“…Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law…”
“…In the majority’s view, while all other citizens of the United States must do their jobs and live their lives within the confines of criminal prohibitions, the President cannot be made to do so; he must sometimes be exempt from the law’s dictates depending on the character of his conduct. Indeed, the majority holds that the President, unlike anyone else in our country, is comparatively free to engage in criminal acts in furtherance of his official duties…”
The U.S. Supreme Court has made it official.
By a 6-3 right wingnut majority:
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 23–939
DONALD J. TRUMP, PETITIONER v.
UNITED STATES
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
[July 1, 2024]
[….]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
[….]
In sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.
[….]
The majority relies almost entirely on its view of the danger of intrusion on the Executive Branch, to the exclusion of the other side of the balancing test. Its analysis rests on a questionable conception of the President as incapable of navigating the difficult decisions his job requires while staying within the bounds of the law. It also ignores the fact that he receives robust legal advice on the lawfulness of his actions.
[….]
Finally, in an attempt to put some distance between its official-acts immunity and Trump’s requested immunity, the majority insists that “Trump asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one [the majority has] recognized.” Ante, at 32. If anything, the opposite is true. The only part of Trump’s immunity argument that the majority rejects is the idea that “the Impeachment Judgment Clause requires that impeachment and Senate conviction precede a President’s criminal prosecution.” Ibid. That argument is obviously wrong. See ante, at 32–34. Rejecting it, however, does not make the majority’s immunity narrower than Trump’s. 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.
[….]
Not content simply to invent an expansive criminal immunity for former Presidents, the majority goes a dramatic and unprecedented step further. It says that acts for which the President is immune must be redacted from the narrative of even wholly private crimes committed while in office. They must play no role in proceedings regarding private criminal acts. See ante, at 30–32.
[….]
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents immunity for their official acts is deeply wrong. As troubling as this criminal immunity doctrine is in theory, the majority’s application of the doctrine to the indictment in this case is perhaps even more troubling. In the hands of the majority, this new official-acts immunity operates as a one-way ratchet.
[….]
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 oup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were not so single-minded. In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” The Federalist No. 77, p. 507 (J. Harvard Library ed. 2009). The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.” Ibid. The answer after today is no. Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.
With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
[SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting]
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
And:
[….]
JUSTICE JACKSON, dissenting.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR has thoroughly addressed the Court’s flawed reasoning and conclusion as a matter of history, tradition, law, and logic. I agree with every word of her powerful dissent. I write separately to explain, as succinctly as I can, the theoretical nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done today to alter the paradigm of accountability for Presidents of the United States. I also address what that paradigm shift means for our Nation moving forward.
To fully appreciate the profound change the majority has wrought, one must first acknowledge what it means to have immunity from criminal prosecution. Put simply, immunity is “exemption” from the duties and liabilities imposed by law….
[….]
It is indisputable that immunity from liability for wrongdoing is the exception rather than the rule in the American criminal justice system. That is entirely unsurprising, for the very idea of immunity stands in tension with foundational principles of our system of Government. It is a core tenet of our democracy that the People are the sovereign, and the Rule of Law is our first and final security. “[F]rom their own experience and their deep reading in history, the Founders knew that Law alone saves a society from being rent by internecine strife or ruled by mere brute power however disguised.” United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 308 (1947) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment).
A corollary to that principle sets the terms for this case: “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.” United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, 220 (1882). We have long lived with the collective understanding that “[d]ecency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen,” for “[i]n a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously.” Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 485 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
[….]
With that understanding of how our system of accountability for criminal acts ordinarily functions, it becomes much easier to see that the majority’s ruling in this case breaks new and dangerous ground. Departing from the traditional model of individual accountability, the majority has concocted something entirely different: a Presidential accountability model that creates immunity—an exemption from criminal law—applicable only to the most powerful official in our Government.
[….]
The majority’s new Presidential accountability model is also distinct insofar as it accepts as a basic starting premise that generally applicable criminal laws do not apply to everyone in our society. In the majority’s view, while all other citizens of the United States must do their jobs and live their lives within the confines of criminal prohibitions, the President cannot be made to do so; he must sometimes be exempt from the law’s dictates depending on the character of his conduct. Indeed, the majority holds that the President, unlike anyone else in our country, is comparatively free to engage in criminal acts in furtherance of his official duties.
That point bears emphasizing. Immunity can issue for Presidents under the majority’s model even for unquestionably and intentionally egregious criminal behavior. Regardless of the nature or the impact of the President’s criminal conduct, so long as he is committing crimes “pursuant to the powers invested exclusively in him by the Constitution,” ante, at 7, or as needed “to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution,” ante, at 14, he is likely to be deemed immune from prosecution.
[….]
The majority of my colleagues seems to have put their trust in our Court’s ability to prevent Presidents from becoming Kings through case-by-case application of the indeterminate standards of their new Presidential accountability paradigm. I fear that they are wrong. But, for all our sakes, I hope that they are right.
In the meantime, because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent.
[JACKSON, J., dissenting]
[From 2000.]
Your choice in November is between a Fascist narcissist, blatantly enabled by a right wingnut Supreme Court, and a decent human being. Vote accordingly.
If you’re all atwitter and wringing your hands about an artificial 90 minute televised debate you’re a fucking maroon.
