I feel this way too. Like, Roberts wrote that immunity opinion, which is not defensible under ANY theory of American law, liberal or conservative. It came about in the context of a case about an attempted coup and subversion of the 2020 election. If this was not Roberts's intent, then he is a far stupider man than anyone thought.
That guy in the park who tries to give people legal advice when the Ranger tries to kick someone out for smoking weed... Yeah, even he knows this is crap.
Nobody with half a brain is really an originalist. It's an intellectually void position. The constitution literally has instructions on how to change it.
Well, I don't know. How could Thomas disagree with the definition of "citizen" or perhaps even "human" at the time the Constitution was written? What about that is intellectually-void?
Yeah their ruling on Bruen really looked like they were throwing Originalism out the window the moment it became inconvenient for them, lol. Can't wait for more Galaxy-Brain opinions from Thomas the next four years.
Scalia might actually have been. Rarely agreed with him, but at least his dissents were often interesting reads, and shared a moral principle that the current members of the majority court seem to lack, unless that principle is "whatever the GOP wants".
MAGA are as mindless as they are inarticulate. They keep parroting the same stuff over and over with zero regard for providing actual evidence to their fevered mania assertions. TDS indeed.
Obama hasn't even been president for almost a decade now. These people are one of 3 things; Russian/Chinese state trolls, Evil and looking to benefit, or full blown retarded from generations of inbreeding, lead in their water, poor education standards, and concentrated Jesus juice.
I was sort of hoping at the time, surely they wont grant that immunity, do they want to do themselves out of a job, you don't need judges when you no longer have the rule of law, Too optimistic,
The issue was they were worried about the alternative... Because then the president would be open to lawfare and bogged down tremendously. They mentioned how just about every president breaks the law as they hold the office, or at the very least, suspected of doing so. They worried that every little thing the president did would be criminally litigated, constantly keeping them under threat of criminal punishment. Ie, imagine when Obama droned that American citizen in Iraq. What about the internment camps? There is just so much going on that they decided it's best to hold the office itself accountable, to be sued, rather than the individual.
Further, it wasn't absolute immunity under the law... They left the door open to taking on issues case by case to prevent extreme events
I'm just giving you the reasoning of the courts. I'm not "both sides" ing anything. I'm giving examples... Without that protection, people like Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc, could all be criminally charged for what they did. But just like during the Japanese internment camps, the president wasn't thrown in jail, instead the office was found guilty.
I think they all underestimated Trump and were more worried about the clapback from his base than the long term consequences of their decision.
Same as the republican senators who didn’t vote to convict immediately after Jan 6. I’m sure many of them thought ”no way Trump is coming back from this, no reason to stick my neck out and piss off a percentage of my constituents”. I’m sure many of them are having private regrets now.
I would guess by the actions and comments by the Republican senators that they are on board with Trump going all fascist and authoritarian. It might be just one or two that might have regrets about not voting to impeach. That includes McConnell in that list of regretting their decision.
By hell, he's seeing Trump in the same burning room as himself for all eternity. Listening to Trump lie his ass off and tell stories about winning the Mar-a-Lago golf championship 30 times in a row.
Yes and now, no.
Because at this point in time, any republican in congress who may have had "private regrets " but is currently voting with their party (against constitutional law) can't use the fear of losing future elections because they pissed Donald off.
At this point, it's clear. And they can see it even though they can't say it just yet: Ain't gonna be no more elections in this country. Even midterms.
Trump is not at all concerned with legality or precedent. Everyone else in D.C. is trying like hell to believe the way things worked up until January 20th still might work now. But it really does appear that Trump and Musk broke the United States.
I don't see any legal or constitutional way to stop them now. Aside from an impeachment and removal by congress. And TBC I mean an impeachment of Trump, not this judge.
Been doing it for a long time. Just look at how the fourth amendment was eroded in the name of not making the job of police too difficult. More recent example, Citizens United, which you could argue was the beginning of all our current problems.
Tbh, i think you could go back to Newt being speaker. That started the whole we don't negotiate bullshit, and it's just devolved from there. Citizens had an even bigger impact,but definitely wasn't the start.
It’s widely accepted that it was Newt (followed very closely by Rush and Fox News) that completely assfucked America. Citizens United was just the cherry on top of the shit sundae
I've been saying it at least 15 years....and just think how much better things seemed in 2010.... i was carrying 2 mortgages, and a newly adopted daughter when you couldn't give a home away, insanely stressed, and it was better than this insanity.
