The Supreme Court handed down a sweeping but vague decision last week that gives the president broad legal immunity for actions taken while in office. Critics have called the decision (which was also adopted by former President Donald Trump) “a scathing and scathing decision that gives the president broad legal immunity for actions taken while in office.” Election interference case ongoing It could dramatically reshape the executive branch’s relationship with the rest of the federal government.
Roughly speaking, Trump vs America Verdict The Supreme Court has stated that there are two types of legal immunity enjoyed by the President of the United States while in office: “absolute” and “constructive.” If the President commits a crime while in “official duties,” he is granted legal immunity for that act and cannot be prosecuted. The Supreme Court’s decision has obviously left many confused as its order is vague and the Supreme Court itself cannot explain exactly what it did. Indeed, the question of what counts as “official duties” and when exactly it can be interpreted as such is sure to be an area of legal battle for years to come.
While the conservative justices seem to see the ruling as a sensible way to protect executive branch power, the liberal justices are more wary. Most notably, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, gave several horrific examples of what she said the ruling would enable: “Ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent? Immunity. Organizing a military coup to stay in power? Immunity. Accepting a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immunity. Immunity, immunity, immunity,” she said.
In particular, the example of Sotomayor’s “SEAL Team 6” Fueled online claims The president can now order the summary execution of political opponents and American citizens.
But is this really true? What could a new Supreme Court ruling stop Joe Biden from designating his current political opponent Donald Trump an “enemy of the state” and identifying his residence, Mar-a-Lago, as a hotbed of “terrorist activity”? Hasn’t the Supreme Court just given the president permission to fly drones at his enemies on only the flimsiest of pretenses? I asked several legal experts about this ridiculous what-if scenario, and the results were… not very reassuring. Indeed, it seemed like everyone had a slightly different opinion.
America’s Misguided Drone Attack Policy
It should be noted that it is already currently legal for a president to order drone attacks against American citizens. The Obama administration created this policy during the War on Terror and (to my knowledge) it has only been used once, in the highly controversial operation that killed cleric Anwar Awlaki and Islamist blogger Samir Khan, both of whom were U.S. citizens and (according to the government) senior members of Al Qaeda. Still, even if the law has only been used on a limited basis, critics say the Obama administration has trampled on constitutional rights and set a dangerous legal precedent that could be abused in the future.
Jeff Rogg, a senior fellow at the University of South Florida’s Institute for Global and National Security Studies, said the drone policy used against al-Awlaki and Khan contained “constitutional ambiguities” and was implemented in a manner that lacked transparency to both the public and the courts. Rogg described the policy as an example of “executive order” that was “left to the discretion of the president” and lacked sufficient judicial intervention.
In fact, the legal basis of Obama’s policies is difficult to understand. Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF)The law, adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, legalized many aspects of the global war on terrorism. As part of its authority under the AUMF, the Obama administration asserted in 2011 that it had the legal right to eliminate threats to the US homeland, including US citizens, without constitutional concerns such as due process. It then argued in the case of al-Awlaki that it could not share information about his case due to national security concerns.
Following al-Awlaki’s killing, the Obama administration faced strong criticism from civil rights groups. Edited version The policy document states, “If a named suspect [as a terrorist threat] If the target is a U.S. person, the Department of Justice shall conduct a legal analysis to ensure that the operation is conducted in accordance with U.S. law and the Constitution.” It also lays out conditions that must be met before a target can be “eliminated.”
The prerequisites for the use of lethal force under Section IC8 are: (a) the identified HVT is virtually certain to be [“high-value terrorist”] (b) There exists a virtual certainty that noncombatants will not be injured or killed; (c) [This section redacted] (d) an assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of the operation; (f) an assessment that the relevant government authorities of the country in which the action is being considered cannot or will not effectively address the threat to U.S. persons; and (c) an assessment that no reasonable alternative other than lethal action exists to effectively address the threat to U.S. persons.
The policy remains in effect. New York attorney Jonathan G. D’Errico wrote: 2018 Papers The Fordham Law Review said President Obama’s policies ignore basic constitutional protections for Americans and that this is an ongoing problem for the American people.
