Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 92

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

25 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

agrees with it.  See ante, at 34.  That suggestion will sur-
prise the Government.  To say, as the Government did, that 
a “small core of exclusive official acts” such as “the pardon 
power, the power to recognize foreign nations, the power to 
veto  legislation,  [and]  the  power  to  make  appointments”
cannot be regulated by Congress, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 85–
87, does not suggest that the Government agrees with im-
munizing any and all conduct conceivably related to the ma-
jority’s broad array of supposedly “core” powers.  The Gov-
ernment  in  fact  advised  this  Court  to  “leav[e]  potentially 
more difficult questions” about the scope of any immunity 
“that might arise on different facts for decision if they are 
ever  presented.”  Brief  for  United  States  45.  That  would 
have made sense.  The indictment here does not pose any 
threat of impermissibly criminalizing acts within the Pres-
ident’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority.  Perhaps for
this  reason,  even  Trump  discouraged  consideration  of  “a 
narrower  scope  of  immunity,”  claiming  that  such  an  im-
munity “would be nearly impossible to fashion, and would 
certainly  involve  impractical  line-drawing  problems  in 
every application.”  Brief for Petitioner 43–44. 

When  forced  to  wade  into  thorny  separation-of-powers
disputes, this Court’s usual practice is to “confine the opin-
ion only to the very questions necessary to decision of the 
case.”  Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U. S. 654, 661 (1981).  
There  is  plenty  of  peril  and  little  value  in  crafting  a  core
immunity doctrine that Trump did not seek and that rightly
has no application to this case. 

VI 
Not content simply to invent an expansive criminal im-
munity for former Presidents, the majority goes a dramatic 
and unprecedented step further.  It says that acts for which
the President is immune must be redacted from the narra-
tive of even wholly private crimes committed while in office. 
They  must  play  no  role  in  proceedings  regarding  private