Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 85

18 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

President’s  attention  during  the  decisionmaking  process”
with “needless worry,” Clinton, 520 U. S., at 694, n. 19, one 
wonders why requiring some small amount of his attention 
(or  his  legal  advisers’  attention)  to  go  towards  complying
with  federal  criminal  law  is  such  a  great  burden.    If  the 
President follows the law that he must “take Care” to exe-
cute,  Art. II,  §3,  he  has  not  been  rendered  “ ‘unduly  cau-
tious,’ ”  ante,  at  10  (quoting  Fitzgerald,  457  U. S.,  at  752, 
n. 32).  Some amount of caution is necessary, after all.  It is 
a far greater danger if the President feels empowered to vi-
olate federal criminal law, buoyed by the knowledge of fu-
ture immunity.  I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent 
in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something
valuable when the President is forced to operate within the
confines of federal criminal law. 

So what exactly is the majority worried about deterring
when  it  expresses  great  concern  for  the  “deterrent”  effect
that  “the  threat  of  trial,  judgment,  and  imprisonment” 
would pose?  Ante, at 13.  It cannot possibly be the deter-
rence of acts that are truly criminal.  Nor does it make sense 
for the majority to wring its hands over the possibility that 
Presidents might stop and think carefully before taking ac-
tion that borders on criminal.  Instead, the majority’s main
concern could be that Presidents will be deterred from tak-
ing necessary and lawful action by the fear that their suc-
cessors  might  pin  them  with  a  baseless  criminal  prosecu-
tion—a prosecution that would almost certainly be doomed 
to fail, if it even made it out of the starting gate.  See ante, 
at 40.  The Court should not have so little faith in this Na-
tion’s Presidents.  As this Court has said before in the con-
text  of  criminal  proceedings,  “ ‘[t]he  chance  that  now  and 
then  there  may  be  found  some  timid  soul  who  will  take 
counsel of his fears and give way to their repressive power 
is too remote and shadowy to shape the course of justice.’ ”  
Nixon,  418  U. S.,  at  712,  n. 20  (quoting  Clark  v.  United 
States, 289 U. S. 1, 16 (1933)).  The concern that countless