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?
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.
I appreciate this response. It makes me feel a little better. I still think we should be concerned about SCOTUS probably getting to make some of these decisions of what’s official or not. Seems more corrupt on the judicial branch side of things rather than executive. Overall not great.
I mean, it’s definitely not great. This court is a sham that never should have had this makeup.
And this absolutely makes it harder to bring Trump to trial before the election.
This is not great.
But it is not “the president can assasinate people!!!”
At least, not to this layman. I would hope supreme court justices know better, but even the dissent seems a little unhinged to me, a progressive who thinks the rule of law should AND STILL DOES apply to everyone. (I am also not willing to just give up and say “yeah, guess assassination is legal now” - I think that junk is counterproductive and maybe being propagandized against us by unfriendly foreign governments.)