By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

The Supreme Court’s decision last year in Trump v. United States gave the president of the United States criminal immunity for “official acts,” defined as anything that could involve or plausibly extend to the president’s core duties.

Critics of the ruling, such as the constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar, were quick to note that the court’s formulation had no basis in the text, structure or history of the Constitution. The dissenting justices in the case, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, warned that the ruling would, in effect, make the president a king.

“The court,” Sotomayor wrote, “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.” When the president uses his official powers in any way, she continued, “he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold on to power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune.”

She was right. In his second term as president, Donald Trump has claimed royal prerogative over the entire executive branch. His lieutenants, likewise, have rejected judicial oversight of his actions, blasting individual judges for supposedly usurping the authority of the president. And it is clear, as well, that Trump attributes this monarchical power to Chief Justice John Roberts. He even thanked him after speaking to a joint session of Congress this month. “Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget,” Trump said, shaking Roberts’s hand as he exited the chamber.

We can’t say for certain what it is that Trump “won’t forget,” but it certainly seems plausible that this was a clear reference to Roberts’s decision in his favor last year.

The president’s belief in his own absolute power and sovereign authority — “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he said last month in a post on his Truth Social network and on X, misquoting a line from the 1970 film “Waterloo” — has gone so far that he has begun to threaten judges who challenge him, calling it, as my newsroom colleague Peter Baker summarized the point, “a high crime and misdemeanor worthy of impeachment for a federal judge to rule against him.”

This, in turn, prompted the chief justice to issue a rare statement. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he wrote. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

It’s a little hard to know what to make of this. One view is that Roberts is issuing a rebuke that may have consequences for any cases the administration has before the court. Another, less charitable view is that Roberts — who has been very sympathetic to Trump’s past claims of broad executive authority, in keeping with his own expansive (perhaps even radical) vision of executive power — is telling Trump that if he backs down, he will get the results he wants.

Whatever the meaning of Roberts’s response, it is clear that Trump is trying to provoke a confrontation with the federal judiciary, which, at this moment, is the only institution in the American political system that can — and will — exercise direct power against the administration. Trump wants to force Roberts to choose between trying to curb a despotic president (thus forcing a standoff between the president and the Supreme Court), and preserving as much of the court’s influence as possible.

Of course, to choose the latter is akin to surrender. And while some people may have faith in Roberts’s willingness to stand up for American constitutional democracy, I don’t think I do.

I’d like to make one additional observation this weekend. Not long after Trump launched his attack on birthright citizenship, the legal scholar Evan D. Bernick wrote a piece for the Law and Political Economy Project on the faulty logic, bad history and anti-constitutional orientation of the president’s executive order. The 14th Amendment, he said, is clear:

The Citizenship Clause is at once a monument to a world-historically successful democratic struggle against domination and a means of its continuance. It promises birthright citizenship to all who would otherwise be subjected to the arbitrary power of regulatory and enforcement mechanisms over which they have no say.

Bernick made another point I want to expand on. He wrote that the administration’s attack on birthright citizenship is “downstream of a constitutionalism that resembles that of the antebellum period.” This “reactionary constitutionalism,” he continued, “is defined by unchecked power over racialized populations which are deemed unfit to govern themselves.”

The president’s belief in his own absolute power and sovereign authority — “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he said last month in a post on his Truth Social network and on X, misquoting a line from the 1970 film “Waterloo” — has gone so far that he has begun to threaten judges who challenge him, calling it, as my newsroom colleague Peter Baker summarized the point, “a high crime and misdemeanor worthy of impeachment for a federal judge to rule against him.”

This, in turn, prompted the chief justice to issue a rare statement. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he wrote. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

It’s a little hard to know what to make of this. One view is that Roberts is issuing a rebuke that may have consequences for any cases the administration has before the court. Another, less charitable view is that Roberts — who has been very sympathetic to Trump’s past claims of broad executive authority, in keeping with his own expansive (perhaps even radical) vision of executive power — is telling Trump that if he backs down, he will get the results he wants.

Whatever the meaning of Roberts’s response, it is clear that Trump is trying to provoke a confrontation with the federal judiciary, which, at this moment, is the only institution in the American political system that can — and will — exercise direct power against the administration. Trump wants to force Roberts to choose between trying to curb a despotic president (thus forcing a standoff between the president and the Supreme Court), and preserving as much of the court’s influence as possible.

Of course, to choose the latter is akin to surrender. And while some people may have faith in Roberts’s willingness to stand up for American constitutional democracy, I don’t think I do.

I’d like to make one additional observation this weekend. Not long after Trump launched his attack on birthright citizenship, the legal scholar Evan D. Bernick wrote a piece for the Law and Political Economy Project on the faulty logic, bad history and anti-constitutional orientation of the president’s executive order. The 14th Amendment, he said, is clear:

The Citizenship Clause is at once a monument to a world-historically successful democratic struggle against domination and a means of its continuance. It promises birthright citizenship to all who would otherwise be subjected to the arbitrary power of regulatory and enforcement mechanisms over which they have no say.

Bernick made another point I want to expand on. He wrote that the administration’s attack on birthright citizenship is “downstream of a constitutionalism that resembles that of the antebellum period.” This “reactionary constitutionalism,” he continued, “is defined by unchecked power over racialized populations which are deemed unfit to govern themselves.”

I want to add that the Trump administration’s vision of a reactionary constitutionalism (if it is even constitutionalism) is reminiscent of the illiberal constitutionalism of the Confederate States of America.

The Confederacy had a constitution and it wasn’t simply a modification of the federal Constitution with an explicit embrace of “compact theory” and ironclad protections for slavery. “The Constitution of the Confederate States,” the legal scholars Mark A. Graber and Howard Gillman wrote in their volume on American constitutionalism, “was the world’s first example of an illiberal constitution, a constitution unambiguously committed to maintaining and perpetuating illiberal practices.”

I am always writing about “ways to understand” one event or another, but perhaps one way to understand the Trump administration’s constitutional thinking is that it is an attempt to bend the U.S. Constitution into something similar. A charter, not for liberty or equality or a free society, but for the domination of some over others.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5698184&forum_id=2Elisa#48772561)

The five female justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett, and John Roberts — were expected to all be in attendance for the event on the front steps of the Supreme Court building this afternoon to celebrate their achievement.

"It's humbling and exciting to be a part of this group," Chief Justice Roberts said in a statement. "While the court has been graced by several strong women over the years, this is the first time there have been five of us sitting on the court at the same time. Having a female majority on the Supreme Court is an amazing accomplishment. We did it, ladies!"

https://babylonbee.com/news/historic-for-first-time-in-history-supreme-court-has-5-female-justices

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5698184&forum_id=2Elisa#48873336)