I'm not as sure as you are about that for two reasons. Firstly, they could have decided the case narrowly to simply say that Trump is immune. They didn't. They said The President is immune for any official act, then went on to define "official" so broadly as to make almost anything official in some conceivable way. And secondly, this dumb fucking "unitary executive" hypothesis has been kicking around for decades. Nixon himself wasn't the one who first opined that when the president does it, it's not illegal. Largely, however, I agree with you that Roberts has gone out of his way to try to twist himself in knots to sound intellectual while basically holding the party line to the greatest extent possible. I think he'll go down as a great villain of 21 c. America. You expect that out of the other lackeys, but he tries to position himself as above the fray, and he's not fooling many people.The mistake everyone is making is the assumption that the Roberts court is attempting to set precedent.
To clarify, this is the scenario I think they envision: 1) president crimes 2) Congress whines about said crime 3) Complications ensue; case goes before the Supreme Court 4) Supreme Court decides whether the President is Republican When I say they "aren't setting precedent" I mean that they do not intend to create any case law that stands on its own. They absolutely want to cement their powers as the ultimate arbiters of all law and jurisprudence. Which means your ability to slow walk, obfuscate and delay will absolutely be dependent on the political makeup of congress and the courts. Populist regimes around the world are doing a banner job of demonstrating why that "appointed for life" bullshit associated with the courts is a terrible fucking idea. I suspect it will go away a piece at a time. Fundamentally, the more parliamentarian our courts become the less sense it makes for them to be political appointees. Fuckin' run for election like every other choad.
Agree with an amendment in favor of parliamentary systems. Or even re-writing much of the constitution, but I'm not gonna pretend like we're in any position to hold a constitutional convention in the current political climate, even if the will was there. Same for an amendment, I guess. The other thing I haven't seen discussed here yet is that Alito and Thomas want to retire, but won't step down unless the president is GOP/Trump. How much that motivates the decisions of Roberts and the rest of the Trump-appointed SCOTUS is a fair question, but it probably explains at least a bit.
Oooof, dark. Had to look that one up. Maybe I'll just stick with my "MAKE SCOTUS SCARED AGAIN" pink hat (w/ inverted Alito face on the back). It's no wonder all of the MAGA celebs and pols demonize cities so much, they're too scared to show their face in public inside a metroplex. I'm all for reinforcing that. Did you see the evening shots yesterday of the crowd barricades put up outside of SCOTUS, with zero people around? Unfortunate. Maybe folks saw what happened to the kids on university lawns.
Here's how it will go. JD Vance really gets it. Biden would do best to realize that they'll try to jail him regardless of what he does or doesn't do. And speaking of the latter, I'm looking very much forward to the SCOTUS ruling, in a veneer of intellectual prose, explaining why Biden's inaction on immigration law is not considered an official act. Like "inactions, in fact, are non-official". That'd be perfect, especially after Trump had his House puppets scuttle the immigration reform talks earlier this year. Honestly I can't think of anything a future Trump admin would try to prosecute Biden for that's based in fact, and since anti-immigration xenophobia is the #1 motivating animus of MAGA, that'll probably be what they go for.