Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 118

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

21 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

attentive, consistently fulfilling their established role in our 
constitutional  democracy,  and  thus  collectively  serving  as 
the ultimate safeguard against any chaos spawned by this 
Court’s decision.  For, like our democracy, our Constitution 
is “the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.” 
Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 389 (1821). 

For my part, I simply cannot abide the majority’s sense-
less discarding of a model of accountability for criminal acts 
that  treats  every  citizen  of  this  country  as  being  equally 
subject to the law—as the Rule of Law requires.  That core 
principle has long prevented our Nation from devolving into
despotism.  Yet the Court now opts to let down the guard-
rails of the law for one extremely powerful category of citi-
zen:  any  future  President  who  has  the  will  to  flout  Con-
gress’s established boundaries. 

In  short,  America  has traditionally  relied  on the  law  to 
keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Amer-
icans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) 
the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted
to promote individual and collective security will operate as
speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction.  Once self-
regulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, 
with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a Pres-
ident have to be let go and which can be redressed as im-
permissible.  So,  ultimately,  this  Court  itself  will  decide 
whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of 
criminality  emanates  from  the  Oval  Office  in  the  future.
The potential for great harm to American institutions and
Americans themselves is obvious. 

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* 
The  majority  of  my  colleagues  seems  to  have  put  their
trust in our Court’s ability to prevent Presidents from be-
coming Kings through case-by-case application of the inde-
terminate standards of their new Presidential accountabil-
ity paradigm.  I fear that they are wrong.  But, for all our