Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 114

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

17 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

that ensure accountability for criminal conduct.7  For that 
same  reason,  some  commentators  also  maintain  that  de-
creasing the certainty of accountability for wrongful acts at 
least arguably reduces incentives to follow the law.8 

Under the individual accountability model, because eve-
ryone is subject to the law, the potential of criminal liability
operates as a constraint on the actions and decisions of eve-
ryone, including the President.  After today, that reality is 
no  more.  Consequently,  our  Nation  has  lost  a  substantial 
check on Presidents who would use their official powers to
commit crimes with impunity while in office. 

So,  one  might  ask,  what  remains  of  accountability  for 
Presidents  under  law?    With  today’s  paradigm  shift,  the 
majority  leaves  in  place  only  the  chance  that  this  Court 
might  someday  determine  that  the  criminal  conduct  in 
question  was  an  “unofficial”  act,  or  that  the  Government 
will somehow rebut the presumption of immunity that ap-
plies to a President’s official acts, such that criminal conse-
quences might attach.  But with the parameters of official
and unofficial conduct unknown, I think it highly unlikely 
that a sitting President would feel constrained by these re-
mote possibilities. 

—————— 

7 See,  e.g.,  Plato,  Laws  274  (B.  Jowett  transl.  2000)  (“Not  that  he  is 
punished because he did wrong, for that which is done can never be un-
done, but in order that in future times, he, and those who see him cor-
rected, may utterly hate injustice, or at any rate abate much of their evil-
doing”);  see  also  J.  Bentham,  The  Rationale  of  Punishment  20  (1830)
(“General prevention ought to be the chief end of punishment, as it is its 
real justification”); A. von Hirsch, Doing Justice: The Choice of Punish-
ments 44 (1976) (“The threat and imposition of punishment is called for
in order to secure compliance—not full compliance, but more compliance 
than there might be were there no legal penalties at all”). 

8 See, e.g., M. Ryan, Taking Another Look at Second-Look Sentencing, 
81 Brooklyn L. Rev. 149, 156, and n. 37 (2015) (“[U]ndermining the . . . 
certainty  of  punishment  . . .  could  undermine  the  deterrence  value  of 
punishment”).