Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 107.0

10 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

deemed immune from prosecution.5 

Ultimately, the majority’s model simply sets the criminal
law to one side when it comes to crimes allegedly committed
by  the  President.    Before  accountability  can  be  sought  or
rendered, the Judiciary serves as a newfound special gate-
keeper,  charged  not  merely  with  interpreting  the  law  but 
with  policing  whether  it  applies  to  the  President  at  all. 
Also, under the new Presidential accountability model, the
starting presumption is that the criminal law does not ap-
ply to Presidents, no matter how obviously illegal, harmful,
or  unacceptable  a  President’s  official  behavior  might  be.
Regardless of all that, courts must now ensure that a for-
mer President is not held accountable for any criminal con-
duct he engages in while he is on duty, unless his conduct 
consists primarily (and perhaps solely) of unofficial acts. 

3 
The structure and function of the two accountability par-
adigms are not the only differences—the models also assign 
different  roles  to  participants  in  the  criminal  justice  sys-
tem,  and  they  ultimately  generate  different  relationships
between the Presidency and the Rule of Law.

Under  the  individual  accountability  model,  duty-bound 
prosecutorial  officers  initially  exercise  their  discretion  to 
decide whether to seek punishment for alleged violations of 

—————— 

5 To fully appreciate the oddity of making the criminal immunity de-
termination turn on the character of the President’s responsibilities, con-
sider  what  the  majority  says  is  one  of  the  President’s  “conclusive  and 
preclusive”  prerogatives:  “ ‘[t]he  President’s  power  to  remove  . . .  those 
who wield executive power on his behalf.’ ”  Ante, at 8 (quoting Seila Law 
LLC  v.  Consumer  Financial  Protection  Bureau,  591  U. S.  197,  204 
(2020)).  While the President may have the authority to decide to remove
the  Attorney  General,  for  example,  the  question  here  is  whether  the
President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poison-
ing him  to  death.    Put  another way,  the  issue  here  is  not  whether  the 
President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applica-
ble criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exer-
cises that authority.