Yesterday, reviewing last week’s Supreme Court decisions, I noted that the court would probably issue its final opinion of the season, on the question of presidential immunity.
So it turned out to be. Yesterday, ‘Trump v. United States’ dropped. For the first time, the Court pondered the question, ‘Does a president have immunity from prosecution?’ or, to use the language of the opinion, ‘Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.’
The answer was more or less what I predicted. I wrote that, while no one outside the hallowed halls of the Court really knew how the Court would come down on the issue, ‘most observers expect the Supremes to recognise immunity for “official acts” but to remand to the lower court the vexed question of what counts as an “official” and therefore protected act.’
That is precisely how the Court decided, 6-3 (Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissenting).
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