Presidential Immunity Decision Illuminates Partisanship Of Jackson, Kagan, Sotomayor
The idea that the Supreme Court would interpret the constitution and law without bias is infuriating to the left.
There was not a single Democrat or left-wing partisan who complained when the court established Roe v. Wade as a precedent or legalized gay marriage, even though there was no clear constitutional or legal basis for either decision. Conservatives have never wanted the Supreme Court or any other judicial body to make policy, Republicans believe in the constitution. The Right in America has always believed in governing through consensus and democracy, not elitism. When nine people establish policies without the support of the public, that is a dictatorship.
But many on the left have always believed in elitism, the idea that the public should not be significantly involved in policymaking, and that’s why most Democratic leaders liked the Court when past Justices were making policies that they supported. The only difference now is that the Supreme has gone back to doing what the Constitution intended this branch to do, interpret law, not make decisions that should be reserved for Congress.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim as a defense to the politicized prosecution over the January 6 Capitol riot was fairly predictable for those who listened to the Justices’ questioning in the case. The court ruled that a President has criminal immunity for official acts, but not private ones.
The court’s decision does not stop any of the absurd prosecutions against President Trump, although the ruling will likely delay these cases until after the upcoming November election, since the lower courts will have to decide which acts were official ones before any trial could continue, and those rulings will likely be appealed as well. The Court’s ruling simply establishes some fairly basic legal guardrails for prosecuting former Presidents.
The left has tried to falsely claim the court is political since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2021, but not a single Democrat has put forward any remotely credible argument questioning the legal basis for the Supreme Court’s decisions on these issues.
This was the case again with the court’s decision on Presidential immunity.
The conservatives on the court wrote a carefully crafted and detailed decision explaining why a President should have criminal immunity for official acts, while the liberal justices, led by Sotomayor, wrote a patently partisan and absurd dissent. The court’s decision is not anything remarkable, everyone presumed the President had a degree of criminal immunity. The difference now is that because of the political prosecutions of Trump, the court simply codified into law what already existed. The fact that the Justice Department under both Democrat and Republican administrations have held that sitting President’s cannot be indicted, they can only be impeached, a statement no one questioned, shows that the idea of criminally prosecuting the President of the United States should be limited was always present in our system.
The founders actually debated at the constitutional convention whether or not President’s should even be able to be impeached for official acts, and Benjamin Franklin even cited how disturbing the prosecuting of a first magistrate was in the context of this discussion. The majority’s decision in this case has a clear basis in the Constitution, and is consistent with precedent as well. No former President has ever been prosecuted, even for unofficial acts, while they were in office or afterwards. The conservative majority cited clear precedent, the constitution, and the importance of the decision moving forward.
Also, the left’s argument that the court is being political here because this decision benefits Trump is also absurd, because obviously all future Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, will be impacted equally by this decision. There is no way of knowing how this decision will impact the right or left in American politics moving forward. The real benefit Trump got from the Court hearing the case was the delay of the absurd indictments against him, none of the prosecutions against him are likely to be completely halted by the Supreme Court’s decision.
If Trump had not won in 2016 and appointed three conservative justices, all of whom has sought to interpret the law rather than make policy, the court today would be overwhelmingly left-wing – and politicized to an unrecognizable degree – today. The dissent in this case was written by Justice Sotomayor, who once claimed during the pandemic that 100,000 children were on ventilators when the actual number was less than 5,000, and has a history of making partisan and nonsensical comments. Sotomayor used the exact absurd rhetoric the left has often used to describe Trump. She talked about fears for our democracy and even made completely absurd references to the President of the United States being able to use the US military to assassinate a political rival, an act that obviously would not be an official one as defined by the majority’s well-written and clear opinion. Sotomayor also absurdly claimed that the President would be immune from prosecution if he or she were to take a bribe for a pardon, even though such a crime would obviously not be an official action.
The liberal justice’s language was partisan and emotional, she even at one point repeated the word immunity four times in a row. The far left-wing judge clearly wanted the Democrats to be able to use her writing for political purposes. The biggest difference between the well-thought-out majority opinion and the emotional dissent of the liberal justices, was the Conservatives were interpreting the law and thinking about the future, Well, the left-wing justices were clearly focused almost exclusively on Trump. Sotomayor’s parroting of the language frequently used by Democrats shows she was focused on politics, not interpreting the law and constitution.
The most important action Trump took during his Presidency was overhauling the federal judiciary. This included appointing three Supreme Court justices. While many of the former President’s policy actions can be reversed, his appointments to the bench and the decisions these justices make will likely last for decades. If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016 the left would have likely been able to establish a permanent liberal majority on the court, and many of the core freedoms and liberties Americans take for granted would have been at risk. The United States is a Republic, and we do not want to live in a country where a group of nine people can make policy decisions without any transparency or accountability. This court’s decision show how dangerous a liberal majority on the court would have been.
