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Page Number: 81

14 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

public duties.”  Id., at 753.  The public interest in such pri-
vate  civil  suits,  the  Court  concluded,  was  comparatively
weak.  See id., at 754, n. 37 (“[T]here is a lesser public in-
terest  in  actions  for  civil  damages  than,  for  example,  in
criminal  prosecutions”).  Therefore,  the  Court  held  that  a 
former President was immune from such suits.  Ibid. 

In the context of a federal criminal prosecution of a for-
mer  President,  however,  the  danger  to  the  functioning  of 
the Executive Branch is much reduced.  Further, as every 
member of the Fitzgerald Court acknowledged, see Part IV– 
B–2, infra, the public interest in a criminal prosecution is
far  weightier.    Applying  the  Fitzgerald  balancing  here 
should  yield  the  opposite  result. 
Instead,  the  majority
elides any difference between civil and criminal immunity,
granting Trump the same immunity from criminal prosecu-
tion that Nixon enjoyed from an unlawful termination suit.
That is plainly wrong. 

1 
The majority relies almost entirely on its view of the dan-
ger of intrusion on the Executive Branch, to the exclusion 
of the other side of the balancing test.  Its analysis rests on 
a questionable conception of the President as incapable of 
navigating  the  difficult  decisions  his  job  requires  while 
staying  within  the  bounds  of  the  law.    It  also  ignores  the 
fact that he receives robust legal advice on the lawfulness
of his actions. 

The  majority  says  that  the  danger  “of  intrusion  on  the
authority and functions of the Executive Branch” posed by
criminally  prosecuting  a  former  President  for  official  con-
duct “is akin to, indeed greater than, what led us to recog-
nize absolute Presidential immunity from civil damages li-
ability—that the President would be chilled from taking the
‘bold  and  unhesitating  action’  required  of  an  independent 
Executive.”  Ante,  at  13  (quoting  Fitzgerald,  457  U. S.,  at 
745).  It is of course important that the President be able to