Even with respect to the vaccines, he didn't mandate anyone use them, he just helped get some red tape out of the way so that they could get to market faster. It was others who took the fact that those vaccines existed and then mandated that millions of people be forced to take an untested experimental vaccine.
I know myself and a lot of other people kind of wish that he had been a little bit more of a violent authoritarian in certain respects. If Minneapolis was my home city, and a bunch of violent lunatics were burning it to the ground for months, I would want every level of government to be stepping in to protect the property rights of the individuals other than the protesters who live in that City and are watching their homes and businesses be burnt to the ground. Instead he just sat there wagging his finger at them.
It says that the only time the government can be liable for crimes or torts is when it agrees to be liable for crimes or torts.
There's a limited number of things that you can sue the government for, and a limited number of things that you can charge the government for criminally. That's just the way things have been for hundreds of years. Examples of where the government allows itself to be sued would be 1983 civil rights claims, and certain laws which limit the immunity of certain actors such as police officers.
If you would make the argument to me that the President should have limitations on their liability, I would agree with that and I would say that the next step would be for the Congress to present legislation which limits immunity of the head of the executive Branch and pass it (even the veto power of the president can be overwhelmed if a super majority can vote for the legislation). It would be unjust for the courts to arbitrarily decide that the ancient and well established concept of sovereign immunity has disappeared because a certain president is now the one it applies to.
The actual argument before the Supreme Court is extremely tame, but there's so much sensational misinformation circulating out there.
It is simply this: a former president cannot be held criminally responsible for OFFICIAL and LEGAL actions he undertook while in office.
That's right, it's saying you can't hold someone criminally liable if they didn't break the law, and this is specifically wrt a former president.
That should be obvious, right? So why are we talking about it? Meh, technical legal procedural issues triggered it.
@2cdff18bbefae63a191eca63e3ee7e5c2bb35430bcfd5ab436a4a358f95696da @sj_zero
I agree that Trump can't get drunk at a poker game and beat a Waiter to death and go "nope, I'm the president, it's ok"
Sovereign immunity obviously only applies to actions taken in your capacity as a sovereign. However, as I said in my other post, if you're in the scope of that immunity then it would be absolute (like civil liability in Nixon v. Fitzgerald) unless limited through legislation similar to how it works in a 1983 claim or the federal tort claims act.
@Hyolobrika to give a taste of the case, on appeal to the DC Circuit, that court issued a ruling with a sweeping claim rejecting the idea that civil immunity can be analogized to criminal immunity ever.
Not just about Trump or accusations about Trump, but ever.
So the question now is whether the DC circuit went too far, and people wondering why justices didn't focus on Trump don't seem to understand that procedural history.
This case doesn't let Trump off of any hooks. It just reviews whether the DC Circuit misread the rules, regardless of Trump.
@2cdff18bbefae63a191eca63e3ee7e5c2bb35430bcfd5ab436a4a358f95696da @sj_zero
It should be mentioned that I'm just a retard on the Internet, and so anything I say about damn near anything is as such.
@sj_zero well, I just try to emphasize that in most cases SCOTUS is sitting as a court of appeals, so it's naturally judging lower courts more than the individual people named.
Actually, it was often surprising that you couldn't predict based on who seemed to be doing better at oral arguments who would win the case.
@sj_zero yeah, I think part of what you're seeing is that different judges/justices use oral arguments for different purposes. As each has different goals with their exchanges, it makes things a little unpredictable.
Briefly, for example, while one justice might use oral arguments to voice the heart of the matter, another might use the time to help a speaker make the very best case they can, even though it's probably wrong, to show that the losing side had every chance--they weren't ignored.
The latter use might make the losing side sound much stronger that it really was, if you see what I'm saying.
