My naive assumption is that ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival is not an official nor constitutionally authorized power, and thus would be prosecutable.
Guess again! Roberts explicitly calls out orders to the military as covered by absolute immunity. EDIT: and motive is explicitly barred from review too.
An important point here is that there are both legal and illegal orders. Military personnel are instructed obey every legal order, and disobey every illegal order (at least I was).
In the military, we have the UCMJ that allows us to prosecute those military personnel that issue illegal orders. The President is the Commander-in-Chief, but he is a civilian, so the UCMJ doesn't apply. I always thought he would be charged under criminal law in that case, but it seems that this ruling precludes that.
This is true but I don't think it meaningfully checks the president, because the pardon power is also absolute and unreviewable, and does cover courts martial (as we saw in the Eddie Gallagher case). Military personnel are not required to follow illegal orders from the president, but if they do they won't face legal sanction.
Page 14 notes that the President's official responsibilities "include, for instance, commanding
the Armed Forces of the United States; granting reprieves
and pardons for offenses against the United States; and ap-
pointing public ministers and consuls, the Justices of this
Court, and Officers of the United States."
Page 17 states "We thus
conclude that the President is absolutely immune from
criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive
sphere of constitutional authority."
Page 26 states "In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may
not inquire into the President’s motives."
> Page 14 notes that the President's official responsibilities "include, for instance, commanding the Armed Forces of the United States; granting reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States; and ap- pointing public ministers and consuls, the Justices of this Court, and Officers of the United States."
Right below that it clarifies
> If the President claims authority to act but in fact exercises mere “individual will” and “authority without law,”
the courts may say so. Youngstown, 343 U. S., at 655 (Jackson, J., concurring). In Youngstown, for instance, we held
that President Truman exceeded his constitutional authority when he seized most of the Nation’s steel mills. See id.,
at 582–589 (majority opinion). But once it is determined
that the President acted within the scope of his exclusive
authority, his discretion in exercising such authority cannot
be subject to further judicial examination.
This demonstrates where the court is drawing the lines. Fascist dictatorships are fine, so long as they keep their mitts away from private industry. Of course, at this point, who is going to stop the President if he starts seizing companies?
This ruling is like telling a hungry leopard, "you can eat anyone except for us." The hubris of this ruling is absurd. American's President Jinping won't be a Federalist.
But Truman shouldn't have faced prosecution for that should he? It was after all done to ensure victory in Korea and he stopped after the court said no with apparent authority when he did it. This case goes too far and not far enough.
This court's citation of precedent in one decision is meaningless, since they've shown a lot of enthusiasm for overturning it as soon as it no longer suits their (or their patrons') interests. See also: Dobbs, Loper Bright.
In the military chain of command an order is only an order when it is a lawful order. The president does not have any power to issue an unlawful order. That would be outside of his constitutional powers and not an official act.
Who gets to decide the lawfulness of the order, and what physical power does the Executive have at his disposal to bring to bear to tip their judgment?
iirc every US service man/woman is empowered to disobey orders. I think they call it "answering to a higher authority" or something like that, granted there are severe consequences for disobeying an order that turns out to be lawful no matter how much you don't like it.
The courts. Military courts have been handling this for a long time. No reason civilian courts couldn't apply the same standards in the case of a president.
If the president is able to bring physical power to bear, then it matters little what the law says anyway.
The previous POTUS is accused of using his office to perform a series of actions that culminated in disruption of the function of Congress.
Several Congresspeople then concluded he could not be impeached because by the time they were able to consider the question, he had left office.
This ruling by SCOTUS suggests there is now no avenue to hold such a President accountable for such actions.
... and that's before we broach the question of whether "Removal from the Oval Office" is sufficient punishment for all manner of crime the President could commit from his position of power, because that is the upper limit of the effect of a Congressional impeachment. This seems to give a sitting President carte blanche to throw the Constitution in a wood-chipper if he can interpret it is within his official acts to do so.
>The previous POTUS is accused of using his office to perform a series of actions that culminated in disruption of the function of Congress.
Yes, and was impeached for that.
>Several Congresspeople then concluded he could not be impeached because by the time they were able to consider the question, he had left office.
That's how checks and balances work. They may have made that conclusion, but the impeachment carried on anyway and failed to gain the 2/3rds majority.
>This ruling by SCOTUS suggests there is now no avenue to hold such a President accountable for such actions.
It doesn't suggest that at all.
>whether "Removal from the Oval Office" is sufficient punishment for all manner of crime the President could commit from his position of power, because that is the upper limit of the effect of a Congressional impeachment.
It's removal from office AND "the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.[0]" They can still be found guilty for insurrection after impeachment.
>This seems to give a sitting President carte blanche to throw the Constitution in a wood-chipper if he can interpret it is within his official acts to do so.
That's not how it works because at the end of the day the President doesn't interpret the law, and isn't shielded from impeachment and justice through state/federal courts as I outlined above. This is literally the majority opinion. Similarly, just because a military officer interprets their actions are lawful doesn't make them so.
The military was happy to systematically seize guns from citizens in NOLA during Katrina. They will follow unlawful orders to keep their dental plans active.
The President is the Commander in Chief; issuing orders to the military is very much an official act.
"But not for this! This would be clearly corrupt!" you may say, but the decision addresses that as well; the President's motive for the "official act" cannot be introduced as evidence!
> In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.
