SCOTUS rules POTUS has limited immunity
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@LuFins-Dad said in SCOTUS rules POTUS has limited immunity:
Well, it could always be tested. Have Biden order Trump’s death. I mean, he is the greatest threat to DEMOCRACY, EVER!
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/07/stark-raving-mad-3.php
You might think the Democrats would be able to keep it together, given that they control the presidency, the Senate, the federal bureaucracy, and the press, and are only a few seats away from controlling the House. But, for whatever reason, they have gone mad. Democrats have reached a fever pitch of hysteria that I doubt we have seen before in our history.
One example among many is their mental breakdown over the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, Trump v. United States. As I wrote here, that decision was moderate, middle of the road, and entirely predictable. While it addressed a novel issue, it is consistent with past Supreme Court decisions.
But to hear the Democrats tell it, the Court has unleashed anarchy and turned the president into a dictator. This kind of thing is typical:
Other Democrats have suggested that Biden has authority, under the Court’s decision, to assassinate the six members of the Court who comprised the majority. This is, of course, complete insanity. But to be fair, it is insanity that began with the three dissenting Democratic Party justices.
In a disgraceful dissent authored by Sonia Sotomayor and joined in by Democrat loyalists Kagan and Jackson, the minority deliberately fanned the flames of ignorance. Sotomayor wrote:
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, immune, immune.
It takes a special kind of dishonesty to read Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion as authorizing political assassination, military coups and bribery. The “Seal Team 6” reference is to a question that was asked during oral argument. Trump’s lawyer, arguing for the broadest possible immunity, said that a president would have to be impeached first, and then prosecuted criminally for such an act. But the Court’s majority didn’t adopt that theory; on the contrary, they rejected it in favor of a middle of the road rule.
What the majority opinion actually holds is:
[T]he nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.
Note that Sotomayor dishonestly fails to characterize the majority’s holding correctly. She claims that immunity attaches when the president “uses his official powers in any way,” such as by ordering a political assassination. But obviously, ordering assassinations, pulling off military coups, and taking bribes are not “actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” The president has no constitutional authority to order murders, carry out military coups or take bribes. On the contrary, murders and coups would be high crimes and misdemeanors, and the Constitution specifically calls out taking bribes as a ground for impeachment.
Do these justices seriously think that if a future president were to carry out a political assassination, and the case were to come before this Court’s majority, they would say, “Yes, that is what we had in mind. Political assassination is A-OK!” Of course not. These three are not intellectual giants, but they can’t possibly be that stupid.
The Democrats’ dissent is so dishonest, and so obviously a political rather than a judicial document, that it must sadden anyone who believes in the rule of law, and who has any respect for the Supreme Court as an institution. It was obviously intended to provide fodder to rile up Democratic voters so as to help Joe Biden (or whoever) win the 2024 election. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson should be ashamed of themselves, but it seems that on the Left, shame is an obsolete concept.
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Some people’s reasoning in this thread, including by some of the pundits quoted, seems to be something like the following:
“The majority is reasonable, ergo the decision would allow reasonable things and disallow unreasonable things.”
Can I ask Horace and LD to answer the following question?
In your reading, what is the difference (in the way the courts should act according to this ruling) between the cases where the president has absolute immunity and the cases where he has only presumptive immunity?
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Well, obviously it depends on which President is in office and what judges are on the bench.
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No, I’m working and don’t have time to do more than make snarky comments.
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DON’T let them eat cake.
- RFK Jr -
@jon-nyc how does that differ from prosecutorial immunity on the part of a DA or other local official?
In United States law, absolute immunity is a type of sovereign immunity for government officials that confers complete immunity from criminal prosecution and suits for damages, so long as officials are acting within the scope of their duties.[1] The Supreme Court of the United States has consistently held that government officials deserve some type of immunity from lawsuits for damages,[2] and that the common law recognized this immunity.[2] The Court reasons that this immunity is necessary to protect public officials from excessive interference with their responsibilities and from "potentially disabling threats of liability."[2]
Absolute immunity contrasts with qualified immunity, which sometimes applies when certain officials may have violated constitutional rights or federal law.[3]
In Trump v. United States, on July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents were entitled to absolute immunity from exercising core powers enumerated by the constitution, presumption of immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial actions. The case was sent back to lower courts to determine which actions in the criminal complaint should be classified as official vs. unofficial.[17] The ruling was the first time the courts granted a president criminal immunity.
