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MayReasonRule

(1,832 posts)
Wed Jul 24, 2024, 08:42 AM Jul 2024

The Court Fools Itself - The Roberts Court has made the current crisis of American democracy perpetual.

The Atlantic

The Trumpist justices on the Supreme Court had a very serious problem: They needed to keep their guy out of prison for trying to overthrow the government. The right-wing justices had to do this while still attempting to maintain at least a pretense of having ruled on the basis of the law and the Constitution rather than mere partisan instincts.

So they settled on what they thought was a very clever solution: They would grant the presidency the near-unlimited immunity Donald Trump was asking for, while writing the decision so as to keep the power to decide which presidential acts would be “official” and immune to criminal prosecution, and which would be “unofficial” and therefore not. The president is immune, but only when the justices say he is. The president might seem like a king, but the justices can withhold the crown.

The right-wing justices, in rewriting of the Constitution in Trump’s image, have clearly diverged from the intentions of the founders. In “Federalist No. 69,” Alexander Hamilton wrote that former presidents would “be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” Expanding on his point, Hamilton wrote, “The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution.” The Roberts Court turned the office of the presidency the Founders made into the kind of monarchical office they rebelled against.

The justices, less independent arbiters than the shock troops of the conservative movement, wanted Trump to be immune to prosecution, and so they conjured a rationale for doing so, with a narrow window of legal accountability that only they have the right to determine. But that window might as well be barred from the inside: What Jackson’s story shows is that the feeble, arbitrary restraints the justices put into their own grant of royal immunity to Trump will not withstand any president with the capacity to violate them. Unfortunately, the day a rogue president shows the Supreme Court just how powerless it really is, it will not be the justices who suffer most for their folly.


Archive Link
https://web.archive.org/web/20240724112934/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/roberts-supreme-court-2024-term/678983/
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The Court Fools Itself - The Roberts Court has made the current crisis of American democracy perpetual. (Original Post) MayReasonRule Jul 2024 OP
When VP Harris Wins, This Will Happen Best_man23 Jul 2024 #1
Genies Do Not Willingly Return To Their Bottle MayReasonRule Jul 2024 #4
John Roberts is a spineless jackass wolfie001 Jul 2024 #2
Roberts Is A Theocratic Fascist Jackass MayReasonRule Jul 2024 #3
Yes! And his wife, just like Alito's and Thomas's are up to their necks in their own bullshit wolfie001 Jul 2024 #6
Indeed!!! MayReasonRule Jul 2024 #7
Nat-C Or Nazi No Matter The Name Their Evil Depravity's Always The Same MayReasonRule Jul 2024 #5
The Roberts Court The Wizard Jul 2024 #8

Best_man23

(5,124 posts)
1. When VP Harris Wins, This Will Happen
Wed Jul 24, 2024, 11:14 AM
Jul 2024

Lindseed Graham or Turtle will go to the floor of the Senate and make a speech demanding a Constitutional amendment to curtail a president's "absolute immunity."

MayReasonRule

(1,832 posts)
3. Roberts Is A Theocratic Fascist Jackass
Wed Jul 24, 2024, 01:16 PM
Jul 2024

The sitting majority of SCOTUS are each various flavors of theocratic fascists.
The sitting majority of SCOTUS are traitorous criminals.
The sitting majority of SCOTUS belongs in prison.

The Wizard

(12,871 posts)
8. The Roberts Court
Wed Jul 24, 2024, 02:52 PM
Jul 2024

will have a perpetual dark cloud over it. There is no good ending when the highest Court perverts justice. Minority rule made possible by Mitch McConnell and his band of criminal Repubic senators.

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