Sorry if this is not the proper community for this question. Please let me know if I should post this question elsewhere.
So like, I’m not trying to be hyperbolic or jump on some conspiracy theory crap, but this seems like very troubling news to me. My entire life, I’ve been under the impression that no one is technically/officially above the law in the US, especially the president. I thought that was a hard consensus among Americans regardless of party. Now, SCOTUS just made the POTUS immune to criminal liability.
The president can personally violate any law without legal consequences. They also already have the ability to pardon anyone else for federal violations. The POTUS can literally threaten anyone now. They can assassinate anyone. They can order anyone to assassinate anyone, then pardon them. It may even grant complete immunity from state laws because if anyone tries to hold the POTUS accountable, then they can be assassinated too. This is some Putin-level dictator stuff.
I feel like this is unbelievable and acknowledge that I may be wayyy off. Am I misunderstanding something?? Do I need to calm down?
A president can’t claim immunity. The president has always had immunity for acts that the constitution provides the office.
The president has inferred immunity for powers shared with Congress.
The president enjoys no immunity for acts as a private citizen.
These are important distinctions.
You or I cannot bomb another country. The president can.
You or I cannot kill a maid. The president cannot.
Only acts used with the power of the office are immune. You can’t use presidential authority to sexually harass your staff. That’s against the law.
The ruling didn’t change anything, nor was anything given. SCOTUS doesn’t create the law. We don’t have a magical genie godking president all of a sudden.
Isn’t the point that SCOTUS could decide that killing a maid was within the responsibilities of office.
No. The president could not personally kill their maid.
The maid was cleaning the presidents office. This was clearly presidential. Business. SCOTUS rules not guilty.
Do you believe that scenario is totally impossible?
Yes, because it doesn’t fall within the powers granted to the president via the constitution. He cannot sexually harass her. He cannot kill her. He cannot take bribes from her. So on and so forth.
What if SCOTUS decide he can do all those things?
The Constitution bestows the power upon the presidential office onto the president. Not SCOTUS.
SCOTUS decides the limit (if it exists) of that power.
I feel like if Trump wins the election, my trans ass is going to end up in a concentration camp. Kinda hope I die before that happens.
Nah man, this is very concerning. You don’t need to calm down; I think everyone else is too fuckin calm about it.
What I want from anyone supporting this decision is a single example of a situation where the President would need to break the law in an official capacity. I want just one. I’ll not get it, but I’m gonna keep demanding it.
The king of Sweden has a similar exemption from the law, but he also doesn’t hold any political power. I also don’t know how waterproof his status is if he did something heinous enough.
Trump already has done heinous stuff.
The king of Sweden doesn’t control the most powerful military in the world.
He doesn’t control much of anything, actually!
Yup! There’s also the fact that kings usually tend to at least care about their country’s welfare somewhat. Republicans don’t give a shit about anything but money, power, and theocracy.
Capitalists. Capitalists are bipartisan, and that’s why Biden is doing this big nothing.
I’ve seen dozens of people, including myself, wondering why there’s no one in the streets over this, it’s a long weekend for a lot of people too.
Honestly, DC is a 10 hour drive for me. If I didn’t think I’d be the lone idiot protesting I’d be on my way because I’m off until Monday.
But there’s safety in numbers. One person in the street will get arrested and end up as a footnote in the local papers, a million people might make them notice.I’d say Biden doing something official to null and void this decision would be good. He won’t, obviously, but it’s an example.
Hey so there’s some echo-chambery stuff going on in Lemmy right now, so I want to provide some clarification:
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The court decision did not create a new law. It provided clarity on laws already in place. Presidential immunity is not a new thing. It’s a well established power. See: Clinton v. Jones (1997), United States v. Nixon (1974), United States v. Burr (1807), Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952)
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The court decision does not expand on the law either, it clarifies that:
The President has some immunity for official acts to allow them to perform their duties without undue interference. However, this immunity does not cover:
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Unofficial acts or personal behavior.
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Criminal acts, (to include assassination).
The decision reaffirms that the President can be held accountable for actions outside the scope of their official duties. It does not grant blanket immunity for all actions or allow the President to act as a dictator.
People who are giving opinions based on what they read on Lemmy instead of going and reading the supreme court opinion that is totally online and right here for you to reference are spreading misinformation and fear.
The decision reaffirms that the President can be held accountable for actions outside the scope of their official duties.
