Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 88.0

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

21 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

munity  “would  frustrate  the  Executive  Branch’s  enforce-
ment of the criminal law.”  Brief for United States 19.  The 
President  is,  of  course,  entrusted  with  “ ‘supervisory  and 
policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity.’ ” 
Ante at 10 (quoting Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750).  One of 
the most important is “enforcement of federal law,” as “it is
the President who is charged constitutionally to ‘take Care
that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ ” Id., at 750 (quoting 
Art. II, §3).  The majority seems to think that allowing for-
mer  Presidents  to  escape  accountability  for  breaking  the 
law while disabling the current Executive from prosecuting 
such violations somehow respects the independence of the
Executive.    It  does  not.    Rather,  it  diminishes  that  inde-
pendence, exalting occupants of the office over the office it-
self.  There  is  a  twisted  irony  in  saying,  as  the  majority
does, that the person charged with “tak[ing] Care that the
Laws be faithfully executed” can break them with impunity.
In the case before us, the public interest and countervail-
ing Article II interest are particularly stark.  The public in-
terest  in  this  criminal  prosecution  implicates  both  “[t]he
Executive Branch’s interest in upholding Presidential elec-
tions and vesting power in a new President under the Con-
stitution” as well as “the voters’ interest in democratically
selecting  their  President.”  91  F.  4th  1173,  1195  (CADC 
2024) (per curiam).  It also, of course, implicates Congress’s
own  interest  in  regulating  conduct  through  the  criminal 
law.  Cf. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 749, n. 27 (noting that the 
case did not involve “affirmative action by Congress”).  Yet 
the majority believes that a President’s anxiety over prose-
cution overrides the public’s interest in accountability and
negates the interests of the other branches in carrying out
their constitutionally assigned functions.  It is, in fact, the 
majority’s position that “boil[s] down to ignoring the Con-
stitution’s separation of powers.”  Ante, at 40.