A Supreme Court immune from law or logic

Jul. 6—America will be a long time recovering from the damage Donald Trump has done to our institutions—and the rule of law itself.

If it ever does.

That much has been made clear by the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling that former presidents of the United States enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for violating the laws they take oaths to enforce.

I've read all 119 pages of the decision — the syllabus, Chief Justice John Roberts's majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas's concurrence, Justice Amy Coney Barrett's dissent-in-part, Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent.

Together, they all make for strange and depressing reading.

The reasoning in Roberts's majority opinion is at times tortured and at other times anguished. In spots, Roberts struggles to make distinctions between "absolute" and "presumptive" immunity, but — as Sotomayor points out in her eviscerating dissent — the chief justice so expands the boundaries of presumption as to make the definitions of the two modifiers distinctions without a difference.

His argument boils down to this: If a president fears prosecution after leaving the White House for breaking laws he took an oath to uphold, the chief executive won't be able to function.

It is an absurd contention, one that sadly now carries the force of law.

This is true for at least two reasons.

The first is that a fundamental premise of our system of government is that no one is above the law. The oaths of office that public officials — including presidents — take when they assume office impose burdens on the officeholder. They don't grant entitlements or exemptions.

They certainly don't grant an all-inclusive get-out-of-jail card to an officeholder who steals taxpayer funds, abuses power to punish political enemies or, say, attempts to thwart the citizenry's will by overturning a legitimate election through illegal and violent means.

The second reason is that it turns the history of the U.S. Supreme Court itself on its head.

Perhaps the seminal moment in the court's history came more than 200 years ago in Marbury v. Madison. In that nation-defining ruling, Chief Justice John Marshall established that even then President Thomas Jefferson — who, in one of history's quirks, was also a cousin of Marshall's — was bound to honor the nation's laws.

This principle that the chief executive must operate within legal restraints is much of what separates a democratic republic such as ours from a monarchy.

Sotomayor points that out, which makes her dissent so devastating.

In fashioning her argument, she makes points that supposed conservative jurists — self-styled strict constitutional constructionists — once held dear.

She points out, for example, that nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say the president should be granted immunity. She notes that there are places in that august document in which immunity is granted and argues that the Framers were not such sloppy draftsmen that they forgot to include the presidency among those offices exempt from prosecution.

There is a certain glee in her writing as she hoists the conservative jurists on their own petards. Her subtext is clear: The conservative majority hates the idea of implied powers until embracing them proves politically expedient.

Then, they do so with gusto.

Perhaps the fact that Sotomayor sank the barb in so deep explains the defensive churlishness of Roberts's conclusion. In it, he says that, by establishing that former presidents should have more rights and more protections than all other citizens, the court really hasn't done anything.

Then he snaps at Sotomayor and Jackson for saying that exempting someone — anyone — from following the law is, actually, a big deal.

Roberts' uncharacteristic ill temper is one sad, disturbing moment reading the decision.

Another comes with Thomas's odd complaint that the office of special counsel is unconstitutional — an argument the court has had more than a half-century to consider and hasn't. I'd call Thomas's concurrence gibberish, but that's unfair to gibberish. He sounds like a man whose thoughts already are focused on his next, all-expenses-paid vacation.

What's missing from the ruling is any recognition of the tragic reality with which it deals.

The reason Donald Trump seeks immunity is there is credible evidence he, as president, betrayed his oath of office and broke fundamental laws.

Now, the nation's highest court is twisting itself and the Constitution itself in knots to avoid confronting that fact.

America will be a long time recovering from the damage he's done.

If we ever do.

John Krull is director of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.