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Page Number: 113.0

16 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

make  the  judiciary  the  overseer  of  our  government.” 
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 594 
(1952) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).  To be sure, this Court 
may  sometimes  “have  to  intervene  in  determining  where
authority  lies  as  between  the  democratic  forces  in  our
scheme of government.”  Id., at 597.  But it has long been 
understood that “we should be wary and humble” when do-
ing so.  Ibid. 

The majority displays no such caution or humility now. 
Instead,  the  Court  today  transfers  from  the  political 
branches to itself the power to decide when the President
can be held accountable.  What is left in its wake is a greatly 
weakened Congress, which must stand idly by as the Pres-
ident disregards its criminal prohibitions and uses the pow-
ers of his office to push the envelope, while choosing to fol-
low (or not) existing laws, as he sees fit.  We also now have 
a  greatly  empowered  Court,  which  can  opt  to  allow  Con-
gress’s policy judgments criminalizing conduct to stand (or 
not) with respect to a former President, as a matter of its 
own prerogative. 

B 
If the structural consequences of today’s paradigm shift
mark a step in the wrong direction, then the practical con-
sequences are a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume 
democratic  self-governance  and  the  normal  operations  of 
our Government.  The majority shoos away this possibility. 
Ante,  at  37  (accusing  the  dissents  of  “strik[ing]  a  tone  of 
chilling  doom  that  is  wholly  disproportionate  to  what  the
Court  actually  does  today”).    But  JUSTICE  SOTOMAYOR 
makes  this  point  plain,  see  ante,  at  29–30,  and  I  will  not 
belabor it. 

Here, I will merely observe that, from a theoretical per-
spective,  philosophers  have  long  considered  deterrence  to 
be a key justification for adopting and maintaining systems