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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
#702Article III of the U.S. Constitution is incredibly brief [1]. I propose the Supreme Court be reconstituted such that for each case a panel of judges from the appellate courts is chosen by lot. They hear that case, write their opinion, and then go back to that work. New case, new lot. Having a permanent bench of judicial oligarchs made sense before telecommunication. It doesn’t anymore. Every ancient democracy used ra…
I’d be okay with that, but only if we have a review process where all Warren Court decisions are re-vetted by the newly constituted Supreme Court. You can’t spend half the 20th century having “judicial oligarchs” rewrite the constitution and then complain when a few court decisions go the other way. But what would be more fun is for the current Supreme Court to adopt the “emanations from penumbras” philosophy of judg…
Why stop there? Why not go back to Lochner?
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#703Well, I guess this ruling makes me eat my words, almost exactly a month ago, that Trump's 34 felony counts was "a good day" for the spirit of Montesquieu checks and balances in this country:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40529062#40529905
Sotomayor has channeled her inner-Scalia in her dissent, and she hit the nail on the head. This is now kingship, this is de-facto sovereign immunity.
This ruling was not constitutionally purposivist, it was not textualist, it was not originalist. It goes against the very founding of America in the contexts of its original conception and revolution. This is BAD.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This comment is a classic example of the ridiculous state of discourse around the Supreme Court right now on HN. So many people are trying to process legal theories through the amygdala and the result is a legal word soup that doesn't actually have any meaning. Chevron deference has absolutely zero to do with this and never would have. I'd go deeper, but Brandolini's Law is real and I simply don't have the energy any…
I'm certainly not law trained and open to being wrong so if you could find the energy I'm happy to listen. My reading of the situation is that the main confusion here is what constitutes an official act and a non-official act. With the removal of the Chevron Deference, all of the interpretation of ambiguous law now rest with the courts.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#705I'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…
> Trump's lawyers admitted as much in the oral arguments.
Trump's counsel did admit this, but the opinion contains no such carve out. It says "he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts" and declines to define what separates an official from an unofficial act, leaving it up to courts on a case-by-case basis. The dissent--rightly--points out that this is way more than Trump asked for:
> Inherent in Trump’s Impeachment Judgment Clause argument is the idea that a former President who was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for crimes involving his official acts could then be prosecuted in court for those acts. See Brief for Petitioner 22 (“The Founders thus adopted a carefully balanced approach that permits the criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts, but only if that President is first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate”). By extinguishing that path to overcoming immunity, however nonsensical it might be, the majority arrives at an official- acts immunity even more expansive than the one Trump argued for. On the majority’s view (but not Trump’s), a former President whose abuse of power was so egregious and so offensive even to members of his own party that he was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate still would be entitled to “at least presumptive” criminal immunity for those acts.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#706Can 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…
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Agreed, it's unfortunate to say but I think it should be noted.
We on HN are not immune to this.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#707I'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.
Which seems reasonable on its face, but it faces another issue. Now, what defines an 'official' act as president. And how loose do we want to play with those terms. If we want to play slippery slope, which is what the court seems to like to do, then something that should be illegal but can be deemed an official act is a President ordering the military to keep voters out of voting locations because they have a 'tip off' from someone in national security that a potential terrorist attack may or may not happen at voting locations. Right, we can end up in a situation where the president can find any loose way to justify anything they do.
That is where probably the blanket immunity comes into play. Its not definitionally blanket immunity, but it might as well functionally be blanket immunity.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, Trump was a candidate, not President at the time of most (all?) of those crimes. They also yeah probably can't be considered official acts even by _this_ Court.
That can't be concluded yet. It will most likely be decided again by SCOTUS - but by then, Trump may well have assumed office and pardoned himself and anyone else involved.
Even this court would have a hard time concluding that acts taken while running for President are official acts.
But practically they've made the President a dictator, so yeah who's going to stop him if he wins.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth reading the actual ruling rather than the reporting on it, which is downright awful.
Here's a sample of Sotomayor's dissent: > 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. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exc…
Serious question: how is assassination an official act? Asked another way, under what constitutional authority is the president charged with assassinating political leaders inside the United States?
I'm not saying a president couldn't try. I can imagine that. I cannot understand how it would be an official act. If the president runs out of Kleenex and opts for toilet paper instead, that is not an official act merely because he is president.
Re: Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with all reforms in the US it's not gonna happen as the party that benefits will block it. Same with implementing ranked choice, outlawing gerrymandering, campaign finance reform, etc. Systems always work to justify and perpetuate themselves. It's part of why our jobs can be such BS sometimes.
> it's not gonna happen as the party that benefits will block it The right and left are both railing against our justice system. At different levels. For different reasons. But that’s political capital on the floor. > Same with implementing ranked choice We have multiple jurisdictions with RCV [1]. Your purported impossibility has happened. > Systems always work to justify and perpetuate themselves We have reformed o…
For RCV, it is small localities no one cares about, and yes, that does include Alaska.