But notably, it does shield them from prosecution for crimes which are tangentially related to their official duties. For example, granting a presidential pardon is an official duty. Taking a bribe in exchange for that pardon would be a crime. But now the president is allowed to openly and blatantly take that bribe, because the bribe is tangential to their official duty, and they are therefore shielded from prosecution.
It does not grant blanket immunity for all actions or allow the President to act as a dictator.
Many experts disagree with the second half of your sentence, because ordering an assassination could easily be argued to be an official duty; After all, the POTUS is the commander in chief of the military. According to this ruling, ordering it illegally would be protected, because the illegality is tied to the official duty.
But notably, it does shield them from prosecution for crimes which are tangentially related to their official duties. For example, granting a presidential pardon is an official duty. Taking a bribe in exchange for that pardon would be a crime. But now the president is allowed to openly and blatantly take that bribe, because the bribe is tangential to their official duty, and they are therefore shielded from prosecution.
Not at all. While granting a pardon is an official duty, taking a bribe in exchange for a pardon is a criminal act. The decision does not shield the President from prosecution for such criminal conduct. Criminal acts are just as prosecutable as there were prior.
Excerpt from the ruling:
“As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. The principles we set out in Clinton v. Jones confirm as much. When Paula Jones brought a civil lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton for acts he allegedly committed prior to his Presidency, we rejected his argument that he enjoyed temporary immunity from the lawsuit while serving as President. 520 U. S., at 684. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Id., at 694, and n. 19.”
Unofficial conduct includes taking bribes.
Many experts disagree with the second half of your sentence, because ordering an assassination could easily be argued to be an official duty; After all, the POTUS is the commander in chief of the military. According to this ruling, ordering it illegally would be protected, because the illegality is tied to the official duty.
“Many experts” isn’t someone I can talk with or argue against. They’re just weasel words.
Ordering an assassination is illegal. It violates the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the constitution (as they deprive persons of “life, liberty, or property” without fair legal procedures and protections). as well as Executive Order 12333 in which assassination is explicitly deemed illegal.
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No. Because they specifically said this is not the case.
The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.
They’re essentially protecting a president from flagrant lawsuits that could be brought for unfounded accusations. The constitution outlines a handful of constitutional duties (such as pardoning) which are by definition the law not prosecutable. There’s a presumption of immunity for their official acts. Anything they do outside of official acts is not immune.
Nothing has really changed. It’s only made it more clear how difficult the process is to indict a president. The Fourth section of Article II still exists.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
So, let’s say, not for the first time ever, a president orders an assassination and congress wants to hold them accountable for this action. It will need to be determined if this act was part of their official duties. The issue SCOTUS has presented is that it’s very, very difficult for congress to obtain the motivation for such an act. Such a case would be dependent on the specific circumstances. I mean, if the president orders the assassination of a foreign leader, no one’s going to, nor have the ever, question that. If they order the assassination of a congressional leader, don’t imagine they’re going to get away with that.
The rules remained the same as it has for 200 years. The president is PRESUMED immunity for OFFICIAL acts. UNOFFICIAL acts have no immunity. This means there are still two angles of attack. Firstly you can say it that even though it was official, it was still unlawful. And second, you can say it wasnt an official act at all.
It is absolutely highly concerning. That said, there’s way too many people who haven’t read the official ruling who are panicking instead of advocating for people to vote to keep Biden in office and prepare another viable candidate for that office once his second term is up. Because the only way to get these idiots off the SCOTUS is to elect non-conservative presidents who can win. And that only happens if people both vote and lobby for what they want. We need better electoral college regulations. We need ranked voting. We need the people to lobby to further limit the government because obviously this is what happens when we don’t.
This ruling, coupled with the whole “Biden is too old, he should step down” BS is exactly the kind of propaganda concoction that will lead to Trump being re-elected in November if we don’t do something.
Do I think this is a way for a President to sanction and enact the murder of political rivals? Under certain circumstances, yes. Do I think the average citizen should be worried about the President signing their death warrant? No.
You have to understand that we’ve had alphabet agencies for a long time and the President literally could use certain pretexts to kill a person if they wanted so long as they did it a specific way. That has not changed just because of this ruling and that’s a big factor people should look at. There’s a reason former Presidents haven’t been prosecuted for drone strikes. Technically they could have been held accountable in a court of law before that. But we’ve known for a long time that in all actuality the law only works that way if you’re poor or if you’re going up against someone else who’s independently wealthy. That’s why Epstein is dead after all. Not because he trafficked young girls. But because his imprisonment put other rich people in danger. Sam Bankmanfried isn’t in prison because he stole money. He’s in prison because he stole from other rich people. Same with Elizabeth Holmes.
