going to the wikipedia page for deadly wars will find many that dwarf the American civil war.

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

#528

Post by kelnos »

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…

This was my thought too. The ruling doesn't seem crazy; being legally liable for every single official act would actually make it untenable for the president to do many things a president needs to do without the real fear of prosecution if anything goes wrong. (And things go wrong! All the time!)

But what's an "official act"? I would hope that courts consider that definition very narrowly. Also disallowing juries to see discussion of official acts as evidence for related wrongdoing is disastrous.

Ultimately, though, it won't matter. Trump has effectively managed to delay this particular trial, and much of the remainder of its pre-trial process, until after the election and after the inauguration. I assume if he wins and takes office, he can instruct the DoJ to dismiss the case against him.

The Georgia case can still proceed, regardless of the outcome of the election, but Willis completely screwed that one up with her idiotic romantic decisions.

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

#529

Post by insane_dreamer »

dustincoates wrote: post #21
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?

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…

> 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.

No, we do not. That's the whole point of the checks and balances. If his political opponents are able to prove their case before the courts, showing that the president broke the law, then they should be able to.

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

#530

Post by jmcgough »

boole1854 wrote: post #505
cdme wrote: 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]

How is eradicating stare decisis considered "solid legal and philosophical principles"?
Post reply on HN