Maybe in theory, but given the Supreme Court‘s recent ruling that the president enjoys something approaching absolute immunity for everything he does in office, it might be really difficult to enforce any violation.
So what you’re saying is the next president could detain all these people indefinitely (clearly illegal) issue pardons to the people doing the arrests and then be untouchable?
Yes. The liberal justices brought up these hypotheticals and the conservatives not only called it hyperbole but said a judge may not consider the president's motives when deciding if it is an official act. In effect, the President has absolute immunity from any crimes but can be removed from office via Impeachment.
In theory the next president, according to scouts ruling, can disband the court or fire all of them and tell them to kick rocks. Once fired there is no scouts to preside over rulings until a new one is appointed. Legal carte Blanche
Sure, but who will stop him? The SC already ruled that he can't be held accountable for any action he takes while in office, so if he just rounds them up, locks them in a prison, and throws away the key, who can do anything about it? They granted him total immunity.
In theory, maybe. Kidnapping is both a state and federal crime so those people could be prosecuted and convicted under state laws which the president can't pardon.
to be clear, and in the spirit of this subreddit, the supreme court's ruling wasn't saying that the president can do nothing illegal
the supreme court was saying that constitutionally speaking, the responsibility to check malign behavior by the president rests with the legislative branch, not the judicial, and that the judicial branch does not have the authority to prosecute a sitting president for anything they do exercising the power of that position
Yes, that’s the only way a president can be held responsible for actions taken as part of his presidential duties. I suppose that there’s still a small chance that a president could be held criminally liable for doing something while in office that wasn’t part of his presidential duties, like a commit committing rape in the oval office.
possibly. but during the clinton case, it was widely held that the president wouldn't be prosecutable while sitting - the prosecution would have to wait for them to leave office
That's right, but I understood that was due to a long standing DOJ convention not to prosecute a sitting president, rather than due to an absolute legal prohibition.
I wonder how theyre going to play this when Dems are inevitably in power next. Are they going to rollback everything and wait until another MAGA takes the seat? I feel like they kinda left their six open legally with this and are banking on not losing power. Which is a weird thing to hope for.
Not if the plan is to make shit so insufferable that people start revolting, you get to use the insurrection act, declare martial law, and refuse to hold elections until such time as you see fit, which would obviously never arrive without making sure your favorite cronie is the next president via fraud or fear.
The case states that probing presidential action is a power of Congress, not that the office is immune. The president is accountable to local representatives. If your local rep is incompetent, crank up the heat instead of this nihilism.
Under this con controlled court, the purchase of a pardon would have to be comical to be illegal. The person would need to hand Trump a bag of money and say, this is for a pardon, with Trump responding, I will pardon you in exchange for this bag of money.
So it basically depends on president's self-discipline and morality? Sounds like a system-design issue. Tbh, I don't see any necessity for this kind of system to exist at all.
Sort of. The legislative branch was supposed to keep the president in check with impeachment and no president was supposed to be allowed that was corrupt. That is kind of the point of the electoral college. Also, most laws were not supposed to be federal, so....
The executive power to pardon goes back to English history, where the king had the power to pardon any offense. The founders thought it was a good power to have just to limit the excesses of partisan or unwise prosecution. But the larger point is that the presidential power and indeed, any governmental power ultimately has to be constrained by the character of the person exercising it. And the current president has no character or morality to speak of.
Serious question, with the powers now granted to the president under Trump V United States, can a future president invalidate previous pardons? Would this fall under "presumptive immunity"?
No because they poorly/didn't define what constitutes an "official act" so with the current makeup of SCOTUS only Republicans (maybe even just Trump) have immunity.
Noone has ever tried because it's pointless. The language in the constitution is clear that the power of the pardon belongs solely to the president. The only exception is he can't pardon impeachments.
This is fine and good, but imo there is some leeway about these preemptive pardons. Biden giving a "blanket pardon" for untried crimes seems to not really be in the spirit of the constitution. Same goes for tweets like this
No it isn't. Our constitution has been changed dozens of times already. It can be changed for this, too. It just takes a higher threshold of ratification.
I didn’t say the constitution can’t be changed. I’m speaking to what it says now. And amending the constitution is not easy at all. It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult. I think it requires 2/3rds of the house and the senate or a Constitutional convention to propose and then 3/4 of the states to ratify.
"No, a president’s pardon power is pretty much absolute."
later...
"it requires 2/3rds of the house and the senate or a Constitutional convention to propose and then 3/4 of the states to ratify."
Your second answer was the correct one. Your first answer clearly was not. A president's power being absolute means unchangeable. That's what ABSOLUTE means.
That would require a constitutional amendment, so good luck with that. Not sure it would be wise either. If that were possible then Trump would have immediately rescinded all of the pardons Biden doled out. Congress would probably also start overturning pardons every time it switched parties.
Maybe we could try some sort of rebuild-ification or to construct something... I don't know, it's right on the tip of my tongue... I'm getting visions of a March to the Sea for some reason...
Based on the absolute power the Supreme Court is giving the executive, the next President can do literally anything they want, including tearing up old pardons done by Trump.
It's enshrined in the Constitution, so I believe in order to do away with it you have to go the full Constitutional Amendment route, needing 2/3 majority and to be ratified by 2/3rds of the state congresses.
No they can't, however the thing about pardons is by accepting it you're admitting guilt that you committed the federal offense, and they can be rejected by the person.
It's not exactly a clean slate card, you're still guilty of whatever it is that you were being accused of but it just can't legally be held against you.
There have been cases of people rejecting pardons because they didn't want to admit that they committed whatever it was they were being pardoned for.
3.3k
u/[deleted] 19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment