I think this often gets confused. Voting a president in doesn't give them a blank mandate to do whatever they want, such as break the law. And knowingly doing things that might not get approved by courts, but veiling it in a "novel legal theory" disguise is still breaking the law. Just because slow and thorough processes need to take place to adjudicate these actions doesn't mean that these actions aren't worth adjudicating. So while voting is important, keeping the voted-in president accountable is important too.
According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable.
I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part is new, though they've been leading up to it for decades, so it's not really surprising.
Or, more charitably: the Supreme Court has says that the president has this authority, in this specific area, and your characterization of this as "breaking the law" is not correct.
Edit: actually, even that is overstating it. This is an extremely narrow ruling that is mainly about the powers of federal judges. It's the sort of ruling that the "other side" will trumpet as settled law when they're the ones in power again.
The second amendment is “very clearly” spelled out in the Constitution yet many roadblocks to gun ownership are thrown up in various states and people STILL make tired arguments about how the amendment “should” be interpreted. For example, the old argument that the founding fathers could have never conceived of AR-15s and thus their legality under the second amendment is debatable.
Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
The amendment was quite obviously targeted at Native Americans and slaves, not any and all pregnant women the world over who manage to reach the US before giving birth. But as you’re noticing, there’s multiple ways people can interpret laws. It’s rarely as cut and dry as “this is obviously against the law!!!”
> Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
This is a better point than you realize, and in the opposite direction you intend.
Immigration in the 1800s was a… cursory process. Not only would those kids be citizens, but their parents would have had little trouble staying around.
> It imposed a head tax on non-citizens of the United States who came to American ports and restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or "any person unable to take care of him or herself." The act created what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration, such as the Immigration Act of 1891.
The quotas you describe didn’t come until the 1920s. Well after the amendment.
> “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
So, I assume that you know that's a poem by someone who was engaged in pro-immigrant propaganda? And the entire reason that Lazarus was engaged in pro-immigrant propaganda was because she was advocating for Jewish refugees from Russia...who weren't exactly welcomed.
Basically, your proposition that it was era of free immigration is historical revisionism. There's a whole island out in front of the Statue of Liberty where the primary purpose was finding reasons to turn immigrants away.
(Castle Garden was established in the 1850s, and the history extends way before the nativist laws you're referring to in sibling comments [1])
Yes, and? I'm not debating the legality of whatever the current administration is doing. I'm just telling you that you have the history wrong, and that there's a deep irony in quoting Lazarus as some kind of "good old days", when she wrote the poem as a form of advocacy for immigrants.
> Nope. Wrong. That's the new facility. Castle Garden started in the 1850s
That's not "a whole island out in front of the Statue of Liberty" (it's in Battery Park, Manhattan), and performed a significantly different role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1882 "restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or 'any person unable to take care of him or herself.'… [creating] what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration"
The 14th Amendment, having been approved decades before we had that first of immigration laws on the books, was approved in a historical context where "illegal immigration" was essentially not a thing.
> I'm not debating the legality of whatever the current administration is doing.
Perhaps don't jump into a thread about the legal basis of it, then. This particular bit is discussing the claim made at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44400640, where another user claims the drafters of the Amendment would've opposed "anchor babies".
"Consistent with the views of the clause's author, Senator Jacob M. Howard, the Supreme Court held that because Indian reservations are not under the federal government's jurisdiction, Native Americans born on such land are not entitled to birthright citizenship. The 1887 Dawes Act offered citizenship to Native Americans who accepted private property as part of cultural assimilation, while the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act offered citizenship to all Native Americans born within the nation's territorial limits."
SCOTUS did rule on the anchor babies thing, in 1898.
Indeed, how terrible! Those kids who then grow up in other countries outside the US will eventually be adults who have to pay taxes without sucking up any physical resources of said United States, whatever will we do about this huge drain on our resources? </sarcasm>
Why am I supposed to be mad about people doing this, exactly? Because of hazy "rules are rules" talk?
Well, that's very cynical and maybe you'll be right, but for now the California AG agrees with me. Per a quote in the WSJ [1]:
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining: Red states, which sought universal injunctions to stymie Biden administration policies, would encounter obstacles pursuing that strategy under a future Democratic president, he said.
Call me a crazy, glass-half-full centrist, but I prefer to look at this as a clawing back of extremely broad powers from rather partisan judges. It's been maddening that circuit court judges in a few hyper-partisan districts basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining…
Sure, and Susan Collins thinks Trump "learned his lesson" with his first impeachment. Looking for the silver lining is what we sometimes call "cope". He lost. As a politician, he's obliged to put some spin on it.
> It's been rather maddening that circuit court judges basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
It is. This sort of thing should've died before ever becoming an EO, and at every level of the judiciary as clearly unconstitutional. That it didn't is a big problem.
Well, if we're predicting the future, here's mine: since they're already basically telegraphing it (and also because it's pretty clear-cut), I predict that they'll overturn the whole thing in a future case, and then the left will be crowing about how mean-ol Mr. Trump was taught a lesson in capital-D Democracy by our powerful system of government.
