Legal experts shocked by Supreme Court immunity ruling: ‘The president can be a king’

Legal experts are concerned about the broad implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that Donald Trump and other past and future presidents enjoy “absolute immunity” for “official acts” performed in office.

In the 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority said presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for acts related to their official duties. The three liberal justices disagreed, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing that the decision “reshapes the institution of the presidency” and “makes a mockery of the principle, fundamental to our Constitution and our system of government, that no one is above the law.”

“Never in the history of our Republic has a president had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the attributes of his office to violate criminal law. In the future, however, all former presidents will be covered by such immunity,” she wrote. “Out of fear for our democracy, I disagree.”

On social media, many legal experts have expressed similar concerns. Attorney Bradley Moss made a striking historical comparison to put the decision into perspective:

“On July 4, 1776, we declared independence from a king. On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court rules that the president can be a king,” Moss wrote.

Moss also listed a number of things the president can now do while theoretically retaining his immunity. These include choosing to “bomb American cities filled with his political opponents,” executing the Supreme Court, and “having Bannon executed by the military in the prison showers tonight and thus gain immunity from prosecution.”

He then asked his supporters: “Do you want to risk living in a military dictatorship or not?”

Steve Vladeck, Georgetown University law professor wrote that the Supreme Court’s failure to avoid partisan divisions in the case constitutes a “major institutional failure.” He also highlighted a small but crucial part of the decision.

“There is an important subsection of the Trump immunity ruling in which the Supreme Court holds that ‘protected conduct’ (which cannot be prosecuted) also cannot be used as *evidence* to establish other charges,” Vladeck wrote on X.

This could hamper efforts to use official acts as evidence to determine prosecutions for other charges, he said. He also noted that the ruling states that the president’s motive for the act is irrelevant.

“If that is the case, how could a president realistically be prosecuted for ordering the military, as commander-in-chief, to kill his chief political rival?” he asked on X.

The failure to consider motive was also a point of contention for other critics.

Harry Litman, former assistant U.S. attorney general, said that bad intentions are “the soul of criminal law.”

“By distinguishing between official and unofficial behavior, courts cannot question the president’s motives. But it is bad motives that distinguish criminal behavior; they are the soul of criminal law,” he wrote on X.

Eric Segall, a law professor at Georgia State College of Law, shared similar concerns in an interview with comedian Pete Dominick.

“If the president truly believed that he had to execute an American citizen living in the United States for military reasons, as part of his powers as commander in chief, the next question we would ask is, ‘Why are you doing this? What is your motive?’ You can’t ask that question,” Segall told Dominick.

Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Georgetown University, wondered if there was “a way to interpret the majority such that ordering the military to assassinate a domestic political rival is not an official act and therefore absolutely immune?”

He also shared his thoughts on how Democrats could use the decision to their advantage, suggesting that they “should make opposing the Republican Court the organizing theme of the November election.”

In a simple but profound statement, Richard Primus, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Michigan, wrote: “Fundamentally, the problem is the same as it always has been: the system is not built to withstand a Holmesian bad man as president.”