9 people decide to allow presidents to act as dictators
All 9 were part of the decision making. For me it is amazing that so important decisions are left to so few
Someone must always make decisions, a world where no decisions are made would devolve into a Mad Max type thing, where the fact that we are members of the animal kingdom would become very readily apparent. We used to decide these things with trial by combat, where the most skilled warrior (or who chose the most skilled as their champion) was right because God apparently said so, by making him so good at fighting. Still a person making a decision. Not far off from a world where you decide if someone was a witch by trying to build a bridge out of them.
The modern trick is dividing up the decision-making power so much that nobody can assemble it all into their personal toolkit and fully embrace corruption with no consequences.
The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/01/us/trump-immunity-supreme-court
So 9 people.
Edit: Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people, and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
The level of corruption of the court is another matter.
Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people
funny how you are proud of your kindergarten logic
and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
and the majority in this case was… wait for it… SIX PEOPLE 😂
so “the court decided to…” or “6 members decided to…” is true, but “9 members decided to…” is not true, because 3 members decided not to.
similarly you can say “51% of people voted for biden” or “people voted for biden”, but not “100% of people voted for biden” - because that would simply not be true.
if you have any other difficult question, like why is water wet, don’t hesitate to ask 😂
The big thing everyone is missing here is the ruling says the president cannot be prosecuted for actions that are constitutional. So this does not mean the end of democracy or whatever people are saying. The president can’t stay in office after his term expires. The president cannot order his political opponents killed- in fact, the Supreme Court issued a statement on that just this year.
Yes, and that is very important and I did not know that, so thank you for clarifying.
That said, this supreme court interprets the constitution however they want. The court in its current form (as a whole) is not ethical, lawful, or legitimate. As soon as a republican takes the presidency, there is no stopping them.
Amici curae aren’t Supreme Court decisions. “Amici curae” means “friend of the court”. It’s an argument from third parties submitted for a pending case. The dissents by the actual Supreme Court justices explicitly reference the assassination potential.
That is true, thank you for explaining that to me. Although I read the dissent and what Sotomayor said was that the president would get their day in court to determine if those actions were constitutional, not that this ruling pre-approves them to do so. Meanwhile Roberts said these concerns are overblown… idk really, I don’t like the ruling, it basically feels like an expansion of qualified immunity to the president, which makes things more difficult for prosecuters but not impossible.
They’re only pre-approved for explicit constitutional duties, but they’re presumed immune for all others and their reasoning can’t be questioned. “I believed they were an imminent national security threat and took the hard choice.” It’s like “I feared for my life” for gun nuts, but you can apply it to nearly anything because the president has expansive emergency responsibilities and the only way to prove he wasn’t actually taking an action “officially” would be using his private communications, but any communications with “advisors” are precluded from being used.
And anything that makes it through that gauntlet to the Supreme Court rather than being dismissed earlier will be decided on ideological grounds.
You say that like it’s a defined thing that will keep a president in check. SCOTUS rules on constitutionality. Are you really that confident that they’ll keep Trump in line if he gets another term and starts really getting to work? The road to fascism isn’t paved with goods intentions, it’s paved with mealy mouthed, two faced decisions like this that give more and more leeway until it’s too late to take back.
Yeah well I guess we’ll see what happens if the orange jackass gets reelected. I’m not holding my breath.
If anyone ever doubted that the DNC and the GOP weren’t on the same team, just watch as the DNC let this opportunity slip right through their fingers. Access to the greatest political, strategical, minds and they will let this opening wash away into a river of fascism.
It’s a play, we are watching theatre. Meant to keep you distracted. Meant to keep you oppressed.
For starters, by spending the last 4 years training a different candidate to beat trump this year.
But failing that, they could absolutely have prevented that disaster on the debate. They knew full well how the rest of America will react to seeing Biden look like that, and I find it no coincidence that it happened directly before The Supreme Court ruled to overturn Chevron and Grant immunity to Trump.
We could all collectively decide to chop the heads off of the elite. We don’t need to argue about which capitalist is better every 4 years. There’s nothing physically stopping 90% of the country from just overthrowing the other 10% if we really tried together
Just make a balance of what the governments of the last 40 years did. Would the us be worse or better off if those changes had not been made? My opinion is that government is unnecessary. There are enough laws already. If anything really needs to be changed it can be done by referendum. Abolish the government!
Edit: government is the biggest illusion of them all
God, we’re so fucked. SCOTUS is turning the Presidency into an autocracy, Biden refusing to get out of the way for a capable candidate…that judge sentencing Trump to jail time in the Stormy Daniels case is basically the only thing that can save us from a right-wing theocracy at this point.
Not that narrow. They are saying fomenting an attack on Congress and conspiring to subvert the electoral college are official acts.
