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

Washington, DC The Supreme Court's decision on the scope of presidential immunity will transform the United States government, experts say, warning that the ruling could undermine the rule of law in the country.

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

The Supreme Court has handed Donald Trump a partial victory, 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, as a lower court will first have to hear arguments over what constitutes official action.

But beyond its immediate effect, the decision will have a remarkable impact on presidential powers, said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University.

This fundamentally transforms the presidency, Super told Al Jazeera. Here, the court says that the president is still subject to the law, but it has made that power much more limited than before. These are certainly powers that are much more familiar to dictators than to presidents of democratic countries.

The Supreme Court's six conservative justices endorsed the decision Monday, while their three liberal counterparts dissented.

decision

The majority held that unless official actions are shielded from legal repercussions, a president could face retaliation from his political opponents when he leaves office.

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

The president has no immunity for his unofficial actions, and not everything the president does is unofficial, Roberts writes.

The president is not above the law. But Congress cannot criminalize the president's conduct in the exercise of executive branch responsibilities under the Constitution.

Presidents can still be prosecuted for robbing a liquor store, as Super says, but not for any decision made within the scope of their powers under the Constitution.

In fact, in its decision Monday, the Supreme Court gave specific examples of when Trump's behavior in the election subversion case constituted official actions.

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

Federal prosecutors have argued that Trump tried to improperly influence the Justice Department to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump, prosecutors said, also used the power and authority of the Justice Department to conduct investigations into bogus election crimes.

But by treating Trump's conversations with agency officials as official actions, experts worry the Supreme Court has endangered the Justice Department's independence.

Although the president appoints the attorney general, prosecutors are expected to act without political interference and apply the law equally, in line with long-standing norms.

Assassinate a political rival? Immune

While a lower court will decide how Monday's ruling will affect 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 decision should not be underestimated, Finkelstein told Al Jazeera in a television interview.

What this means is that if Donald Trump becomes president again, he will be able to use his official position, particularly his essential constitutional functions, to subvert the law, to shield himself from criminal liability, and to distort justice in ways that are favorable to him.

The U.S. Supreme Court is dominated by conservative justices, including three appointed by Trump. [File: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters]

Matt Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University, also said the court's decision was appalling.

The move violates constitutional limits aimed at preventing abuse of power, he told Al Jazeera.

In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor also forcefully rejected the decision.

The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and perhaps the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, the majority reasoned, he will now be immune from criminal prosecution, she wrote. Does he order Navy Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.

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

“No other official can override the president in commanding the army. Therefore, him giving an order to the army would be totally immune from this decision,” he told Al Jazeera.

Before Trump, no former US president had been indicted. The former president faces four charges, including two related to subversive tactics during the election.

Earlier this year, he was convicted in New York of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in all cases, describing the allegations against him as a witch hunt by his political rivals, particularly Biden. He is running against Biden in the 2024 presidential election.

Radical

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

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

Several Reagan administration officials were also indicted in the Iran-Contra affair, which saw the United States illegally sell weapons to Iran to fund a rebel group in Nicaragua. But Reagan, who denied knowledge of the complex transactions, was never charged.

More recently, the Barack Obama administration declined to bring charges against executive branch officials who authorized torture during the presidency of George W. Bush.

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 throughout modern history, American presidents have exercised their power without significant constraints.

What is different today is that the court has now upheld that decision, and we have a presidential candidate who has made it clear that he will seek to rule as a dictator, Edelson told Al Jazeera.

Trump said last year that he would be a dictator from his first day in office, in order to close the border.

Edelson also called the court's decision radical. He drew comparisons to the Nixon era, when claims of presidential immunity sparked an outcry.

When Richard Nixon said in a 1977 television interview that when the president does something, it means it's not illegal, it was considered a breathtaking statement, he said.

The Court today said Nixon was right.

Brian Osgood contributed to this report.

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