Article II of the constitution specifically gives the POTUS the authority to command the armed forces. The limit is declaring war, which is vested in Congress. So it seems reasonable that commanding Seal Team 6 is specifically a constitutionally authorized power and within an official duty.
Being killed by the government without due process of law (ie: death penalty for convicted criminals) is a clear violation of your constitutional rights though, and violating someone's constitutional rights (read: going against the constitution) can't be an official act by definition.
You’re creating an “any unconstitutional act cannot be official” rule that does not appear in the ruling and is contrary to tons of statute and case law. Qualified immunity codifies that rights violations can be official acts.
And as bad as today’s ruling is, I think your proposed rule would be worse because it would create tons of liability for good faith government employees.
We can’t have a world where it’s unclear if an act is official until there’s some kind of review of its outcome. The act itself has to be official (or not).
So now we’ve left the land of settled law are are into personal opinions. Which is fair enough, I detest qualified immunity, but it is the law of the land.
This is explicitly about the POTUS being immune from prosecution for official acts like commanding ST6 to assassinate someone. Fortunately in some cases, unfortunately in others, semantic wordplay akin to “could god microwave a burrito so hot even they couldn’t eat it” has little effect in the court system. That is to say, semantic gotchas like “but actually it couldn’t be an official act because the very act is against the constitution” have no sway.
Every sentence except for the first is about word games not mattering. The first sentence is what I am also addressing, so I don't see how it is making a new point. Help me out?
This is at least the second time in this thread you've said something like an official act can't violate someone's constitutional rights "by definition". I'm wondering what definition you refer to.
That said, it's obviously a false statement. By your argument, the president ordering flight 93 to be shot down on 9/11 would not be an official act. You might now retort something about extenuating circumstances, but really that would only show you to be entirely wrong about your original assertion.
I recommend you edit your posts to correct your mistake.
And you’re are free to sue the government in that case. The DOJ won’t prosecute the president for ordering something like that even after he leaves office..
"Official Act" has not been defined, so who knows if going against the the Constitution will count. The way the law is worded it may not matter anyway, it's pretty much left up to the courts to decide.
Haven't we had Presidents order airstrikes on American citizens in the Middle East before without a trial because of their association with jihadist groups?
At a certain point the "constitutionality" doesn't matter; it's hard to make a case have a meaningful outcome when the plaintiff is dead.
We've made it very clear for decades that the President can commit acts of war without declaring it. Syria, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of other hotspots around the world.
Congress hasn't declared war after WWII. I suppose that's why you used the euphemism "congressional authorization"; instead of what was intended by the folks that wrote the constitution -- a declaration of war.
But assasinating private citizens a ok? So Biden can order the assassination of Trump? Even if you claim as someone else that you can’t violate someone’s constitutional rights within an official act, we have already killed US citizens abroad via drone strikes. So if Trump is in some foreign country we can drop an a-bomb and claim it was to kill some terrorist & that’s a ok?
The minority points out that official acts was already a defense. The majority opinion here claims that it’s an absolute immunity and even motivation is impervious to this immunity claim. This is a serious undermining of the rule of law in a substantial way and paves the way for the US to have a dictatorship at some point in the future.
So first, the distinction between official acts and unofficial acts isn’t actually defined and even Robert’s admits this ambiguity is going to be a problem:
> Determining which acts are official and which are unofficial “can be difficult,” Roberts conceded. He emphasized that the immunity that the court recognizes in its ruling on Monday takes a broad view of what constitutes a president’s “official responsibilities,” “covering actions so long as they are not manifestly or palpably beyond his authority.” In conducting the official/unofficial inquiry, Roberts added, courts cannot consider the president’s motives, nor can they designate an act as unofficial simply because it allegedly violates the law.
Basically the President has a presumption that his behavior is an official act unless it’s egregiously outside his powers but there’s also no way to really investigate it. Oh and it’s also combined with the unitary executive theory popular on the right which holds that the president basically has absolute power over all executive agencies and a growing interpretation of the powers of the president (under both parties) which is a scary scenario.
And given that the dissenting opinion from SCOTUS justices literally raises the exact scenario you’re assuming is unofficial, so dismissing it out of hand seems overly bold:
> 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, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
You can disagree with the dissents, but even Justice Barrett outlines some very serious problems with the reasoning in the majority opinion while Justice Thomas says they should go further and completely rule Jack Smith’s investigation unconstitutional outright.
