There Oughta Be a Law
Not being a lawyer, it is beyond my skillset to analyze in detail yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. Even the constitutional legal experts on TV described it as convoluted and complex, so if they were having trouble with it, what chance have I got? For some things a president has immunity, for some things he doesn’t, and for some things…well, maybe does or doesn’t, but we’ll presume he does and it’s up to lower courts to decide, at which point the loser will appeal the decision and it will be sent back to the Supreme Court to decide.
But as long as it’s an official act, it’s protected by immunity, whatever an official act actually is, and if it’s an official act, motives can’t be questioned. So, since appointing ambassadors is an official act, if you give a million dollar bribe to a president and get appointed, the president can’t be convicted, since appointing ambassadors is an official act. Now, whether the person making the bribe can be indicted, that’s another matter for the High Court to decide.
By the way, calling them the “High Court” gives them new meaning, since it appears six of the Justices were on something.
However, though I can’t unpack this fully from a legal standpoint – and neither, it seems, can the Supreme Court itself – I do have some thoughts coming at it from another angle.
My level of outrage at the Supreme Court has reached its limit. That’s not to say that I can no longer be outraged by their decisions – we’re at the point where that’s almost a given. But because the bucket is now full, any new outrage added to it only creates an overflow, and an old outrage will spill out.
After all, according to the Roberts Court, it’s now okay for a state official to take a bribe, as long as it wasn’t called a bribe beforehand, and was only paid off as a “gratuity” after the fact. Thank you for your servitude!
And more to the point, the Roberts Court has made abundantly clear that, despite what the six Republicans serving all said under oath when they testified before Congress at their confirmation hearing, none of them actually believe in precedent, except only as a matter of convenience when it serves their purpose, and so they can point to from on high.
Fifty years of the Constitutional protection of Roe v. Wade? Nah, we just don’t like that. Throw it out. Forty years of government agency protection of experts under Chevron? Used by courts over 18,000 times? Nah, we do not like that, throw it out. And besides, we Justices know more than experts anyway. About everything.
On and on it goes.
Precedence is the rock foundation of the law. It’s what allows people to understand and rely on and follow what the law is. Precedence is only overturned when new and compelling conditions have changed so much that they demand even just hearing the new evidence -- and only then, after hearing arguments, accepting the arguments that the old realities no longer are valid, and the new status in the country now applies. Without precedence, you have a Supreme Court that now decided that, no, we don’t like the law, so we’re going to change it. The law becomes merely the whim of who happens to be sitting on the court. If you’re deeply religious, and the law goes against your personal religious beliefs, sorry, the law is no good, overturn it, and everyone in the country must follow your beliefs now. Until, that is, new people on the court come in who also don’t believe in precedent, and overturn that. The answer isn’t the law -- the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.
The moment I heard the immunity decision announced as “In a 6-3 decision,” my immediate reaction (and I’m sure the same for many) was “Oh, God, it’s a political ruling.” And so it was. Twisted and convoluted and jury-rigged (wow, does that word now take on new, whimsical meaning) to somehow create totally new law out of thin air undermining 230 years of Constitutional precedence. So much for Republican supposed-hatred of “activist judges…” (Ha!! There was an old canard that was never hard to spot.) No one is above the law. A president, not a king. Throw that out the window. All to do its best to protect one man, while trying not to seem like they were. It was a failed attempt at subterfuge.
The mere fact that two of the conservative justices, Thomas and Alito, were so overloaded with conflicts for hearing this case, yet didn’t recuse themselves is not only no surprise, but business as usual on the Roberts Court.
However, this yesterday was just one in the long line of such party-line decisions. Merely the latest, cutting down George Washington’s cherry tree to put one of the cherries rolling away on top of the sundae. The only difference is that this Supreme Court says, under oath, “Oh, no, sir, we did not chop down the cherry tree.” The majority would probably blame it on the damn libs, as they raised the American flag upside and, now that the term is over, drove off in their luxury cruiser for a well-earned, highly-paid vacation.
It’s not hard to see why the Supreme Court is the only court in the country that doesn’t have a code of ethics that needs to be followed.
What is also now clear from the many rulings this Roberts Court has made is that it no longer sees itself as an separate branch of government, available under contract for independent right-wing freelance work, but now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the MAGOP Party.
Many people who know Chief Justice John Roberts have said that he is very concerned with the legacy of his court. He doesn’t have to worry about it. The legacy is written in stone. Far more permanent than the precedent of law.
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