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Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity opinion, dropped this morning. In broad strokes it goes like this:
1. For those acts that are pursuant to the President's "conclusive and preclusive" authority there is absolute immunity.
2. For those acts which are official acts by the President but not covered by (1) there is a presumption of immunity that can only be overcome by showing the prosecution would pose no "dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch."
3. For those acts which are unofficial there is no immunity.
4. Those acts for which the President has immunity cannot be used as evidence to demonstrate any element of a crime for which the President would not have immunity.
I think it's just incredible that the six justices in the majority looked at the Navy-SEALs-assassinate-a-rival hypothetical and went "yep, sounds right, no liability." Roberts' majority opinion even mentions the President's orders to the armed forces as one of the things that falls under (1).
I think the way is clear. Biden orders Trump, the six justices in the majority, and let's say the next 2-3 top Republican candidates whacked (just for safety). He probably gets impeached and removed but can't go to jail (thanks SCOTUS!) Harris takes over as President and I think it's unlikely she would also get impeached. Dems don't want to hand the presidency to Mike Johnson. That gives Harris plenty of time to stack the court. Republican convention in disarray due to the deaths of their prominent candidates. Biden obviously out, he'd be ineligible anyway if impeached and removed. Dems probably dump Harris to create a clean break with Biden admin, clearing the way for Whitmer/Newsom/Pritzker/whoever.
The above is fan fiction, of course.
This is the same Court that has been consistently expanding protections for firearm ownership pursuant to the Second Amendment so I expect liberals will, any day now, start finding a strange new appreciation for civilian ownership of 'weapons of war' if the President is free to kill U.S. citizens at will.
More seriously the consequences of not having immunity for 'official acts' would be arguably worse, with any given law enforcement agency that can claim proper jurisdiction able to show up to the White House with a warrant and seek to put the President in custody and/or search for evidence of criminal activity. Obvious failure mode there if we want him to be effective at his job (I, myself, wouldn't mind it! But as a practical matter who would agree to be President under these conditions?).
The line "When the President Does it, that means that it is not illegal" really does mean just that. If the laws carve out an exception for this particular person, then we can say in complete isolation from how immoral, illogical, and ill-advised an action may be, it is not illegal and thus remedies generally lie outside the legal process.
The Court has done nothing except re-allow bump stocks. All its other firearm cases were dead on arrival, except Rahimi which was their burial.
I'm not sure what exactly Rahimi entails. Gorsuch posed it as only saying that banning firearms, temporarily, from those judged, by a court, to be dangerous, is permissible.
The court in Rahimi accepted that laws against "going armed to the terror of the public" were historically significant. This translates into a blank check for any restriction on carry. Further, they accepted Rahimi, which walked back gun rights (not just by those judged by a court to be dangerous, but by those with a restraining order against them without any finding that they were dangerous), while ignoring many other cases where various courts have been ignoring Bruen.
Not quite. Bruen also recognized the same laws as historical precedents, but not for the law there in question. I don't have a good enough sense of how the court would continue to apply it more broadly, but I read Rahimi as mostly saying that "if you're dangerous, they can take your guns away." Which, will undoubtedly be attempted to be construed broadly, but Rahimi is clear (see page 15) that this is only allowing bans that show the individual in question a threat, unlike in Bruen, where they struck it down, because it presumed that they were lawful.
That is, it has to be default-legal to carry.
It is ruling only when a court decides that someone presents a threat. It's mentioned in the main opinion several times. For example, in the conclusion:
Section 922(g)(8), which the court upheld:
Note (8)(C)(ii), and note the "or" in (8)(C)(i). A court need merely order a person to not do something they're already prohibited from doing, without any finding they they represent a credible threat of any sort, and they lose their firearms rights. They didn't reach the constitutionality of (8)(C)(ii) in Rahimi, but they never will. The lower courts will take this decision as meaning the whole idea of "restraining order = lose firearms rights" is validated, and the Supreme Court will refuse to address the question again.
LOL, it isn't, not in New York or New Jersey certainly. If I strap a pistol on my hip and walk around my neighborhood, and a cop sees me, I'm going to prison with John Roberts's blessing. And despite there being ample cases to say that they really meant what they said in Bruen, the Supreme Court has taken none of them. The conservatives on the Supreme Court (except Thomas) do not want people to actually carry a gun; they support gun rights in the abstract as part of their high-class debating society, that's all.
Yeah, they definitely left up in the air whether it as a whole is fine. (Though Gorsuch, at least, seemed opposed.)
Fair enough, who knows whether they'll address it again. Why do you think they took Bruen, then, if you think they don't care? It's (mostly) the same justices?
They enjoyed the argument. It's not that they don't care; it's that they positively do not want the scenario I've been putting forth -- any unconvicted citizen being able to buy a gun, load it, and carry it into a major Blue city (they're probably mostly thinking Washington, D.C.) legally -- to happen. But they position they've taken in their high-class debate club is that the Second Amendment provides such a right.
Roberts, especially, is fond of decisions with no practical impact. Even with the recent decision striking down application of Sarbanes-Oxley to most Jan 6 protestors did nothing; the defendant in the case had enough other charges against him to put him away forever.
When Obergefell hit, people were getting gay married in every state in weeks if not days. The one resister in the entire country got fired and successfully sued for tens of thousands of dollars. It's been years since Bruen and it's still illegal for me to buy a gun or to carry one. Clearly the Supreme Court can make decisions which have effect; they just chose not to.
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