Currently, there is no legal system that provides answers or defenses to violations of procedural due process the next time the Executive determines that it must execute a U.S. citizen to protect the nation’s borders. The Executive remains free to unilaterally target and execute U.S. citizens via drone strikes without the formal procedures normally associated with a death penalty sentence under U.S. law. Executive discretion, protected under the aegis of national security, trumps the procedural due process rights of U.S. citizens.
Indeed, several lawsuits were filed following Operation Al-Awlaki. I tried to decide The Obama administration argued that it acted illegally, but the court that brought the case refused to let it go forward. The judicial system effectively dropped the challenge, saying the issue was up to the government to decide. That has upset some legal experts, but others say the White House policy is largely limited to Operation Awlaki itself and doesn’t pose a continuing threat to the American people as a whole. Such critics point out that“The definition of targeted national groups is in fact very narrow, and so far the regime has only claimed authority to target one individual: al-Awlaki.”
But clearly just because the law says one thing today doesn’t mean it can simply say something different tomorrow. I told Rogg that Obama’s policies seem like they were crafted in a pipe dream for political purposes. If an administration can create such confusing and constitutionally questionable policies at all, what’s to stop the next administration from expanding on them or creating new ones?
“Nothing,” Rogg said. “Nothing can stop it. [next] president [from doing this again]”The government’s argument is unclear because this is an unsettled constitution,” he said, referring to the murky legal situation on which the government bases its argument.
Regarding the recent Supreme Court decision, Rogg said one of the problems with it is that it “has the potential to make the president more irresponsible.” [in their national security activities]Due to the presumption of immunity, [the court] It just approves something as an “official act.”
“Not only is it wrong, it’s dangerous.”
Legal experts who spoke about the recent Supreme Court decision said it did not change existing legal powers enjoyed by the president, such as the authority to launch drone attacks against Americans. Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said the Supreme Court’s decision “changes nothing about the president’s legal authority. As we have long argued, the U.S. program of lethal force outside of authorized war zones is illegal. Now the Supreme Court majority is saying the president has immunity if he uses that authority to violate criminal law.” The ACLU was one of the groups that originally sued the government over al-Awlaki’s killing.
Another legal scholar, Lisa Goten, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that while killing a political opponent may be technically possible, it’s hard to imagine a president attempting such an act or, more importantly, getting away with it. What the court is doing, she said, is “removing the deterrent to criminal prosecution and essentially giving the president personal immunity from criminal conduct,” which she considers “a fundamental misreading of the Constitution with potentially very dire consequences.” But she still thinks we’re talking about an extremely unlikely scenario, since the president needs an accomplice.
“Unless the president himself is going to pick up a gun and go shoot somebody, I don’t think that’s necessarily something to be concerned about,” she said. “The president may have immunity, but the person carrying out the orders doesn’t have immunity.”
“But can’t the president order a killing and then pardon everyone involved?” I asked.
“Well, he could certainly give it a try,” Gotain said.
“Assassinating a political opponent is unconstitutional,” Gothein argued.
But Gotain’s interpretation doesn’t seem to take into account the fact that the government has already asserted the right, however limited, to assassinate Americans without constitutional due process.
Gothein also noted that “domestic military deployment” is a shared prerogative between the president and Congress. In other words, it does not fall within the scope of protection provided by the Supreme Court’s new “absolute immunity” ruling, because that immunity only pertains to actions taken by the president himself. But the president may still have “presumed immunity” for his actions, Gothein added. Gothein also acknowledged that there could be scenarios in which White House lawyers could make legal arguments that differ significantly from his own.
“The court has essentially held that the president is above the law when it comes to committing a range of crimes, to the extent that those crimes can be construed as occurring while the president was performing his official duties. [presidential] “I believe this principle is not only wrong, but dangerous to the rule of law and to democracy,” Gothein said.
Gothein added: “The concern is [about the ruling] “This ruling has emboldened the president to the point where he has little respect for the rule of law and the only thing preventing him from breaking the law is fear of personal consequence,” she continued. “In the wake of this ruling, there is a lot of uncertainty about what conduct is covered by absolute immunity and what presumed immunity means. There are a lot of grey areas. I hope the president doesn’t try his luck and test whether there is immunity in the system.”
