Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
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.
Nope. Too busy losing my goddamn shit over this insane, dictator-making, Enabling Act 2.0 garbage.
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.
You are not considering the part where we can't use relevant testimony or documents to prove that what the President does is illegal in the first place. The President can just say whatever illegal things they did were official acts, and all the evidence that might prove otherwise is off-limits. It relies on other people in the administration to not follow the illegal order, but of course that is a weak protection and the President can fire them or do something illegal to them without consequence too.
If you follow an illegal order, guess what you just did: broke the law.
Please, fhis strident unreality being pushed is JUST LIKE the fear mongering on the right.
This decision is by no means great, it may totally delay trials for Trump until after the election, that's horeshit in my opinion. But I also don't beleive this bullshit about this ruling making the president a king. Stop FUDing for them. Trump STILL HAS TO FOLLOW THE LAW IF HE IS ELECTED. Please STOP REINFORCING THE IDEA THAT HE DOES NOT.
Did you even read Sotomayor' dissent? I did.
Yes, and I sadly had to agree with John Roberts, not a good place to be.
The doomerism is just ridiculous to me.
How can you have immunity from following the law? The only immunity is from breaking it; any law broken in a president's effort to execute their core official acts cannot be prosecuted or even investigated, according to this decision.
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 ot 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?
What trial court? He’s immune from prosecution.
Look, I recommend reading the decision, especially the first few pages, instead of basing your opinions on what you think makes sense. I’m done trying to convince you about what’s in the document, it’s there for you to read if you actually care and aren’t just arguing in bad faith.
If you empanel a grand jury and present them with compelling evidence that the president accepted a bribe for a pardon, you could presumably indict them.
From there, you would present this evidence that there was a quid-pro-quo bribe and presumably the defense would move to dismiss under "it was an official act, can't prosecute". The judge would then need to decide if there is sufficient evidence to call into question if the act was official, given that the president cannot give an illegal order as an official act. If there's enough evidence, presumably the judge wouldn't dismiss and the trial would continue. (If they did dismiss, presumably the prosecution could appeal to a higher level court,)
I am just not clear on why everyone both thinks, and seem to want to think that this has given up the ball game and now the president is a king.
I am trying to argue in good faith. I just don't agree with you that the president can now do whatever they want. If they could, Biden could order the assassinations of all Republicans sitting in congress, for instance - presuming your reading of this is correct, what's to stop him? If you think it's just that he's not bold enough, perhaps you should call the whitehouse and give your opinion on what he should do with his newfound powers.
That’s not how immunity works. It’s not a defense at trial. It’s presumptive, and prevents you from even filing charges. If you look at my screenshot above, their stated intent is to protect the president from having to go through trials.
The US President now has legal immunity from executing those laws faithfully.
Incorrect. Breaking the law is never an official act of the office, and therefore, cannot be protected.
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.)
The president absolutely can assassinate people according to this. They can have someone picked up on any charge (execution of laws and giving orders to the military are part of their "official acts"), taken to a federal facility, and executed (espionage, national defense, exigent circumstances, whatever), then pardon everyone involved, and no evidence could even be brought up because it is all tied to an official act and investigating it would be impossible because any evidence tied to the official act is prohibited (giving orders to the military, directing federal law enforcement) and the investigation would burden the president's ability to execute their core responsibilities.
I'm not reading this. Your first sentence is incorrect.
Bull. The president giving orders to the military is a core responsibility, and he has full immunity in that regard. That plus a pardon for the military members involved means he can have anyone assassinated and nobody would face consequences. Period.
Legal orders. The president is bound by Article II, Section 3.