Washington DC – The Supreme Court's ruling on the scope of presidential immunity will “transform” the US government, experts say, warning that the decision could undermine the rule of law in the country.
On Monday, the highest court in the United States weighed in on former President Donald Trump's sweeping claims that his actions while in office were immune from prosecution. He currently faces criminal charges for his conduct during the final days of his presidency, when he was accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
The court handed Trump a partial victory by ruling that former US presidents cannot be prosecuted for official actions taken while in office. “He is entitled to at least presumed immunity,” the court majority wrote.
Monday's ruling will likely delay two of Trump's criminal cases beyond the November presidential election as a lower court must first hear arguments over what constitutes official action.
But beyond its immediate effect, the decision will have a “notable” impact on presidential powers, said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University.
“This fundamentally transforms the presidency,” Super told Al Jazeera. “Here, the court says the president is still subject to the law, but it has made it much more limited than before. These are certainly the kinds of powers that are much more familiar to dictators than to presidents of democratic countries.”
The Supreme Court's six conservative justices approved the ruling on Monday, while their three liberal counterparts opposed it.
Sentence
The majority argued that unless official actions were protected from legal repercussions, a president could face retaliation from political opponents upon leaving office.
But in the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that there are limits to presidential immunity.
“The President does not enjoy immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official,” Roberts wrote.
“The President is not above the law, but Congress cannot penalize the President’s conduct in the exercise of the responsibilities that correspond to the Executive Branch under the Constitution.”
Presidents can still be prosecuted for robbing a liquor store, as Super put it, but not for any decision made within their powers under the Constitution.
Indeed, in its decision Monday, the Supreme Court gave specific examples of how Trump's behavior in the election subversion case constituted official actions.
For example, the court ruled that conversations between Trump and Justice Department officials are “absolutely immune” from prosecution.
Federal prosecutors had argued that Trump sought to improperly influence the Justice Department to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump, prosecutors said, also used “the power and authority of the Department of Justice to conduct sham investigations into election crimes.”
But by calling Trump’s conversations with agency officials “official actions,” experts fear the Supreme Court may have jeopardized the Justice Department’s independence.
While the president appoints the attorney general, prosecutors are expected to act without political interference and apply the law equally, in line with long-standing norms.
Assassinate a political rival? Immune
While a lower court will decide how Monday’s ruling will affect Trump’s criminal case, Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the “real significance” of the decision is that it may allow future presidents to act with impunity.
“The long-term significance of this ruling should not be underestimated,” Finkelstein told Al Jazeera in a television interview.
“What it says is that if Donald Trump becomes president again, he can use his official capacity — particularly his fundamental constitutional functions — to subvert the law, shield himself from criminal liability, and distort justice in ways that favor him.”
Matt Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University, also called the court's decision “appalling.”
“The ruling is an attack on constitutional limits to protect against abuses of power,” he told Al Jazeera.
In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor also strongly rejected the ruling.
“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, the majority reasoned, he is now protected from criminal prosecution,” he wrote. “Ordering Navy Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.”
Law professor Super said Sotomayor's claim is not exaggerated. The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces.
“There is no other official who can override the president's authority in military command. So if he gives an order to the military, this decision would fully protect him,” he told Al Jazeera.
Before Trump, no former US president had ever been impeached. The former president faces four sets of criminal charges, including two related to election subversion.
Earlier this year, he was convicted in New York on charges of falsifying business documents to conceal hush money payments made to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all cases and has described the charges against him as a “witch hunt” driven by his political rivals, primarily Biden. He is running against Biden in the 2024 presidential race.
'Radical'
Trump is not the first president to test the limits of presidential immunity, however. Richard Nixon could have been impeached over the Watergate scandal (when he used government resources to spy on his political rivals), but was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, in 1974.
In response to another case against Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents were also immune from civil damages.
Several officials in Ronald Reagan's administration were also charged in the Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund a rebel group in Nicaragua. But Reagan, who denied any knowledge of the complex transactions, never faced charges.
More recently, the Barack Obama administration declined to bring legal charges against executive branch officials who authorized torture during the presidency of George W. Bush.
Chris Edelson, an adjunct professor of government at American University and author of Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security, said that in modern history, American presidents have exercised power without “significant” restraints.
“What is different now is that the court has backed him, and we have a presidential candidate who has made it clear that he will seek to rule as a dictator,” Edelson told Al Jazeera.
Trump said last year that he would be a dictator on his first day in office, in order to “close the border.”
Edelson also called the court's decision “radical” and compared it to the Nixon era, when sweeping claims of presidential immunity sparked protests.
“When Richard Nixon said in a television interview in 1977 that when the president does something that means it is not illegal, this was seen as a stunning statement,” he said.
“The court today said that Nixon was right.”
Brian Osgood contributed to this report.