When Trump was in office, I need you to understand that the government (the people who guard national secrets) actually considerered him a threat and limited his ability to do damage by not telling him things. We would have been much worse off if they hadn’t.
As a result, the apparatus of the government is not a monolith, just like the apparatus of the military or even just the US as a whole. It’s made up of people. And we’ve limped along this far because we could rely on them not to do certain things. But what Trump was able to get away with by being elected and being in office? This is the fallout of that.
Your statement that the president can “personally” violate any law without criminal liability isn’t correct. Here’s a direct quote from the ruling “Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
“As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Clinton, 520 U. S., at 694, and n. 19. The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President’s unofficial acts.”
On its face this ruling admits there is a such thing as an unofficial act. The problem is that the SCOTUS should not be allowed to make this decision without checks or balances in place. I.e. if they are making the deduction that a President has immunity, they must cede the determination of such acts that have immunity vs those that don’t to another regulatory body. That’s the disturbing part to me.
This also makes me question what the point is of the impeachment process specifically because of this passage from the same ruling:
“When the President exercises such author ity, Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions. It follows that an Act of Congress—either a specific one targeted at the President or a generally applicable one—may not criminalize the President’s actions within his exclusive constitutional power. Neither may the courts adjudicate a criminal prosecution that examines such Presidential actions.”
Technically an impeachment is not a criminal trial. But that passage doesn’t specify the scope. So it could be used to argue that impeachment (while not a criminal proceeding) is an examination of the Presidents actions that potentially would not be allowed. And since the impeachment process is a check and balance for the presidential office, that’s not okay.
Very well thought out reply, thank you. I’m absolutely alarmed, zero people should be above the law, and I think this puts us on a very dangerous path, but if we all collect our heads we can still keep our current president, and maybe work some stuff out from there.
I’m absolutely annoyed with the Biden talk, like no he isn’t my favorite candidate. He’s just not openly calling for overthrowing democracy, so that’s my choice. I don’t worship my leaders, and in a 2 party system I just choose the least worst. He’s the least worst.
I keep thinking back to Carlin. He called it in the 90s. “We don’t have leaders, we have owners, they own you.” Two big things keep me from panic attacks right now. One is that the true owners of the country right now are corporations, and they want stability and you to keep paying, which is oddly comforting in terms of what’s going to happen. The second is that it’s not over yet, we just need to all go out and vote for the least horrible candidate we have! Huzzah!
I’m a bit bothered that people aren’t going to the web to read the ruling in full. They’re relying heavily on dissenting SCOTUS member’s statements and the media. I’m also disheartened at the number of people who don’t know their rights, don’t understand the government’s functions in society, and don’t understand that the constitution is meant to be a living document that restricts what the government can do, not what its citizens can. Of course the number of people who don’t know what’s in the constitution and its amendments is also very high.
It wasn’t that terribly long ago that we didn’t have presidential term limits. There’s absolutely a way forward with further amendments to the constitution which is something we as a people should also lobby for.
Edit: Speak of the devil: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4750735-joe-morelle-amendment-supreme-court-immunity-ruling/
The real problem isn’t what this does right now, it’s how vague and open it is to interpretation. Official acts aren’t described anywhere in it, and they’re explicitly allowing other courts to decide rather than call out things that are obviously wrong for someone with that much power to do. Rather than cracking the door and opening it when needed, they swung the door wide open, and it will be up to courts to close it later. That vagueness is the terrifying part, who knows what acts will be “justified” later.
They aren’t though. They say in the document that they are the final word on what is within the scope of official acts. So it’s not even a separate regulating body purpose built for that. It’s lower courts making a decision and the SCOTUS deciding if it is right and wrong and having the final say.
If you trust the courts, that works fine, but they have proven all year how the court is definitely partisan and corrupt now. The court shouldn’t swing in either direction - they should be only beholden to the constitution, and justices who take money are no longer just listening to the constitution
Yes. And to be clear I don’t think this is a good thing. I’m actually very much against the courts deciding the purview of what is lawful conduct for the president within his duties to the Constitution and what is not.
I don’t know why people care. Obama dronestriked an American citizen and nothing happened. Snowden revealed that we are all under mass surveillance and nothing happened. Biden withheld funds from Ukraine to halt an investigation into his son and nothing happened. This ruling just reflects reality.
Biden withheld funds from Ukraine to halt an investigation into his son and nothing happened.