> There's nothing that binds any Supreme Court to do anything at all.
We agree. So your remark about “nothing in the ruling says. . .” was actually irrelevant to the broader point. From a lacuna in a decision we can conclude nothing.
I think that comment is referring to Trump v. United States, where the court said that a president cannot be held accountable for using a Constitutional authority to break the law. It is very literally "a blank mandate to break the law".
For example, a president is granted authority to command the military and issue pardons. They have absolute immunity for any act performed using these authorities, including illegal acts such as assassinating or deporting a political opponent or accepting bribes in return for pardons. This is not a matter of opinion or a controversial interpretation, these consequences were discussed during the case and in the opinion, and the court accepted them.
This was also discussed in the Constitutional Convention, where the participants decided the impeachment process, and failing that, four-year terms, were a sufficient remedy.
Sure, that was a concern: a sufficiently large faction of Senators might combine to protect a bad President, or destroy a good one unjustly.
> Mr. MADISON, objected to a trial of the President by the Senate, especially as he was to be impeached by the other branch of the Legislature, and for any act which might be called a misdemeanor. The President under these circumstances was made improperly dependent. He would prefer the Supreme Court for the trial of impeachments, or rather a tribunal of which that should form a part.
> Mr. PINKNEY disapproved of making the Senate the Court of impeachments, as rendering the President too dependent on the Legislature. If he opposes a favorite law, the two Houses will combine agst. him, and under the influence of heat and faction throw him out of office.
Ultimately it was decided that "in four years he can be turned out", so it was not worth addressing further. Indeed some argued that the President should not be impeachable at all because of this.
> Mr. KING expressed his apprehensions that an extreme caution in favor of liberty might enervate the Government we were forming. He wished the House to recur to the primitive axiom that the three great departments of Govts. should be separate & independent: that the Executive & Judiciary should be so as well as the Legislative: that the Executive should be so equally with the Judiciary. Would this be the case, if the Executive should be impeachable? It had been said that the Judiciary would be impeachable. But it should have been remembered at the same time that the Judiciary hold their places not for a limited time, but during good behaviour. It is necessary therefore that a forum should be established for trying misbehaviour. Was the Executive to hold his place during good behaviour? The Executive was to hold his place for a limited term like the members of the Legislature: Like them particularly the Senate whose members would continue in appointmt the same term of 6 years he would periodically be tried for his behaviour by his electors, who would continue or discontinue him in trust according to the manner in which he had discharged it. Like them therefore, he ought to be subject to no intermediate trial, by impeachment. He ought not to be impeachable unless he held his office during good behaviour, a tenure which would be most agreeable to him; provided an independent and effectual forum could be devised. But under no circumstances ought he to be impeachable by the Legislature. This would be destructive of his independence and of the principles of the Constitution. He relied on the vigor of the Executive as a great security for the public liberties.
The Supreme Court has pointedly not ruled or said that the president has the authority to redefine birthright citizenship. What they have actually done is to put very stringent requirements on how the president's authority can be challenged in lower courts.
And notably, exactly the same Republican-nominated Supreme Court judges did not do anything to interfere with exactly the same legal process (nationwide injunctions) when they were aimed at a Democratic president. See, e.g. Biden's student loan forgiveness executive order.
"C. The District Court’s Remedy Was Improper" is a section of the petition for cert in The mifeprestone case from the Biden admin[0], where the SC overruled the district court's PI, but declined to address the question of whether it's PI was reasonable.
>According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable.
The president absolutely is accountable. The problem is the Congress for their own reasons refuse to hold it to account. The Congress could remove any president in less than 24 hours with simple majority for no reason whatsoever.
I am aware of this ruling, and disagree with it. My comment was making a broader point: There's a mistaken notion that a lawyer can advise you to do something that they think courts might find illegal later, "and that's how we'll find out whether we can do it." That's illegal both, for a lawyer to advise, and for anyone to follow. A president is supposed to collaborate with the other branches to find constitutional solutions to problems, not deliberately attempt to overwhelm them with edge cases. But yeah, the ruling on criminal immunity feels horrific to me.
Also, any time anyone actually brings up any details about Presidential elections you'll quick get many people rushing to explain how the people do not in fact directly elect the President and how this is such an incredibly brilliant idea.
Except voting this person to the presidency has given just over 1000 convicted criminals a pardon, as promised in advance. It’s an unlimited and irreversible power.
The Court has long considered that the president has a duty to follow the law, but also that the Court can’t compel the president to follow the law. That is a political question. Congress alone can stop a president by impeaching and removing them from office. Not only can’t the Court initiate impeachments, impeachment is unreviewable by the Court.
If there’s a servile Congress, it means voters can elect a law breaker as president. They are going to get a president who breaks the law.
And this is what’s happening. People voted for an abuser, a rapist, a felon, a conspiracy theorist who lies about the outcome of elections, lies that VPOTUS can and should overturn them, and even sent a mob to have that VPOTUS assassinated for refusing to comply with that illegal order. Then boasted he’d pardon all those criminals who were in his service. And despite all of this, people voted for him again.
