Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: “The United States has gone for two-and-a-half centuries without a constitutional rule concerning presidential immunity, and it has been able to do so for a very simple reason: Most presidents aren’t criminals and don’t use their official functions to commit crimes.”
“The question of whether a president has some form—and if so, what form—of immunity for official acts thus hasn’t come up much. Where presidents have broken the law, the country has resolved the matters by means other than criminal charges. We saw a pardon in the case of Richard Nixon, and we saw a negotiated resolution short of prosecution in the case of Bill Clinton. In some cases, we just looked the other way. And the country and its presidency moved on.”
“Had it come outside the context of the once and possibly future presidency of Donald J. Trump, the Supreme Court’s decision Monday in Trump v. United States would still have been wrong, and it would still have been objectionable, and it would still have been dangerous.”