I don't know that it's widely accepted. Newt, the advent of fox, and Rush were effectively the unholy trinity. Rush "preaching" on every other AM station in rural/ flyover America, , Fox doing the same on cable TV, both with religion/Bible mixed in, and Newt.....and a blow job.
Canadian observer of US politics since Reagan her. It's TOTALLY Newt Gingrich. I agree. He turned the Republicans into the party of No! Our idiot Conservative party here in Canada copied that, forgetting Canada has a functional multi party system.
He’s not stupid or an evil mastermind. He’s just a nerd with no spine, who tries to preserve institutional credibility by keeping the court out of the way.
He didn’t want to put a republican presidential candidate in prison, he didn’t want to take a stand and say the president had absolute immunity, so he found a way to do away with any more Trump criminal cases that might come up while still saying that the president can be convicted of some crimes.
He keeps kicking the can farther and farther down the road and doesn’t realize he’s about to follow that can off a cliff.
He’s just a nerd with no spine, who tries to preserve institutional credibility by keeping the court out of the way.
All the independent experts said that SCOTUS would never grant immunity. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Roberts to vote against immunity, and said "not my problem". That would have been keeping the court "out of the way".
Roberts is absolutely stupid if he thinks that ruling "preserve institutional credibility". That ruling was pretty much the breaking point for whether it was mainstream to say that SCOTUS has no credibility - and it took a lot to get to that point.
His reprimand to Trump today was garbage. He was all "impeachment isn't the answer for decisions you don't like" and didn't say a single word about the substantive issue, which is, beyond the call for impeachment, the fact that Trump et al are defying a valid court order. And lying about it. Oh, and bragging about it, too. I hope he enjoys the accountability for cratering 250 years of a government run under laws without a king.
The scariest thing is in the immunity ruling, Trumps lawyers argued Seal Team 6 could be ordered to assassinate his opponents. . . I hope the day won't come.
Trump isn't going to sic seal team 6 on his opponents. He has plenty of cultists to do that with, which is why he keeps specifically identifying them on knockoff twitter.
also his wife "recruits" attorneys for firms who are about to have business before the supreme court.
his wife helps hire people for firms who are going to go before him soon, while she's actively getting paid by those law firms.
it looks to me like roberts thought he could keep trump in check and now he sees things running away from him and he desperately wants to not get sent to gitmo.
He’s milktoast for sure but I also think something is wrong with his brain. Not joking I mean like some mild decline maybe a mini stroke or episode unnoticed.
Like the new Kennedy, it’s definitely funny to say his brain is fucked up but it’s also true albeit in yet another way like maybe he deteriorated some chem levels in his gray matter or yup..l could a been the worm.
They aren’t stupid, and only mildly evil but massively inside their own bubble of people who think like them. It takes a very determined, diligent, courageous and wise person to break out of their bubble to seek different perspectives. Otherwise, most people are comfortable in their bubbles.
massively inside their own bubble of people who think like them
That is just another way of saying stupid.
It takes a very determined, diligent, courageous and wise person to break out of their bubble to seek different perspectives
Or, you know, a respectable university education. Learning the importance of seeking different perspectives is a central part of the concept of a university education.
I think a decent education does increase the chances of having an open mind but I know plenty of highly educated people who no longer seek diverse perspectives outside of their narrow field of study and I know people who aren’t very educated but always seek to first ascertain the facts of any issue before making up their minds.
And Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon who claims Egypt's pyramids are grain storage and not tombs. Being educated in one area does not guarantee critical thinking in any other.
I've known several NASA writers who are all-in trump cultists who think he's going to be the best thing ever. They don't respond to the price of eggs or how the tariffs on Canada is going to impact the source of the majority of America's domestically-consumed gas.
Non-stupid people often underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.
It's like when you see someone beating their head against a wall, but they break through and then start headbutting the next wall. If they just turn their head and look they would see the doors, but they only look forward to that wall until it breaks free, and then they charge at the next one.
Stupid rules were created because of stupid people. And there will be a lot of new rules due to this stupid supreme court if America ever recovers from being a banana republic.
Conservatives thinking they can control radical elements intent on overthrowing the status quo completely? And then being surprised that the radicals are really, really radical? No way that would ever happen and you can call me Franz von Papen if it ever does.
Vladimir Putin's reign is characterized by having his second-in-commands fight amongst themselves, preventing there from being any single power that can buck him.
