US Supreme Court rules presidents have immunity. What this means for Donald Trump and US politics

While Donald Trump may be smiling away, United States President Joe Biden warned of a dangerous precedence that the Supreme Court has laid out with its latest ruling. On Monday (July 1), the US Supreme Court ruled that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution for any “official” act they took while in the Oval Office.

This is a major victory for the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 White House race, who is fending off an indictment in connection with his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which resulted in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Soon after the court’s ruling, Trump declared in all caps on Truth Social, his social media network, “Big win for our Constitution and democracy. Proud to be an American.”

Meanwhile, President Biden said the judgment undermined the “rule of law” and was “a terrible disservice” to Americans. In a statement, he said: “This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. Each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law. Not even the president of the United States.

“Today’s (court) decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president may do.

What does the court’s ruling mean? How does it affect Trump? What are the reactions to the ruling? Here’s all this and more.

What did the court rule?

The court’s ruling on Monday comes from the special counsel’s indictment against Trump for his activities in relation to the January 6 insurrection. In his defence, Trump said he was immune from anything he did as the president. That led to the question on whether the president is immune from criminal process and what’s the extent of the immunity granted to him for acts taken in his capacity as president of the United States.

Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “The president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.”

He, however, added: “The system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive. The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”

What this primarily means is that the president has been granted substantial — though not absolute — immunity from criminal charges, with the court adding that the threat of future prosecution could chill a president’s ability to do the job.

The majority opinion also said that a president gets “at least a presumptive immunity” even for acts “within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility”.

However, the court also had a dissenting opinion from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the court’s decision to grant former president criminal immunity “reshapes the institution of the Presidency.”

She added, “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”

Raising a few examples of where the president would be protected, she said: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organises a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

How does this ruling affect Trump?

In many ways, the US Supreme Court is a win for Trump, who faces a litany of charges and cases ahead of the November elections. The court’s decision, according to experts, will delay the Washington DC federal election subversion case. As The Guardian notes the court’s ruling guts one of the allegations and challenges the legal viability of the others, raising the stakes still more.

An article published by The Cut wrote that the ability of the prosecution to win a case, and to find that the president did commit a crime, is significantly less than it was before because of the restrictions placed by the majority.

For instance, Special Counsel Jack Smith has said in the election subversion case that Trump met with his acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and other top justice department (DoJ) and White House officials to discuss the alleged election fraud after the 2020 elections. Furthermore, when Rosen refused to comply with his demands, Trump repeatedly threatened to fire him.

However, according to the court’s ruling Trump’s discussion with Rosen constitutes an official act and is protected from criminal prosecution. The court has said that Trump has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority”.

How have people reacted to the ruling?

From his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump celebrated the US Supreme Court’s ruling. Moreover, his lawyers asked the New York judge who presided over his hush money trial to set aside his conviction and delay his sentencing, scheduled for next week.

His lawyers argue that the Supreme Court’s decision confirmed a position the defence raised earlier in the case that prosecutors should have been precluded from introducing some evidence they said constituted official presidential acts, reports the AP.

On the other hand, US President Joe Biden railed against the ruling, saying: “For all practical purposes today’s decision almost certainly means there are no limits to what a president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent.”

Speaking from the White House, Biden added: “The American people must decide if they want to entrust… once again, the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing he’ll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases, whenever he wants to do it.”

Legal and political experts also weighed in on the matter. David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that the decision will have a “remarkable” impact on presidential powers.

“This fundamentally transforms the presidency,” Super told Al Jazeera. “Here, the court says the president is still subject to the law, but they’ve made that much, much narrower than it ever was before. These are certainly the kinds of powers that are much more familiar to dictators than they are to presidents of democratic countries.”

Matt Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University, also said the court’s decision is “appalling”. “The ruling is an assault on the constitutional limits to guard against abuses of power,” he told Al Jazeera.

Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, also chimed in, telling AFP that the decision provides a “roadmap” for a US leader to avoid prosecution for a particular action “simply by intertwining it with official government action”.

“That’s going to seriously hamstring the prosecution of a former president because the president’s official actions and unofficial actions are so often intertwined,” he said.

With inputs from agencies