Where are you getting that? That question wasn’t put to SCOTUS.
Trump was charged. Trump claimed he had “absolute immunity”, and didn’t have to face charges. Court rules against him in this issue; he appealed. Appellate court ruled against him, sending the case back to the trial court. He appealed to SCOTUS. SCOTUS said he doesn’t have absolute immunity, and that the limit of his immunity is on his “official acts”. SCOTUS then sent the case back to the trial court. The trial court will have to determine whether his actions were “official” or “unofficial”.
Surely Trump just appeals to the SCOTUS and they free him in line with today’s ruling?
SCOTUS can’t do shit for state charges. Doesn’t mean they won’t try.
However, His legal team will argue literally any punishment is too harsh and appeal the NY state charges, which will be granted because he was a president and has money. Then it will be delayed past the election and not matter anyway because this system is not made to resist willful destruction by those entrusted to protect it.
Edit: Turns out they can. The NY prosecution has agreed to postpone charges less than a day after the ruling. Trump’s team asserts that the criminal activities occurred before he was president, but since the evidence was gathered during, he can not be prosecuted. Apparently concealing evidence unrelated to the presidency is an official act…
They cannot currently cancel state charges, but the GOP is trying to change that. It is one of a raft of measures underway. Some are truely frightening, such as using Red State National Guard troops against non-compliant Blue States. Check out Project 2025 - the Republicans are even trying to hide their planned dictatorship.
There’s move afoot by the GOP to get any state charges against the president to be elevated to the Federal court.
Guess who can pardon himself or have federal charges dropped?
Wouldn’t be that simple. The Stormy Daniels case was about things that happened before he became president. Sure reimbursing Cohen might have occurred at least in part while Trump was president, but Cohen was never part of the administration. They were disguising the reimbursement as paying Cohen in his capacity as Trump’s personal lawyer. So there’s pretty much nothing that this ruling does to hamper this case.
That said, I have no doubts that they’d find some way to rule in his favor if an appeal managed to land in front of them. But I think he’d have to go through normal appeals first, he can’t just go straight to SCOTUS.
People aren’t reading the article. They did not rule that he is immune because his acts were official.
They ruled that official acts, and not unofficial acts, convey immunity, and remanded to lower courts to determine whether his acts should be considered official or unofficial.
They gave it absolute immunity. That means there is no way to appeal, to argue, to halt, stop, or sue any act by a president. Even arguing whether or not the act is official would be a type of qualified immunity. Meaning that, if you are the office holder of president, everything you do has carte blanche, de facto legality. Sure, some future court could devise a test for this official vs unofficial distinction, but it means nothing for the near future. Biden is now a monarch with no legal method of stopping whatever he wishes to do, so long as it doesn’t explicitly fall outside of the extremely broad powers of the executive as defined by SCOTUS and the constitution. Likewise with any future officer holder.
That’s not what they ruled at all. They said there was immunity for official acts, specifically citing constitutional powers like appointing judges, commanding the military and recognizing foreign states. That was honestly never in question. A lot of people are reading this wrong. This was a massive punt, which basically opens up the door for a jury to decide what constitutes an official act.
Hi! I’m a real big dumb dumb, cause I never, ya know, studied law. But I sure do know that with SCOTUS decisions, the dissenting should be read as well, to get the proper context of the decision that the opinion won’t state. Sotomayor sums up the majority decision like this, and she’s a damn sight more knowledgeable than I could ever be:
The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of “core constitutional powers.” Ante, at 6. This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and the majority’s attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds. In any event, it is quickly eclipsed by the second move, which is to create expansive immunity for all “official act[s].” Ante, at 14. Whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless. Finally, the majority declares that evidence con- cerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. See ante, at 30–32. That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical.
You should really read it, it’s such an important read.
PS: Sorry for formatting, it’s copied verbatim from the dissenting pdf
I felt like I must have misread the ruling after seeing all of the articles and comments.
Former presidents also have a “presumption of immunity” for their official acts while in office — but, the court ruled, there is no immunity for “unofficial acts.”
So chutkin is going to decide what acts were official acts and which were unofficial.
But “presumption of immunity” is a weird fucking phrase too because it makes it seem like you can prove they aren’t immune? Like presumption of innocence–you start there and work the other way. So presumably(pardon the pun) you can start there with this and work the other way still?
I’d need actual lawyers to make this make sense.
But either way it didn’t seem as “carte Blanche presidents can do anything” to me when I read it.
I’d need actual lawyers to make this make sense.
You mean like the dissenting judges?
But either way it didn’t seem as “carte Blanche presidents can do anything” to me when I read it.
Read the dissent. The most qualified people say it is literally carte blanche in the dissent.
