Court Rulings

To the editor:

Two Letters to the Editor in last week’s Record excoriated the United States Supreme Court for its recent decision on presidential immunity. One letter accused “the MAGA Justices on our Supreme Court” of inviting “Trump to get away with crimes.” The other letter tells us that “the delusional and extreme majority of our Supreme Court makes a decision to declare that the president of the United States is above the law.”

Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling gives presidents immunity for official acts but not unofficial acts.

On page one of the Court’s ruling it states, “Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts, pp. 5–43.”

The ruling seems to make a lot of sense. For example, Obama ordered, without trial and conviction, the killing of American citizen and alleged al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Do you want to prosecute Obama for that? Neither do I.

Parks Tilly La Grange