Quote (Thor123422 @ 7 Jul 2024 23:08)

And as much as you want to waffle, commanding the military is explicitly a core power with no clearly defined limits

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Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

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The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 7 2024 04:50pm)

There are plenty of laws placing clearly defined legal limits on the types of actions the US military is allowed to engage in without explicit authorization by Congress or the Constitution. For example, the Posse Comitatus Act limits the use of the US military for domestic law enforcement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

Title 10 of the US Code contains a similar provision:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/275

So the lawful scope of actions the US Armed Forced can carry out domestically is limited, and if it includes comparatively tame stuff like making an arrest, you will surely also find provisions which apply to and forbid straight up murder.

Hence, an assassination order would explicitly violate the law, so that the presumption of immunity should be broken and the onus of proof should go to the president: he would need to provide the legal basis for the assassination, say national security concerns (which he would then have to detail). In any case, his underlying motivations would be up for litigation once he orders the military to break its own legal boundaries.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 7 2024 04:50pm)

Hence, an assassination order would explicitly violate the law, so that the presumption of immunity should be broken and the onus of proof should go to the president: he would need to provide the legal basis for the assassination, say national security concerns (which he would then have to detail). In any case, his underlying motivations would be up for litigation once he orders the military to break its own legal boundaries.

Quote (Thor123422 @ 7 Jul 2024 23:58)

My man you keep defaulting to "it would be against the law". Do the second step of the equation.

The bold is the EXACT OPPOSITE. All immunity for core activities is presumptive and motivations cannot be introduced as a reason to break it regardless of circumstance. That's why the ruling is a problem.

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"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

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At a minimum, the President must be
immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can
show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no
“dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive
Branch.”

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 7 2024 05:38pm)

If the president has ordered the military to violate explicit law, that's a violation of the law, period, you don't need to probe the underlying motivation anymore. This violation of the law in and off itself breaks the presumption of immunity and puts the president on the defense. Anyway, this point is irrelevant imho.
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"Giving orders which are explicitly and factually illegal" is not covered by the "core duties and responsibilities of the presidency", hence, such an act should not enjoy presumptive immunity to begin with.

In this regard, note that the Constitution requires the president to take an oath of office which reads as follows:

So it's blatantly obvious that the presidency is bound by the Constitution itself and by the laws derived thereof, and that the president's powers and duties don't stretch beyond these boundaries. If you can prove that the president went beyond these boundaries, why on earth should that not be sufficient to break the presumption of immunity?

Furthermore, from Trump v. United States:

Unconstitutional activity does not lie within the authority or function of the presidency, hence, criminal prosecution for such activity is permissible under this ruling.

So if you can prove that unconstitutional activity took place without having to dig into the president's motivations or internal communication, that's an easy way around the immunity protections. The core issue in the case here is that the prosecution accuses Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States and stuff like that, which is very hard to prove without intrusion. In cases like the president ordering a drone strike on his rival, this complication simply doesn't exist.

Quote (Goomshill @ Jul 7 2024 08:21am)

Again what you're failing to grasp is the actuality of the balance of power and the tyranny inherent to a democracy.
You could have all the words written on the constitution and judicial precedents you want, if power comes down to which side has more planks of wood with nails in them, and batters senseless the other side to take power by force, the constitution is good for nothing more than wiping the taco bell away.
The ability to prosecute a president, whether sitting or former, is not a lever that affects that balance of power, not intended to do so, not necessary to do so. At best it would be redundant with the existing safeguards, or at worst it gets exploited by a tyrant as a means to quash the democratic will of the people by persecuting his political rivals (gee).

So you get your hypothetical
Biden demands a general assassinate Trump. The general refuses, Biden fires him, gets someone who will assassinate Trump. The president can then be impeached and removed, which he would be, the constitutionally prescribed recourse to remove a president. His personal fate after that is irrelevant compared to being removed from office, though congress still has tools to imprison him officially, or more likely the public would simply assassinate him. But you claim a scenario where Biden threatens congress into submission and rules as a bloody tyrant like Saddam Hussein did. Okay? What about this scenario would be made any different by the power to prosecute him? Who in the Iraqi judicial system stepped up to prosecute Saddam for murdering his political rivals? If someone is overthrowing a government by force, its no longer a democracy (see: Ukraine circa 2014), and only force can restore democracy. The judiciary would be powerless in such a scenario unless you're going to hand out RPGs and M4s to the justices so they can join the march on DC.


The founding fathers, like the supreme court today, didn't build the law around collapsed failed states where the law is irrelevant, because that would be an oxymoron. Instead what we deal with in the courts its the balance of the separation of powers at peacetime, in a functioning democracy, where we have to take as a presumption that the elected officials represent the people who elected them and the powers we split up among them. And this case was trivial by that measure. The president is tasked with seeing the law faithfully executed. Any attempt by the judiciary to either hold the president criminally liable for exercising his official powers, or to even intrude upon his deliberative process as to how he exercises those powers, would be a clear usurpation of the powers of the president by the judiciary. A prior restraint to how a president is even allowed to think and act, arbiters of plenary powers granted to him in the constitution. A constitution which granted clear levers to be used by congress to rein in a president if he misuses his powers, a safety valve that kicks in faster than the 4 year window between elections.

Quote (Goomshill @ Jul 7 2024 06:04pm)

Im not gonna type another wall of text to say the same thing

Quote (Thor123422 @ 8 Jul 2024 00:48)

Not much I can do with willful naivety. We've already had a president drone strike a citizen. You've already admitted that the presumption of immunity should not be given to the president, and you've already flat told me that the conclusions in the ruling should be the exact opposite. Goom who's position was literally "he would be immune" already told you this decision was exactly how he would have ruled it.

And these aren't even my arguments. They are the arguments of the supreme court justices and countless other legal experts that have been extremely loud over the past week.

Black doesn't just regurgigate conclusions while ignoring the words on the page challenge: Impossible.

Quote (Thor123422 @ 8 Jul 2024 01:17)

Interesting case where Thor and Goom agree but Black won't see the clear implication.