Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 45

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

37 

Opinion of the Court 

Gregoire  v.  Biddle,  177  F. 2d  579,  581  (CA2  1949)  (Hand, 
L., C. J.)).  The Constitution does not tolerate such impedi-
ments to “the effective functioning of government.”  Fitzger-
ald, 457 U. S., at 751. 

As for the Government’s assurances that prosecutors and
grand  juries  will  not  permit  political  or  baseless  prosecu-
tions from advancing in the first place, those assurances are 
available to every criminal defendant and fail to account for 
the  President’s  “unique  position  in  the  constitutional 
scheme.”  Id., at 749.  We do not ordinarily decline to decide
significant  constitutional  questions  based  on  the  Govern-
ment’s promises of good faith.  See United States v. Stevens, 
559 U. S. 460, 480 (2010) (“We would not uphold an uncon-
stitutional statute merely because the Government prom-
ised to use it responsibly.”).  Nor do we do so today. 

C 
As  for  the  dissents,  they  strike  a  tone  of  chilling  doom
that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually
does today—conclude that immunity extends to official dis-
cussions between the President and his Attorney General, 
and then remand to the lower courts to determine “in the 
first instance” whether and to what extent Trump’s remain-
ing alleged conduct is entitled to immunity.  Supra, at 24, 
28, 30. 

The  principal  dissent’s  starting  premise—that  unlike
Speech and Debate Clause immunity, no constitutional text
supports Presidential immunity, see post, at 4–6 (opinion of 
SOTOMAYOR, J.)—is one that the Court rejected decades ago
as “unpersuasive.”  Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750, n. 31; see 
also  Nixon,  418  U. S.,  at  705–706,  n. 16  (rejecting  unani-
mously a similar argument in the analogous executive priv-
ilege context).  “[A] specific textual basis has not been con-
sidered  a  prerequisite  to  the  recognition  of  immunity.” 
Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750, n. 31.  Nor is that premise cor-
rect.  True,  there  is  no  “Presidential  immunity  clause”  in