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Comment by danielmarkbruce | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it is, to be honest. All three of those examples are clearly official acts. The President is commander-in-chief of the military, and is also responsible for granting pardons. The key piece of the ruling which lends credibility to her examples is that any motive or details behind the official acts are immune from scrutiny.

The only real difference is whether the acts are official or not. So the President is allowed to order the military to assassinate a political rival, but not to pay a private hitman to do so.

It's a pretty ridiculous and indefensible stance from the majority opinion.

They are not clearly official acts. It's going to be years of decisions and debate to define official acts.

As an example, the fact he's in charge of the military doesn't make everything he asks them to do official because he is obliged to follow the constitution. There are arguments to make against what I just said. It's as clear as mud once you start going through concrete scenarios.

This is as the Imperial Supreme Court wants it, so that it will come back to them every time an important decision needs to be made. This enhances their power and ability to shape events. Murkier is better.

It also makes it easier for partisan rulings on a case-by-case basis. If defendant is on your team: allow it, if not, issue a self-contained ruling (or don't pick up the case at all if lower courts ruled against them).

We have front-row seats to how empires decline and fade away. I guess those who missed the 20th century decline of the British Empire (culminating in Brexit) can study this one.

Yep, peak hypocrisy.

The constitution says very little. Most legislation says very little. I don't think they are grabbing for power, they are just stating the obvious - this isn't covered, so I guess we'll cover it.

So the prior textualism was just tactical?

Textualism doesn't mean they say "i don't know, the answer to this very specific question isn't insanely obvious from reading the text".

Well, to be fair, the first two examples she uses are very likely official acts and the third requires an official act to be bribery in the first place.

Do you really want this kind of thing to be speculated to be possible? The court should be putting the squash on this kind of thing full stop, not giving any wriggle room at all. The fact that you have to argue that a supreme court justice is speculating on the downstream effects of a monstrous decision should tell you something is very wrong. Step back and think for one second.

It's been speculated on for ages. Humans tend to deal with things as they come up. The entire system is built that way. We don't write legislation that deals with every single possibility, we deal with it in the courts as it happens. It seems to basically work.

> like, those assume the court will find anything to be an official act, which is nonsensical.

But the Supremes haven't said what they think an official act is; that's a matter for the court of first instance, according to the Supremes.

To me, in the UK, it looks like vandalism. There's no clear law on what constitutes an official presidential act, and until there is, the Pres is beyond the reach of the law.

I don't think these very senior lawyers are fools, I don't think they made a mistake. They've deliberately fucked-up the US legal system (even more than it's already a mess).

That's not how it works. If he does X and the court decides X is not an official act, he isn't immune. He doesn't get to say "well it was undefined at the time".

Read the actual ruling. They haven't fucked up anything. They haven't actually said much. Any time you read media coverage of a supreme court decision you've already made a mistake. You have to read the source material.

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