a king is sovereign and thus cannot in his own body be subject to the law; he has subjects, is not a subject. in a republic or democracy, the people are sovereign, and thus no one is above the law, all are subject to it. calling him a king is an effective shorthand for where the SC put him.
Really, tho? It was already Department of Justice policy that a president could not be prosecuted while in office. Every cop in the country enjoys qualified immunity, which amounts to more or less the same protection.
read the dissents! the immunity granted to the president is categorical in a way that qualified immunity is, well, qualified. If a president orders the military to go out and shoot people, he's immune from prosecution because "giving orders to the military" is his duty.
OK. But 1) presidents already do order the military to go out and shoot people, this is not something new. 2) in practice the binding legal constraints on the president are not the possibility of criminal charges once they leave office.
I mean, the real reason he isn't a king is that he doesn't have a crown and isn't called a king. But the substantive difference in those terms, in political theory, which the analogy gestures at, is the *categorical* deference given to him
Obama could drone strike an American, after all, but he had to say "here is why that was legal" and, in theory, prove it. Roberts is saying he didn't have to prove it, that anything the executive uses his military for is, by definition, immune from prosecution.
right, yes. but they also changed the reality of the federal government in some actually consequential ways, in the opposite direction. maybe we should be talking about that too?
the other two big decisions - overturning Chevron and Corner Post - which seem vastly more consequential but are getting less attention, because they don't fit the frame that the problem with the Court is that it doesn't do enough to restrain the government. People really want their judicial daddy!
all I'd saying is that I think if you posed this issue to the founders, what "faithful execution" means, e.g., they would understand the roberts court decision as undermining and reversing exactly the form of non-king they were inventing the president to be
which is a point worth making because the roberts decision really is profoundly baseless! like, not only invented out of thin air, but just wildly at odds with how a republic was being, in the 18th c, theorized as distinct from a monarchy
Btw if you read about the Washington administration (I just did, in Gotham) it's amazing how much monarchical trappings they dressed themselves up in. I'm not sure they would be on your side, here.
I think the idea that *the threat of criminal prosecution of the president personally* is what has limited abuse of federal power in the US historically needs a bit more evidence to back it up.
I think that is just totally wrong, and in a politically destructive way. I guarantee you, if Trump comes into office and says "I declare that the minimum wage in all US states is abolished, by decree" that will not happen.
