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

91–100 of 1001 posts

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

#91

Post by chadash »

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.

This is a bit misleading. DAs have latitude about what to prosecute and if they don't think they can win, they dont have to bring it to court.

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

#92

Post by margalabargala »

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.

> 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, ordering a drone strike without Congress' input would seem well within the scope of the President's powers.

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

#93

Post by sowut »

chasd00 wrote: post #41
grecy wrote: post #5

[flagged]

i don't think that's included in "official duties".

it doesn't matter. the trump heuristic is the only way some people perceive the world. then they'll suggest some insane nonsense which is actually bad but they'll justify it with the trump heuristic

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

#95

Post by Matticus_Rex »

alsaaro wrote: post #46

Curious how an ostensibly "conservative" court can ignore the concept of enumerated powers, the constitution clearly does not grant immunity to the President, so the conservative court invents immunity when none is explicitly granted. Indeed, the concept of immunity is recognized in the American constitution for legislators in a limited way, so this isn't an oversight by the framers corrected by Robert's conservative…

> Curious how an ostensibly "conservative" court can ignore the concept of enumerated powers, the constitution clearly does not grant immunity to the President, so the conservative court invents immunity when none is explicitly granted.

Roberts' opinion covers this, as do many discussions of textualist interpretations -- not being set out in the text specifically doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, for textualist interpretations. Roberts' example is separation of powers. There's no "separation of powers clause," but the concept is pretty clearly set out in the text anyway. They say the same is true for immunity for public acts, and they provide reasoning. I disagree with some of the reasoning, but there are much more tenuous things read into the Constitution by the Supreme Court than this one.

And if the Constitution includes immunity for public acts, so much the worse for the Constitution!

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

#96

Post by runjake »

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…

  > Could Obama be prosecuted for ordering drone strikes that unintentionally killed two Americans?
If you're referring to Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son, both US citizens, it was intentional.

If you're not referring to this, Obama's already done this without getting charged.

Being POTUS is an unenviable job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

Edit: Since people are assuming my views on this topic, I'll say that they're seriously conflicted and I'm not trying to imply any particular viewpoint, only the facts.

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

#97

Post by TylerE »

dang wrote: post #37
kibwen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the question will now turn to what is actually an official duty Fortunately, the past rulings of this court have made the jurisprudence abundantly clear: If Biden orders Trump to be assassinated, that's unofficial, and he can be prosecuted. If Trump orders Biden to be assassinated, that's official, and he has complete immunity. Easy, right?

Please don't take HN threads into political flamewar hell, or any other flamewar hell. That's what we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This feels likely highly selected be encorcement.

Either let people vent or nuke the whole thread

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

#98

Post by treeFall »

>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/1807787300375445993

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

#99

Post by lupusreal »

afavour wrote: post #22
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If presidents could be prosecuted for their official acts then the next time the other party takes over they will just immediately find various crimes their predecessor “committed” (there are probably 10s of 1000s of them).

But isn't that the status quo? Why didn't that happen when Obama left office? It's not like the Republicans were lacking a desire for retribution against him. "there are probably 10s of 1000s of them" also feels a little lacking to me. Do we have concrete examples?

Obama didn't prosecute Bush, so the Republicans didn't try to prosecute Obama. Professional courtesy.

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

#100

Post by haroldp »

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.

> We've been ignoring the Constitution for a very long time.

Since Thomas Jefferson sent Navy & Marines after the Barbary Pirates without consulting Congress.

Post reply on HN