Not intent, but the location and nature of the order. If it’s not in a war zone, not targeting an enemy combatant, etc. that’s not an order that falls within the scope of the core actions of a commander in chief.
Neither is pressuring the Vice President not to certify the election, but they explicitly state it to be an official act. Page 31 of the ruling:
> Whenever the President and Vice President discuss their
official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct. Pre-
siding over the January 6 certification proceeding at which
Members of Congress count the electoral votes is a consti-
tutional and statutory duty of the Vice President.
> The indictment’s allega-
tions that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President
to take particular acts in connection with his role at the cer-
tification proceeding thus involve official conduct, and
Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution
for such conduct.
They're laying out an extremely permissive standard.
But the immunity is only presumptive for acts within the outer perimiter of the president's official responsibility. For core constitutional powers, like giving orders to the military, the immunity is absolute.
Article II of the constitution specifically gives the POTUS the authority to command the armed forces. The limit is declaring war, which is vested in Congress. So it seems reasonable that commanding Seal Team 6 is specifically a constitutionally authorized power and within an official duty.
Being killed by the government without due process of law (ie: death penalty for convicted criminals) is a clear violation of your constitutional rights though, and violating someone's constitutional rights (read: going against the constitution) can't be an official act by definition.
You’re creating an “any unconstitutional act cannot be official” rule that does not appear in the ruling and is contrary to tons of statute and case law. Qualified immunity codifies that rights violations can be official acts.
And as bad as today’s ruling is, I think your proposed rule would be worse because it would create tons of liability for good faith government employees.
We can’t have a world where it’s unclear if an act is official until there’s some kind of review of its outcome. The act itself has to be official (or not).
So now we’ve left the land of settled law are are into personal opinions. Which is fair enough, I detest qualified immunity, but it is the law of the land.
This is explicitly about the POTUS being immune from prosecution for official acts like commanding ST6 to assassinate someone. Fortunately in some cases, unfortunately in others, semantic wordplay akin to “could god microwave a burrito so hot even they couldn’t eat it” has little effect in the court system. That is to say, semantic gotchas like “but actually it couldn’t be an official act because the very act is against the constitution” have no sway.
Every sentence except for the first is about word games not mattering. The first sentence is what I am also addressing, so I don't see how it is making a new point. Help me out?
This is at least the second time in this thread you've said something like an official act can't violate someone's constitutional rights "by definition". I'm wondering what definition you refer to.
That said, it's obviously a false statement. By your argument, the president ordering flight 93 to be shot down on 9/11 would not be an official act. You might now retort something about extenuating circumstances, but really that would only show you to be entirely wrong about your original assertion.
I recommend you edit your posts to correct your mistake.
And you’re are free to sue the government in that case. The DOJ won’t prosecute the president for ordering something like that even after he leaves office..
"Official Act" has not been defined, so who knows if going against the the Constitution will count. The way the law is worded it may not matter anyway, it's pretty much left up to the courts to decide.
Haven't we had Presidents order airstrikes on American citizens in the Middle East before without a trial because of their association with jihadist groups?
At a certain point the "constitutionality" doesn't matter; it's hard to make a case have a meaningful outcome when the plaintiff is dead.
We've made it very clear for decades that the President can commit acts of war without declaring it. Syria, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of other hotspots around the world.
Congress hasn't declared war after WWII. I suppose that's why you used the euphemism "congressional authorization"; instead of what was intended by the folks that wrote the constitution -- a declaration of war.
But assasinating private citizens a ok? So Biden can order the assassination of Trump? Even if you claim as someone else that you can’t violate someone’s constitutional rights within an official act, we have already killed US citizens abroad via drone strikes. So if Trump is in some foreign country we can drop an a-bomb and claim it was to kill some terrorist & that’s a ok?
The minority points out that official acts was already a defense. The majority opinion here claims that it’s an absolute immunity and even motivation is impervious to this immunity claim. This is a serious undermining of the rule of law in a substantial way and paves the way for the US to have a dictatorship at some point in the future.
So first, the distinction between official acts and unofficial acts isn’t actually defined and even Robert’s admits this ambiguity is going to be a problem:
> Determining which acts are official and which are unofficial “can be difficult,” Roberts conceded. He emphasized that the immunity that the court recognizes in its ruling on Monday takes a broad view of what constitutes a president’s “official responsibilities,” “covering actions so long as they are not manifestly or palpably beyond his authority.” In conducting the official/unofficial inquiry, Roberts added, courts cannot consider the president’s motives, nor can they designate an act as unofficial simply because it allegedly violates the law.
Basically the President has a presumption that his behavior is an official act unless it’s egregiously outside his powers but there’s also no way to really investigate it. Oh and it’s also combined with the unitary executive theory popular on the right which holds that the president basically has absolute power over all executive agencies and a growing interpretation of the powers of the president (under both parties) which is a scary scenario.
And given that the dissenting opinion from SCOTUS justices literally raises the exact scenario you’re assuming is unofficial, so dismissing it out of hand seems overly bold:
> 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.
You can disagree with the dissents, but even Justice Barrett outlines some very serious problems with the reasoning in the majority opinion while Justice Thomas says they should go further and completely rule Jack Smith’s investigation unconstitutional outright.
My naive assumption would be that giving that order must fall into the realm of official act. How can POTUS command the military, unless acting in the capacity of their Commander in Chief?