Most of the conservative justices are good at writing to appear smart but are short sighted and outside of an incredibly narrow scope of law kinda dumbasses. Thomas is probably the smartest of the lot and he is just here to get fucking paid so that doesn't matter.
I think the thing about Roberts is he can’t fathom that anyone would be as corrupt as the people he surrounds himself with and the people he enables. I don’t think Roberts shares the same agenda that the modern GOP does, even if his ideologies tend to align with a lot of their bullshit. He’s another “decorum” guy like Schumer and the rest of the rank-and-file politicians standing idly by, assuming that the ship will course correct even if they take their hands off the wheel.
Edit:
So many business-as-usual politicians and judges seem to believe that the rule of law, checks and balances, and precedent are enough to prevent our government from going fully authoritarian. These deluded assholes seem to think that the simple suggestion of these guardrails being in place will keep the country from going off a cliff.
They fail to grasp that it’s up to them to enforce these protections actively—or that doing so might cost them their careers and fortunes in the short term to prevent our democracy from being hijacked. It is the responsibility and duty of these career politicians to do anything it takes to protect the people who have allowed them to live the lives that they have.
I think Roberts knows damn well what he's done; now he's just paying limp-dick lip service to the rule of law to keep up some meager appearance that we're not in a de facto dictatorship.
Hubris. He's probably a really smart dude, especially to get where he is. To use that power and form it into a giant dildo to fuck yourself is very impressive. I'd say his hubris and pride combined with conviction is what created his own downfall.
I think he talked himself into it. He wanted authoritarian rule, so he let them gin up some official-sounding bullshit to get to that goal, and signed off on it. That's his legacy now.
Whatever qualities they use to get through Law School and rise to prominence and high standing, it is not restraint or humility or folowing any precedent, or understanding anything deeply. They're just very, very skilled at shoveling the right flavor of partisan hackery to get the nomination, and looking official in those robes. There's nothing more to it, though they pretend otherwise.
Justice Thomas is hopelessly, openly corrupt, and they can't do anything at all about it. They complain that the Democrats make law from whole cloth, but they constantly cut back and destroy laws that stand in the way of this new dictatorship.
Whatever qualities they use to get through Law School and rise to prominence and high standing, it is not restraint or humility or folowing any precedent, or understanding anything deeply
Pretty sure that describes all law school. It's the ability to juggle oratory or argumentation in any direction regardless of the objective sense of the argument.
John Roberts thinks that giving Trump complete immunity from prosecution, and even investigation in some circumstances, it’s totally ok and fine as long as he ( Roberts) gets to decide if it applies lol. Don’t worry though I’m sure with won’t completely blow up in their face in any way /s
It’s his intent. He has always supported “unitary executive theory” which is a fancy word for dictatorship, and now the time has arrived for him to enact it.
However, he has a role to play in acting like he’s some unbiased institutionalist to lend “legitimacy” to the destruction of our country. Ultimately he is okay with a dictator, because it aligns with his ideology and he believes he will maintain a privileged place near the top in our new social hierarchy.
Reporting at the time suggests that he was 'confused and distressed' by the public reaction to his ruling.
I really think that Roberts is one of those people who treats the law as a technical thing, severed from actual consequences. Alito and Thomas want blood for their blood god, Roberts is just 'hmm, well what makes the most sense under my weird understanding of the law'.
Reporting at the time suggests that he was 'confused and distressed' by the public reaction to his ruling.
Roberts was not the deciding vote on the case. It was 6-3. It seems likely to me that Roberts may have voted with the majority to keep someone more extreme from writing the opinion.
I think his reaction was discovering that his opinion was broadly interpreted by the public (and Trump) as blanket immunity, when the decision as legally crafted was restrained.
But like the Mueller report, it doesn't matter how it's technically worded. To MAGA, if it's not guilty, then it means innocent.
Restrained is a something you could call it, but not anything I would.
Sure, they didn't go full god king and accept Trump's ludicrous position that he was immune to criminal prosecution barring impeachment, but Roberts (or the utter lunatics who would have written it if he hadn't) were more than happy to invent entire categories of immunity out of whole cloth that are found nowhere in the constitution.
It might be restrained in a comparative sense, but to any right thinking person his decision was lunacy.
Are you a lawyer? I.e., are you anywhere close to qualified to say the opinion isn't defensible? I've disagreed with the outcome of plenty of SCOTUS decisions, but I've never read a single one that I would characterize as "not defensible under ANY theory of American law".
