Sarah Binder, James Goldgeier, and Elizabeth N. Saunders
This week in Milwaukee, Republicans have gathered to formally nominate Donald Trump for president—as they have twice before. But this time, they meet under vastly different circumstances. Most obviously, they are nominating the former president just five days after a man tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally. But they are also nominating Trump in the wake of two extraordinary legal developments. The more recent of the two is the dismissal of the classified documents case in Florida. The other, more enduring one is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States—which grants presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution after leaving office.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that presidents—and former President Trump in particular—have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their exercise of “core” executive powers. The court also granted ex-presidents presumptive immunity for actions at the “outer perimeter” of their responsibilities. They are not immune for their “unofficial” acts, but the opinion’s distinction between what is official and unofficial is so blurry that it may be meaningless. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a bracing dissent, Trump v. United States makes the president “a king above the law.”
No comments:
Post a Comment