Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 97.0

30 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

coup  to  hold  onto  power?  Immune.  Takes  a  bribe  in  ex-
change for a pardon?  Immune.  Immune, immune, immune. 
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trap-
pings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official 
power for evil ends.  Because if he knew that he may one 
day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as
bold and fearless as we would like him to be.  That is the 
majority’s message today.

Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I
pray they never do, the damage has been done.  The rela-
tionship  between  the  President  and  the  people  he  serves 
has shifted irrevocably.  In every use of official power, the
President is now a king above the law. 

* 

* 

* 

The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s 
need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing 
need  for  accountability  and  restraint.  The  Framers  were 
not so single-minded.  In the Federalist Papers, after “en-
deavor[ing]  to  show”  that  the  Executive  designed  by  the 
Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Al-
exander  Hamilton  asked  a  separate,  equally  important 
question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a 
republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due re-
sponsibility?”  The Federalist No. 77, p. 507 (J. Harvard Li-
brary ed. 2009).  The answer then was yes,  based in part 
upon  the  President’s  vulnerability  to  “prosecution  in  the
common course of law.”  Ibid.  The answer after today is no. 
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had 
reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal 
prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate
the  criminal  law.    Moving  forward,  however,  all  former
Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity.  If the occu-
pant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, 
the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not pro-
vide a backstop. 

With fear for our democracy, I dissent.