Bit of a refresher as it’s so hard to keep all of the lies straight: Republicans claimed that an FBI informant said that Hunter Biden took a position on the board of Burisma, and the Bidens took a bribe, in return for Joe pressuring Ukraine to fire the government official investigating Burisma. Nobody can produce the evidence, and said government official wasn’t investigating Burisma, after all.
Pres. Trump threatened to withhold funds from Ukraine unless Zelenskyy dug up kompromat on Trump’s political opponents. He was impeached over it. So that happened.
You don’t think this series of events is indicative of corruption?
The CIA also censored references to Shokins book on twitter.
Unrelated but the same people censored the Hunter Biden laptop story and called it Russian disinfo during peak election season. It turned out to be true. 🤔
That is indeed a series of events. Did they ever come up with any evidence linking them in a causal way?
Well is there any evidence?!
The title of the article is literally about the oversight committee demanding communication records as recently as last fall.
Biden is a uniparty member and for all of this smoke he was never properly investigated by the justice department at home or abroad. Every inquiry is some anemic posturing.
Special counsel David Weiss let Hunter Biden’s most egregious financial crimes elapse past the statute of limitations – convenient. Hunter was making millions overseas in Ukraine and moving it through Romania and China. He wasn’t investigated for years until he ended up picking up a gun charge.
Why would an energy company in Ukraine pay Hunter Biden, a crack smoking drug addict, 50-80k a month if not for political access or a quid-pro-quo? Who is “the big guy” in Hunter Bidens email? Why were they trying to give him a plea deal that would absolve him of everything last July? If this were anyone that was not a member of the privileged class they wouldn’t be able to move due to all the investigation instead you are labeled as crazy for thinking this is old fashioned political corruption.
Wikipedia dismisses it as a Russian disinfo conspiracy theory. Where have we heard that before? 🤔
It goes back to my original point these people are above the law.
So… no.
Lol good one it’s like you missed the entire point of my post.
I get the intent of such posts: To confuse and demoralize people with a “both sides” or “they’re all bad” message. I object because they discourage participation in the democratic process and serve authoritarian interests, and in the abstract, truth matters.
This is a 5 alarm fire. It’s very concerning. This is precariously close to the end to the quarter millennium of the American Experiment. Seriously.
The likely scenarios, as far as I can guess are that…
a) if Biden wins with anything less than a substantial majority, there will be violence. b) if Biden just scrapes a win, violence seems likely. c) if Biden loses, the violence will be long lasting and possibly irreparable in the next generation or two.
They took a torch to your constitution. All for the sake of a very, very evil man.
I am quite afraid, to be honest. The people who are not concerned do not appear to have familiarity with some very significant and recent (ie - less than a century ago) world history.
This is not just a conventional political pendulum shift where every so often you find yourself in vociferous disagreement with where things are going. This is a fundamental shredding of societal fabric.
I would very, very much like to be wrong.
Can’t Biden just have a reaper drone fire a hellfire missile at Trump? Or am I missing something?
He could but he wont. Trump would definitely do it tho.
The whole Trump presidency was filled with Trump abusing vague powers because when it was written, they assumed that the president wasn’t a asshole.
This new law plus Trump is a cluster fuck.
It’s one more piece of Project 2025.
Trump is the side-show. Stop getting distracted by his fat orange ass. The disorganized, played more golf and gave more bad speeches than any President before him is just a side show. Most of the executive branch jobs that go with the administration each election were left empty in 2016.
Project 2025 is an organized, focused Trump term where the machinery runs for him. Where the mechanics of what to do have been thought out and planned for since 2020. Where he can sit on a gold toilet and truly let other people handle the day to day.
And just sign it all with presidential immunity.
So unless cardiovascular disease does it’s fucking job in the next 4 months (yeah, that’s right, the self imposed I don’t want to deal with it time warp you’re in let you forget that it’s just 4 months away), and bad COVID comes back and hits the SCOTUS hard, it’ll be SCOTUS 2.0 for the entire executive branch of the government come 2025. And like a SCOTUS vote, that 2:1 vote in our entire government will be in favor of authoritarian Christian nationalism. That’s what the the SCOTUS vote on immunity is. It’s not about Trump. It’s about authoritarianism going forward.
High odds on Project 2025 because I know you fuckers under 40 won’t be voting in the numbers boomers or GenX do. You’ll stock up on the steam summer sale, maybe get a Costco crate of cool ranch, tuck in, and try to pretend it’s not happening instead.
Yea, it sucks, but the vote is basically Kamala or Trump. No or yes on Project 2025. And if project 2025 goes in, America really is dead and shit is going to get violent.
Not sure another play through of Mass Effect Legendary or BG3 is going to be able to block that out this time.
Good time to remind people that a higher proportion of millennials and gen z voted in mid-term elections than baby boomers or baby boomer babies (gen x) did at equivalent ages.
Millennials voted in the last presidential election at a rate that represents the highest level of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. Gen Z seems poised to do something similar, as this will be the first presidential election where a majority of Gen Z will be old enough to vote.
Additionally, gen x is the only generational cohort that voted LESS in the last mid term elections than the one before it, i.e., participation in elections declined for that cohort. I guess they were too busy… idk, doing whatever gen x does instead of voting.
This whole post is just one long “the kids are the problem because of their phones and video games,” but I’m pretty sure the most politically active youth generations in modern history aren’t ruining democracy by playing video games.
Anyway. Basically what I’m saying is: ok boomer. Oh well, whatever, nevermind, right?
Millenials are old now. We’re not “the youth”, we’re like mid-30s to early 40s.
Four years ago, when the last presidential election occurred, the millennial age range was 24-39. Beyond that, I’m comparing generational participation in elections at particular ages.
Further, not all of Gen Z will be of voting age for this election, so the youngest generational cohort where all members of that cohort are able to vote is still millennials, i.e., millennials are the youngest generation able to fully participate in elections.
I’m not saying millennials are all “young,” I’m saying that in terms of electoral participation statistics, they’re the youngest generation able to fully participate, and that compared to when Gen X and Boomers were going, Gen Z and Millennials participate (and have participated) at higher rates than the generations above them.
This is contrary to the subtext of the Boomer Lite (Gen X) poster to which I’m responding that implies younger generations are too busy distracting themselves with their phones and video games to participate in politics.
It seemed really obvious to me that he was talking about actual youth, ie Zoomers. But you started throwing a bunch of statistics about millenials.
Millenials are a politically active generation. The fear is that Zoomers are not. That was the point I got from his comment.
As I said, Gen Z has, so far, participated in the elections they’ve been eligible for at higher rates than any previous generation since the age of voting was made 18, including millennials.
The youngest of Gen Z is currently about 12 years old, so they’ve had less elections to participate in with a smaller percentage of their generational cohort able to participate. Nevertheless, so far, a higher percentage of eligible Gen Z voters have voted in elections than Millennials, Boomers, and Boomers Lite.
The youngest generational cohort that are all above the voting age are millennials, which have also voted at higher rates than Boomers and Boomers Lite at similar ages.
Nevertheless, so far, a higher percentage of eligible Gen Z voters have voted in elections than Millennials, Boomers, and Boomers Lite.
…compared to previous generations at that age.
Youth turnout is still abysmal, it’s just less abysmal than previous generations.
K
Actually I think it is far worse than you may…
They ruled that the president is immune from prosecution for official acts they would get to rule on what that means.
So if Biden does X; they could rule it not official; but if Trump were to do that same thing, I’ve no doubt they would rule the other waySays right in the ruling it’s up to the trails court to determine what is official.
The fact that Clarence Thomas has his name on this ruling really helps illustrate how easy and often cheap it is to simply buy rulings.
I wonder, what do you think the ruling changed? What can the president do now that the president wasn’t able to do before?
Did you read the dissenting judges statements on the ruling? Sitting Supreme Court Justices have publicly given their legal opinion on what the ruling means.
Did you read it?
All this shit is literally straight out of the Putin playbook. Take control of the courts, take control of what is legal, take control of elections. Republicans were always too dumb and incompetent to be anything but pawns of a better organized evil.
Fascism isn’t some genius-brained thing, it’s just how authoritarians operate, and Putin didn’t invent it.
US politics has always been deeply corrupt, and now it is losing even more of its veneer of legitimacy, which means it’s crumbled that much more.
The Russians aren’t the cause of your woes. Actually if you look at what happened with the neoliberal shock doctrine and the fall of the USSR, the US is way more responsible for Putin than the other way around.
That’s correct, and it doesn’t discount that authoritarianism is authoritarianism. Notwithstanding, people are so indoctrinated with American exceptionalism and USA most free country in the world, we don’t even bother to learn about what Greg Palast termed vulture capitalism and tactics used. Operation Paperclip is heavily whitewashed as “the best and brightest,” leaving out the noun being described, Nazis.
We’re in real trouble and the only ones who can save us from ourselves is ourselves. It will be interesting to see if it will be done before the climate extinction.
Disclaimer: someone calm me and op down.
