PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tuesday, July 2, 2024.
today's The world and everything in itGood morning, Paul Butler here.
NICK EICHER, HOST: I'm Nick Eicher.
First, the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity and Idaho's abortion law.
This is the busiest time of the year for our friend and colleague, Mary Reichard, but thank you, Mary, for taking us through these important decisions, page by page. Let's start, of course, with the presidential immunity case.
Mary Reichard: Yes, this is what everyone has been waiting for.
The question is whether the court will rule on this point: whether former presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for events following the 2020 election. The answer is… it depends.
The indictment against Trump alleges that he conspired to overturn the election results, and the six-justice majority agreed that immunity applies only in connection with “official conduct” — a new issue and one that lower courts had not analyzed Trump's alleged conduct.
of High Court The ruling makes clear that former presidents have absolute immunity from liability for core constitutional powers. Official Act and nothing informal action.
For a more detailed analysis, I called Daniel Sarr, a lawyer and court watcher who writes for WORLD Opinions.
DANIEL SUR: Ultimately, we'll just have to wait and see, Mary. This decision provides a framework for some important legal questions, but it doesn't resolve the core question the headlines are focusing on: What's next for President Trump? The answer is we'll have to go back to court for a fact-finding session.
When the ruling was handed down, some headlines were abuzz — “Supreme Court Endorses Presidential Dictatorship” was probably the best — but in a first-of-its-kind case, the sentiment was expected: It will take time to enforce the rule that gives the president immunity from prosecution for some actions but not others.
SUHR: The reality is that the president is asked to be many things at the same time. He is the head of state, the head of government, the leader of a political party. He may be a candidate for reelection, and he is juggling all these jobs as one person when he sits in the Situation Room deciding the most important issues about war and peace.
That would be true of any president, including President Barack Obama, who wasn't charged with murder after ordering drone strikes, or President Biden, who allowed millions to overrun the southern border.
The Supreme Court also Motivation Distinguish between official and unofficial actions, as doing so invites allegations of merely political motives. One example is President Bill Clinton's 1998 authorization of missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal.
SUHR: The question is, did he do it to distract from his political problems, the affairs that he was having? Did he do it because they were a threat to the United States, or did he do it to create a news story to distract from Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment?
One thing I noticed about Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissenting opinion (joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson) is that it seems more like hyperbole than the customary deference to the majority. “The President is now a king above the law,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, and concluded, “Fearing for our democracy, I dissent.” And she did not write, as she usually does, “respectfully dissent.”
I asked Suhr about this.
SUHR: Their responsibility is to model healthy disagreement, respectful disagreement, which we need more of in our democracy. You hear all the time about Justice Alito's ethics, Justice Thomas' ethics. I'd love to hear more about the ethics of the other justices. They're setting a good example for the American people that you can disagree without offending them, and they're modeling respectful cooperation. We need more of that in our politics.
In practical terms, the decision is a delayer: Aside from Trump's New York record-keeping conviction, this and other prosecutions will likely be stayed until after the election.
That's good news for him…
SUHR: The bad news for President Trump and the American people is that this process will continue past Election Day. It will hang over him. It will hang over our politics, just like what happened in New York and what's happening in Georgia. Unfortunately, we as a country will never recover from what happened.
The second case today brings us back to last week's ruling. Moyle v. United States. Most abortions are illegal in Idaho, and the Biden administration filed a lawsuit arguing that the state law supersedes the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding to provide “necessary stabilizing care” to pregnant women in emergencies.
So the legal question was whether federal law supersedes Idaho's law protecting the unborn?
I called the lawyer who filed the amicus brief in support of Idaho, John Aizmo, who is senior counsel for the Moral Law Foundation.
John Azmor: It's neither a victory nor a defeat. The media is reporting this as if the pro-life movement has clearly lost because of the abortion in Idaho, but that's not the case at all.
The DIG was ultimately overturned as having been granted improperly. The Court was split 3-3-3, with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch upholding the Idaho law and Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor ruling in favor of the Idaho law. To disable Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts wanted the case sent back to a federal district court for procedural reasons.
But what has changed since the court accepted to rehear the case?
Eismoe: What they said was that the positions on both sides had changed somewhat. The federal court ruled that Idaho law would allow doctors who are conscientiously opposed to abortions not to perform abortions. Idaho recognized that abortions may be permitted for the health of the mother in non-life-threatening circumstances. The court said that because the positions on both sides had changed, the case needed to go back to federal district court for a full review on the merits.
Justices Alito and Jackson both wrote that they would not have dismissed the case — but for different reasons. And — as a cultural aside — Justice Jackson, in his partial concurrence and partial dissent — used “pregnant women” or “pregnant patients” instead of “pregnant women,” something no other justice did.
That's all for today. More tomorrow. From the WORLD, I'm Mary Reichard.
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