How the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is ‘changing’ the US presidency | Donald Trump News

Washington, DC – The Supreme Court’s ruling on the scope of presidential immunity will “transform” the US government, experts say, warning that the decision could undermine the rule of law in the country.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court considered former President Donald Trump’s sweeping claims that his actions while in office were immune from criminal prosecution. He is currently facing charges for his conduct in the final days of his presidency, when he was accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election.

The court awarded Trump a partial victory by ruling that former U.S. presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts committed while in office. “He is entitled to at least presumptive immunity,” the court majority wrote.

Monday’s ruling will likely delay two of Trump’s criminal cases beyond the November presidential election because a lower court must first address the question of what constitutes an official act.

But beyond the immediate impact, the decision will have “notable” implications for the president’s powers, said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University.

“This fundamentally changes the presidency,” Super told Al Jazeera. “Here the court is saying the president is still subject to the law, but they’ve defined that much, much more narrowly than ever before. These are certainly the kinds of powers that are much more familiar to dictators than to presidents of democratic countries.”

The Supreme Court’s six conservative justices approved the ruling on Monday, while their three liberal colleagues dissented.

The regulation

The majority argued that a president must expect retaliation from his political opponents after leaving office unless his official actions were protected from legal consequences.

But in the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that presidential immunity has limits.

“The President has no immunity for his unofficial actions, and not everything the President does is official,” Roberts wrote.

“The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in the performance of his constitutional duties as an executive branch.”

Presidents can still be prosecuted for robbing a liquor store, as Super put it, but not for decisions made within the scope of their constitutional powers.

In fact, in its decision on Monday, the Supreme Court gave specific examples of when Trump’s conduct in the election tampering case constituted an official act.

For example, the court ruled that conversations between Trump and Justice Department officials were “absolutely immune” from prosecution.

Federal prosecutors had argued that Trump had tried to improperly influence the Justice Department to overturn his 2020 defeat to Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump, prosecutors said, had also “used the power and authority of the Justice Department to conduct sham investigations into election fraud.”

But experts fear that the Supreme Court may have jeopardized the independence of the Justice Department by classifying Trump’s conversations with agency officials as “official actions.”

While the Attorney General is appointed by the President, prosecutors are expected to act without political interference and apply the law on an equal basis in accordance with long-standing norms.

“Murder a political rival? Immune”

While a lower court will decide how Monday’s ruling affects Trump’s criminal case, Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the “real significance” of the decision is that it could allow future presidents to act with impunity.

“The long-term significance of this ruling should not be underestimated,” Finkelstein said in a television interview with Al Jazeera.

“It says that if Donald Trump were to become president again, he could use his official powers – particularly his core constitutional functions – to subvert the law, shield himself from criminal liability, and distort justice in his favor.”

Matt Dallek, political historian and professor at George Washington University, also described the court’s decision as “appalling.”

“The ruling is an attack on the constitutional safeguards against abuse of power,” he told Al Jazeera.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor also strongly rejected the ruling in her dissenting opinion.

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country and possibly the world. If he uses his official powers in any way, he is now, in the majority view, immune from criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “He orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.”

Law professor Super said Sotomayor’s claim was not an exaggeration. The president is the commander in chief of the military.

“There is no other official who can overrule the president in commanding the military. Therefore, his decision to give an order to the military would be absolutely immune,” he told Al Jazeera.

Before Trump, no former US president had ever been indicted. The former president faces four charges, including two for election fraud.

Earlier this year, he was found guilty in New York of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in all cases and called the allegations against him a “witch hunt” instigated by political rivals, especially Biden. He is running against Biden in the 2024 presidential election.

‘Radical’

Trump is not the first president to test the limits of presidential immunity, however. Richard Nixon could have been impeached over the Watergate scandal – when he used government funds to spy on political rivals – but he was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, in 1974.

In response to another case against Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents were also protected from civil damages.

Several officials in Ronald Reagan’s administration were also charged in connection with the Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States sold illegal weapons to Iran to finance a rebel group in Nicaragua. But Reagan, who denied any knowledge of the complex transactions, was never charged.

Most recently, Barack Obama’s administration has declined to bring charges against executive branch officials who authorized torture during the George W. Bush presidency.

Chris Edelson, assistant professor of government at American University and author of “Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security,” said that in modern history, U.S. presidents have exercised their power without “significant” constraints.

“The difference is that the court has now approved this and we now have a presidential candidate who has made it clear that he will try to rule as a dictator,” Edelson told Al Jazeera.

Trump declared last year that he would declare himself a dictator on his first day in office in order to “close the border.”

Edelson also called the court’s decision “radical,” comparing it to the Nixon era, when sweeping claims of presidential immunity sparked an outcry.

“When Richard Nixon made the famous statement in a television interview in 1977 that something the president was doing was not illegal, it was seen as a breathtaking statement,” he said.

“The court today declared that Nixon was indeed right.”

Brian Osgood contributed to this report.