[alsaaro]

Curious how an ostensibly "conservative" court can ignore the concept of enumerated powers, the constitution clearly does not grant immunity to the President, so the conservative court invents immunity when none is explicitly granted.

Indeed, the concept of immunity is recognized in the American constitution for legislators in a limited way, so this isn't an oversight by the framers corrected by Robert's conservative majority, rather the lack of immunity for the executive is a feature and not a bug of our constitution, and all republican forms of government.

Ironically the American president now has more power than the King of England, George the III, at the time of the American independence. King George had to follow the laws of Parliament, as did all Kings of England since the passage of Magna Carta some 500+ years prior.

As of today our President no longer has to obey the Constitution or the law so long as the act is deemed "official" by the conservative majority.

[vundercind]

They also cite the Federalist Papers in comically-vague support of their ruling, while the dissent cites the Federalist Papers right back to note that the founders had executive immunity very much on their minds and left it out of the constitution extremely on-purpose because they regarded subjecting the President to the same law as everyone else to be key difference between the system they were setting up, and monarchy.

[pavon]

To a large extent this immunity is inherent in the enumerated powers. Consider this general case: The Constitution enumerates specific powers to the executive branch, and hence President. Congress passes a law that makes those same actions illegal if performed by a normal citizen. If this law applied to the President, then that would mean that Congress could nullify the enumerated powers granted to the Executive, making those enumerated powers meaningless. So it makes perfect constitutional sense that actions performed by the President as part of his job that that are within his enumerated powers cannot be made illegal by Congress.

That core concept of immunity is pretty solid and essential, it is the details that are problematic, in particular the fact that the courts have interpreted "official" acts so broadly in the past in cases of qualified immunity makes one worried they will do the same here.

[mindslight]

Because they're not conservative. They are radical reactionaries, to use the word that Moldbug himself coined. Essentially Republicans got tired of things changing despite their conservatism, got angry, and now it's not enough to slow change - they want to rewind us to the values of the 1980's or even the 1950's. This perspective is why they refer to any post-y2k mainstream social values as "activism".

The Democrats have now become the conservative party. Both in the abstract of wanting slow cautious change, and in the concrete principles that have long been held as conservativism - belief in American institutions, strong foreign policy to spread those institutions, the rule of law, and now even fiscal responsibility with having led the pull up from ZIRP!

[spencerflem]

This was downvoted at the time of this comment. Shame on the Republicans in this thread that I have my fellow programmers to blame for the fall of american democracy

[spacephysics]

Unfortunately presidents on both sides have used executive order as a way to bypass the process.

Combined with Chevron doctrine precedent, agencies could enact what the executive branch wanted if the standard quo process failed

[mmcgaha]

Good thing the the courts just reigned in the powers that federal agencies claimed via the chevron doctrine. https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

[Matticus_Rex]

> Curious how an ostensibly "conservative" court can ignore the concept of enumerated powers, the constitution clearly does not grant immunity to the President, so the conservative court invents immunity when none is explicitly granted.

Roberts' opinion covers this, as do many discussions of textualist interpretations -- not being set out in the text specifically doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, for textualist interpretations. Roberts' example is separation of powers. There's no "separation of powers clause," but the concept is pretty clearly set out in the text anyway. They say the same is true for immunity for public acts, and they provide reasoning. I disagree with some of the reasoning, but there are much more tenuous things read into the Constitution by the Supreme Court than this one.

And if the Constitution includes immunity for public acts, so much the worse for the Constitution!

[o11c]

That's not really a coherent stance though, given how many "protect the constitution" laws they keep overturning in the name of "it's not actually written in the constitution".