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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

#761

Post by failuser »

Spooky23 wrote: post #641
sterlind wrote: post #552

> 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 exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immu…

This isn’t conservatism. It’s despotism. We’re probably a decade away from a coup.

Decade? You are optimistic.

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

#762

Post by qarl »

pyuser583 wrote: post #60
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. The Founders envisioned an extremely weak criminal justice system, especially for "their class of people." Defendants were given extremely strong protections, and convictions were the exception, not the rule. The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. So they added other mechanisms for presidential accountability: impeachment, elections, and the weakness of the office. Thes…

> Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors.

If that were true then defendants would waive their right to a jury trial. They don't.

The conviction rate is high because prosecutors don't bring weak cases.

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

#763

Post by tines »

Ancapistani wrote: post #722
kemotep wrote: post #310

My limited understanding of the ruling: The ruling states that the President is immune from prosecution while exercising official duties of the office of President but can be investigated by a special counsel that is appointed by an act of Congress, and if successfully impeached and convicted can then be charged with said crimes. “Unofficial” acts are not protected by this immunity but a special counsel is still requ…

> Out of context this is quite reasonable and level headed. That's why I'm opposed to making changes to the way the Court is selected and empaneled. The fact that it's inconvenient for one party right now is irrelevant. It'll be inconvenient for the other party soon enough. > In context of the hyper partisan landscape US politics are today, doesn’t seem likely without a supermajority opposition to be able to bring ch…

> Good. If it were easy to bring charges against a President, then Presidents wouldn't be able to do anything they were elected to do.

Leaving aside the difference between "bringing charges" and "successfully bringing charges," there's a big gap between "easy" and "impossible." Nobody wants presidents to be criminally liable for the things they do in good faith. But this ruling makes good faith irrelevant; it doesn't matter why they do an official act, it's immune.

The fact is that a former president exerted pressure on government officials in a way that would halt a lawful election and coordinated to subvert its true results by presenting fake results. In determining whether that was an official act, we cannot reference his motivations according to the SC's ruling.

Allow the motivation for official acts to be taken into consideration for prosecution, and a lot of the problems go away.

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

#764

Post by luxuryballs »

karmajunkie wrote: post #717
claytongulick wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In today's political environment I don't see an impeachment ever succeeding unless the opposing party has a super-majority in the US Senate. It's supposed to be hard to do. Impeachment is intended to be reserved for egregious violations or actions that most of congress (and by proxy, the citizenry) agree on.

it’s supposed to be hard. not impossible. and it’s pretty clear at least to me that the authors of the constitution very clearly intended presidents like trump to be thrown out of office.

the constitution loves presidents like Trump, because he actually acted as a constitutional president while in office instead of being a figurehead for manufacturing consent on behalf of the global hegemony

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

#765

Post by tacticalturtle »

claytongulick wrote: post #642
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #546

Article 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…

The lifetime appointment of Supreme Court justices is done specifically so that they aren't financially influenced by politics and party. I.e. their job doesn't depend on them ruling the "right" way. There are pros and cons to different approaches. There are differences at the state level for judges, being appointed vs elected. Each has problems. In TX, for example, judges are heavily influenced by mob mentality - th…

Federal justices still have lifetime appointments - and what the OP is describing wouldn’t change that.

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

#766

Post by kristjansson »

throwadobe wrote: post #518
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?

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.

That's not quite it. There's absolute ('blanket') immunity for acts that exclusively reserved for the president (vetos, pardons, etc.). There's presumptive immunity for other 'official acts', but that doesn't preclude the possibility that some official acts could be deemed or made illegal. There's no immunity for unofficial acts, but there's a pretty fine needle to thread in to determine an action is unofficial (if it's not 'palpably' so).

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

#767

Post by electrondood »

coffeemug wrote: post #89
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?

Yes. Ever since Bill Clinton (and probably before that, I was too young) the President and a non-trivial number of presidential candidates were either under an investigation of some sort, or a threat of such an investigation. Obviously Bill, Hillary, constant threats of investigation of George W Bush and Obama, special counsel investigating Biden, and all the Trump cases. Notably nothing ever comes out of these. This…

See, the difference is politically-motivated investigations YIELD NO CRIMES WHEN NO CRIME WAS COMMITTED.

Today's ruling is a solution to a problem that no one has actually had for the last 250 years, and which no one currently has.

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

#768

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

pyuser583 wrote: post #60
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. The Founders envisioned an extremely weak criminal justice system, especially for "their class of people." Defendants were given extremely strong protections, and convictions were the exception, not the rule. The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. So they added other mechanisms for presidential accountability: impeachment, elections, and the weakness of the office. Thes…

>The Constitution simply didn't envision a situation where the criminal justice system is more likley to hold someone accountable than an election or Congress

The constitution didn’t envision a sprawling legal services market to secure the freedom of criminals despite overwhelming evidence while poor people are enslaved like cattle in a nakedly classist and racist exercise of state power to maintain class divisions that afford the empowered unearned wealth power and privilege by virtue of birth.

Speaking of trends here-exceptions occur and get held up as some gotcha that only further betrays ignorance of the system and actually represents the calculated tokenization of the oppressed to act as a shield to scrutiny.

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

#769

Post by czl »

qarl wrote: post #762
pyuser583 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The Founders envisioned an extremely weak criminal justice system, especially for "their class of people." Defendants were given extremely strong protections, and convictions were the exception, not the rule. The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. So they added other mechanisms for presidential accountability: impeachment, elections, and the weakness of the office. Thes…

> Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors. If that were true then defendants would waive their right to a jury trial. They don't. The conviction rate is high because prosecutors don't bring weak cases.

That and juries are not informed they have a right to judge not just the defendant but also the fairness of the laws involved. Indeed anyone that mentions or admits this is removed from juries.

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

#770

Post by slongfield »

pyuser583 wrote: post #60
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. The Founders envisioned an extremely weak criminal justice system, especially for "their class of people." Defendants were given extremely strong protections, and convictions were the exception, not the rule. The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. So they added other mechanisms for presidential accountability: impeachment, elections, and the weakness of the office. Thes…

For what it's worth, conviction rates are not in the high 90%s.

The DOJ has a high conviction rate, at 93%, but Federal cases are the minority of cases in the USA. Most cases are state-level, and the conviction rates vary pretty significantly (E.g., California has a conviction rate of ~65% for property crime: Table 6 of https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/lr-2019-JC-disposition-o... )

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