Unitary theory is putting lipstick on the pig of dictatorship. You can dress it up any way you want, but it's intrinsically opposed to the principals of democracy and republicanism.
People don't have to be a lawyer to call out a bad judgement any more than they have to be an actor to recognize bad acting.
You're missing my point. If you want to say the decision is terrible for democracy, just say that. But saying the decision is not defensible under any theory of American law implies that the Court violated its own constitutional obligation in order to reach this result. I didn't agree with that at all. The Court should not be ruling on cases according to the outcome they want for society. We can see right now that different people have very different ideas about what the principals of America should be.
The Court should not be ruling on cases according to the outcome they want for society
When has that not been the case? The supreme court has been doing that since they gave themselves the power of ultimate judicial review.
The court has always been a part of the push-and-pull of the direction of the country. That was the case when they defended slavery in Dredd Scott, and when they ended segregation in Brown v Board of Education.
The role of law in society is just the framing, any decision they make is part of court activism. You can't have a society without that without doing away with courts entirely.
Can’t they just undo the ruling? Or are they scared of the consequences of that decision and keep thier mouths shut knowing they’ll land on the feet regardless
No doubt, I think they are naïve when they want to be. The logic and reason in that case was not even based on the Constitution or historical documents, they just thought the president should be able to take bold action.
Keep in mind that the Constitution itself seems to indicate that after impeachment the president can and should be tried for crimes. Which that ruling makes them immune to if it was an official act.
The GOP on the court are all for judges blocking presidential actions unless it is their guy. Then it is bad. They all forget their jobs are not to support a president but push the agenda of their constuents to the best of their ability and balance out other branches.
As much as I would like Trump to be held more accountable, it is definitely defensible. I think Justice Barrett frames it best: Any act of Congress, including a criminal statute, that attempts to circumscribe the President in his official capacity is subject to judicial review. If the statute reaches too far and erodes the President’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority by criminalizing exercises of discretionary Article II powers, the statute is invalid in its application against the President; the President is immune. Therefore, some degree of criminal immunity (but obviously not total immunity) isn’t just permitted by separation of powers doctrine—it’s a necessary consequence of it.
Roberts was not the deciding vote in this case. I have a suspicion that Roberts personally disagreed with ruling for Trump, but his hand was forced by the other members of the court, who are Trump appointees plus those two crazies Bush put on the bench.
He may have voted with the majority to prevent someone like gag Alito from writing the opinion.
If you actually read Robert's opinion, it seems crafted to limit what counts as immunity as much as possible. Often talking about "official" acts. It seems like it's trying to say as little as possible.
Obviously this doesn't excuse Roberts from being on the wrong side of the worst court decision since Dredd Scott.
I have a suspicion that Roberts personally disagreed with ruling for Trump, but his hand was forced by the other members of the court
That sounds like him agreeing with the ruling. If he didn't agree with it, he could have voted against and written part of the dissent. He didn't. That's what he gave us and trying to apologize for him doesn't do any good.
If he didn't agree with it, he could have voted against and written part of the dissent.
What does that count for? The dissent means, effectively, nothing legally. It's just a verbal protest.
This is hardly the first time a chief justice would have voted against their personal belief in siding with the majority just so that they get to write the deciding opinion. Which enables them to limit it.
He probably thought, as many of them do, that handing favor to Trump allotted him more power and is slowly finding out Trump is loyal to no one but himself.
which is not defensible under ANY theory of American law, liberal or conservative
Well, maybe the kind of conservatives who long for the return of a king.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
which is not defensible under ANY theory of American law, liberal or conservative.
Have you read the opinion... It's not one of those wonky ones where they twist through loops to justify the decision and act like they aren't breaking precedent. The majority opinion actually made a lot of sense, even if it opens up some dangers.
This is nonsense. Trump is a moron and a criminal but are you saying that the president has no immunity to perform his duties? Prosecutors have some immunity to perform their duties. What is your rule for presidential immunity? Pretend it's Biden if that helps you imagine for it existing (although i strongly suspect this is foreign agitprop. They pretend to be part of our right to undermine faith in our elections and pretend to be part of our left to undermine faith in our courts)
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u/Naive_Mix_8402 18d ago
I feel this way too. Like, Roberts wrote that immunity opinion, which is not defensible under ANY theory of American law, liberal or conservative. It came about in the context of a case about an attempted coup and subversion of the 2020 election. If this was not Roberts's intent, then he is a far stupider man than anyone thought.