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@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS rules POTUS has limited immunity:
Some people’s reasoning in this thread, including by some of the pundits quoted, seems to be something like the following:
“The majority is reasonable, ergo the decision would allow reasonable things and disallow unreasonable things.”
I think it would take a tortured reading of the constitution to find the authority for a president to carry out assassinations with the military. I don't need to rely on any extra-constitutional "reasonableness" to be confident about their ruling. I need to rely on the constitution, and a lack of "conclusive and preclusive" authority for the president to carry out these fanciful acts the TDS rabble are allegedly concerned about, as they score their political points about how existentially dangerous conservatives are.
Can I ask Horace and LD to answer the following question?
In your reading, what is the difference (in the way the courts should act according to this ruling) between the cases where the president has absolute immunity and the cases where he has only presumptive immunity?
Why is this a question? SCOTUS gave guidance about what the lower courts should do with the remanded parts of Smith's indictment.
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@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS rules POTUS has limited immunity:
Avoiding the question without LD’s excuse.
The court literally gave guidance, and my reading can be assumed to be the literal one from the ruling. It's not an avoidance of the question, it's an avoidance of a cut and paste that you could just look up, being the court-watcher and deep thinker about SCOTUS that you are.
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@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS rules POTUS has limited immunity:
Your post basically says “to interpret the ruling otherwise is unreasonable”. Which is still an argument from reasonableness.
Can you argue your interpretation from the ruling? Or not?
I don't live in any fantasy where laws don't have verbal wiggle room, so I fail to see where you think you have anybody in a logical vice grip here. Every time we see the court divided about anything, we see the fact that humans interpret words in law differently, including words in the constitution. I predict that all nine justices would find no textual support in the constitution for a conclusive / preclusive authority for the commander in chief to order an assassination with the military without any due process. In oral arguments, Roberts responded to the hypothetical about the auctioning of pardons. He said the auction itself would be a private act, and therefore prosecutable. (I heard this after I had the same notion, as I waded through all the stupidity of the TDS reactions to this ruling.)
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One interesting thing came up in oral arguments. What's to stop a president from pardoning himself from everything, even if he doesn't have immunity? The counter argument is that it hasn't been tried, but without a doubt the president could at least try to pardon himself, and then it would come before the court whether a president has that power of self-pardon. Can anybody argue from the constitution that the power of the pardon does NOT apply to self-pardons? So, we see that we've been living with these "terrifying" issues forever, including during Trump's first four years. The backstop then, as now, would be a supreme court that would find that no, the president can't just do any given high crime and misdemeanor while nominally carrying out his duties, then pardon himself and expect to be free from any criminal prosecution.
The more important backstop is actually impeachment, not criminal proceedings. And impeachment is unaltered by this ruling. We actually do trust a great deal in the reasonableness of other elected human beings in that process, and again I'm comfortable with that, as I am not inflicted by histrionic derangements around any given political party or candidate.
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In your reading, what is the difference (in the way the courts should act according to this ruling) between the cases where the president has absolute immunity and the cases where he has only presumptive immunity?
As @Horace has stated, it’s pretty obvious in the ruling. In cases where the President has presumptive immunity, the judiciary has the power to review and decide on a case by case basis.
I’ve given examples of this earlier in the thread.
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@Horace “absolute immunity” provides no wiggle room. Yes they remanded to the district for some specifics from this case but they also set law of the land which would anpply to future scenarios, and that is the subject of the criticisms so far unanswered here.
DON’T let them eat cake.
- RFK Jr -
@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS rules POTUS has limited immunity:
@Horace “absolute immunity” provides no wiggle room. Yes they remanded to the district for some specifics from this case but they also set law of the land which would anpply to future scenarios, and that is the subject of the criticisms so far unanswered here.
I’ve said many times that official duty vs unofficial as described by the constitution, provides some wiggle room. You don’t accept that answer because you’re choosing an absolutist interpretation to suit the histrionic hypotheticals. But given absolutist interpretations of words in the constitution, we have always been living with the specter of a President doing whatever and pardoning himself. We rely on various people being reasonable to some low bar, to provide a backstop to that.
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Bunch of lawyers talking about this for about 30 minutes.
Link to video"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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You misunderstood the ruling. SCOTUS did not create two buckets (official acts, unofficial acts), they created three (core constitutional functions, other official acts, unofficial acts).
There is no wiggle room in the first bucket - there, immunity is absolute. That’s where the dragons lie.
DON’T let them eat cake.
- RFK Jr