I couldn’t believe that every post wasn’t about this ruling all day
No, you shouldn’t calm down, this decision is absolutely cataclysmic for the US should a dangerous person be elected or the ruling not overturned.
I’ve been saying the states are okay despite all SCOTUS’ stripping of civil rights and everything else wrong with that country because as long as there were checks and balances, voting had relevance.
With this ruling,I can’t see that it will continue to.
A president can order their political opponents murdered.
They can order that all civil rights be suspended indefinitely.
They can order a suspension or abolition of term limits.
They can abolish voting altogether in a hundred different ways and nothing can be legally done to halt that president from continuing to abolish voting until it sticks.
If anyone does manage to legally stop the president, the president can kill them or cut off their fingers and remove their voice box.
Literally anything is now legal, fair game.
Biden has spoken out against that kind of power and he has it right now, so VOTE for BIDEN to buy yourselves some time.
Whoever comes after this term or the next likely won’t have the same scruples.
This is far and away the most dangerous and harmful decision SCOTUS has ever made, which is saying a LOT.
It is the antithesis of the line in the Constitution explicitly stating that no elected official (like the president) has legal immunity.
The decision to grant an entire branch of the government absolute(it is absolute, anything can become “official”) legal immunity could very rapidly destroy the country as it is and turn it into a true authoritarian state within a week.
It takes some time to write, print and sign the executive orders or I’d say a day.
I have to read up on it more because I haven’t read or heard enough yet to convince me that this decision is not utterly catastrophic.
I’m shocked the dollar hasn’t collapsed, any further international faith in US stability is misplaced.
Antiquated.
Article II, Section 3 - the president must take care to execute the laws faithfully. No president meeting the requirements of the office could issue an illegal official order. If the president orders something illegal, it’s necessarily against the oath of office and should not be considered official.
My feeling is that this ruling means any cases brought against the president would need to establish that an act was unofficial before criminal proceedings could proceed. Thay seems fine to me to adjudicate in each case.
Unfortunately I think you’re missing something here. The court ruled that the president has immunity. Like the kind of immunity diplomats get in foreign countries that enables them to run over people in their cars. Immunity as a concept only makes sense if the action performed is actually illegal. Nobody can be prosecuted for legal actions. The president is now unprosecutable for both legal AND illegal actions.
It’s a nonsensical and horrifying ruling. The fact that the president would be violating his oath of office doesn’t cancel out the immunity, it just makes the crime that much more disgusting, and the impossibility of justice that much more galling.
Please back this up with some quotes from the ruling or something because this is not how I read it.
The reason the president is immune for official acts is to protect people like Obama who ordered extrajudicial killings of American citizens. That is a very grey offical act - these were US citizens in a war zone fighting for the other side. I may not fully agree that that should be protected, but I understand the reasoning around a president feeling free to act (legally) in the best interests of the nation without fear that their actions would lead to legal jeopardy after they leave office.
(To be clear: I would be ok with a trial to decide if Obama’s actions were official, for instance. And if they were deemed not, then he could be tried for those assassinations. Also, to be clear: I am a progressive who would vote for Obama over Trump in a heartbeat.)
It’s all over the Syllabus section, but here’s a specific quote:
Personally I am ok with courts not being able to deem something unofficial based on allegations rather than on a decision.
So how do they prosecute then? If the president commits a crime, let’s say he accepts a bribe for a pardon, you aren’t allowed to bring a prosecution unless a court deems the act unofficial. And the court isn’t permitted to find that the act was unofficial because the bribery is merely an allegation and hasn’t been proved. And you can’t prove the allegation because you can’t prosecute a president for official acts.
The trial court is supposed to determine if there is sufficient evidence such that is not a mere allegation?
It makes me very uncomfy from a fundamental perspective. Ignoring the fact that it goes against the founding principles of the US.
It provides rather wide and sweeping immunity, and even presumed immunity.
Although to be clear, the immunity act does not cover any private acts of the president, so if they were to for example,personally murder someone, it shouldn’t apply, even remotely.
Now to be clear, the likelihood that a government official uses this to kill people is incredibly small because otherwise the precedent that it would set would literally push us into civil war. Will trump do it ? Good question.
You’re right, using this ruling in the way people fear it can be used would provoke a civil war.
Now, remind me, was there a large fraction of the US population frothing at the mouth at the idea of a civil war? Perhaps one with a complex the size of Alaska with regards to the previous US civil war? Hmm…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=isCh4kCeNYU two spoken quotes highly relevant.
