Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Saturday that she hopes the court’s decision granting former presidents broad criminal immunity will be overturned, saying her colleagues have done some “crazy things.”
Appearing for a civics education talk at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, the liberal justice also publicly commented for the first time on this week’s midterm contests, when Democrats swept control of both chambers of Congress.
The justice specifically singled out the court’s 6-3 decision along ideological lines that former presidents enjoy at least presumptive immunity for their official acts. At the time, the justice wrote that it made Trump and his successors a “king above the law.”
I’ve always wondered - why on earth is the Justice Dept. under the President? Like, I get that he’s supposed to Execute the legislative and Judicial decisions and laws. But there needs to be some serious tweaks to the powers of the president, regardless. I’d be in favor of getting rid of the position entirely. But that’s never going to happen.
I been a proponent of moving the US Marshall Service under the Judicial. Give them an enforcement mechanism that isn’t reliant on the Executive cooperating. Because they clearly aren’t following court orders currently.
Prez can still pardon any of the for any reason at any time.
He’s not going to pardon anyone that isn’t paying him for the pardon.
The only reason he pardoned the Jan 6ers was because his handlers and their cronies were mixed up in it, and it was easiest to cover the entire thing up and give it an air of bullshit credibility at once. His other pardons are always in response to a payment of some sort because he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
I know it. Just making a point about how federal charges are pointless in the face of a faithless admistration.
But they do some pardon, perhaps, for political reasons, like giving license to similar elected officials to break the law. But one wonders if even then some donor has to pay the prez to 6 layers of shell companies ending in his possession.
He was selling them for 1 million in a firesale in 2020 after he lost. I bet it’s higher now, and a sliding scale for the rich notorious cases, like Zua or whatever of binance the crypto exchange. I bet he paid a lot. I think he got 10 years, or a ten year felony not sure which.
That’s interesting. I like that, actually.
This is a really great question! You’ve already got the underlying reason down too - all the various executive departments were created to distribute the enormous administrative burden of figuring out how to enforce laws that have been passed.
Interestingly, Congress is actually in charge of creating the various departments. The President is not authorized to abolish or create new ones, or to expand their jurisdiction or invent new powers, however they are responsible for proposing leaders to each and soliciting their guidance for topics within their domain. How this currently gets enforced is part of the issue however.
Independent agencies also exist that do not explicitly fall under the authority of the President. While the President can remove heads of departments for any reason, there is a much higher bar for removal of independent agency board members.
As the office of the attorney general is one of the government’s oldest, established during the first Congress, this may be a matter of combatting tradition more than anything else! This predates independent agencies by something like 100 years.
I should also edit in a clarification that the DOJ not being an independent agency is what allows it to be more partisan than something like the FTC. Also that an independent agency does not in and of itself entirely mitigate partisan politics from its decision making.
Three branches of government is too few
Are there examples of systems with more?
I don’t think the most applicable systems describes it formally as different branches comparable to what we’re used to. But the TLDR is really too distribute power so nobody has too much power.