[JumpCrisscross]

> Amazing how Trump gets unfettered power and Biden gets reeled in

If we look at how often the justices voted in favour of each administration in emergency applications when the government was the filer, we get Sotomayor and Jackson favouring Biden with a 77-point margin (88 to 11 percent and 77 to 0 percent, respectively), Alito favouring Trump with a 77-point margin (95 to 18%), and Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts with 48, 26 and 21-point margins [1].

On the whole, Trump has been successful 84% of the time against Biden's 53%. But my point is that the partisan fracture of our court--on the level of individual justices--has been happening for a while. (The fact that we have (a) Alito, who's a hack and (b) a decadelong conservative majority is more explanatory than e.g. Barrett or Roberts having gone to the dark side.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/politics/supreme-court...

[wahnfrieden]

Would you characterize the items they hand to the court as similarly extreme and unprecedented in both ways? If one side is providing milder work, then I would expect higher agreeability. Otherwise there is something fishy with both sidesing it.

Obviously it is impossible to answer this without projecting some bias. But I don't think that makes it unanswerable.

[stinkbeetle]

It's not unanswerable, but it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion about it even with otherwise reasonable people, sadly.

I'm not American so I try not to wade into it too much. I think Americans and everybody is entitled to a basic human right of self-determination, holding, and voting for diverse political beliefs. They have a bunch of shit to sort out and are pretty divided sadly, but so is my country and many others.

Now something that America has been known for is extraordinary renditions, extrajudicial executions, foreign "interventions", and that kind of thing. Again I don't say America is unique or even the worst at this by a long shot. Hell, France carried out a state sponsored terrorist action and murder against a civilians in a friendly democracy (New Zealand) within living memory. But America, being the biggest, most influential, and "leader of the free world" gets most of the focus.

With those disclaimers out of the way, the presidential immunity ruling did not come as any shock to those outside America and slightly removed from the propaganda war. We've seen W start questionable wars and the whole CIA renditions, Obama's love of drones and his ordering extra-judicial execution of US citizens, their destruction of Syria and Libya and Iraq, etc.

Presidential immunity was the defacto operating principle and most legal experts outside the fringe really agreed that an action like the killing of an American citizen abroad by the executive branch could not be prosecuted, despite it otherwise meeting all elements of the criminal statute for murder.

I'm no legal expert, but the presidential immunity ruling from SCOTUS as far as I could see affirmed existing practice and understanding. If anything it actually restricted presidential immunity because it explicitly limited it to official actions and created some guidelines for how courts could decide how to make that classification.

But the reaction online was literally that it made Trump a dictator and it meant he could go personally shooting opposing politicians, judges, and bureaucrats with no consequences! People who believed that of course will categorize that decision as extreme. But the reality seems to be the opposite, extreme (not as a value judgement but in terms of distance from status quo of both sides of mainstream politics) would have been to rule the other way and permit the prosecution of presidents for executive actions, because presumably then the DOJ would have begun cases against Obama, W, as well for their criminal and now prosecutable actions in office.

[intermerda]

> Obama's love of drones and his ordering extra-judicial execution of US citizens, their destruction of Syria and Libya and Iraq, etc.

Good thing that you prefaced with that you're not an American and you try not to wade into it too much. Your have a good excuse for ignorance of drone strikes and are a great example of how manufactured consent works. "Obama" + "drones" eventually leads to "both sides" enlightened centrism without understanding policy nuances. Just one such example - https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526906?seq=8.

> It's not unanswerable, but it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion about it even with otherwise reasonable people, sadly.

You're right about that one.

[stinkbeetle]

> Good thing that you prefaced with that you're not an American and you try not to wade into it too much. Your have a good excuse for ignorance of drone strikes and are a great example of how manufactured consent works. "Obama" + "drones" eventually leads to "both sides" enlightened centrism without understanding policy nuances. Just one such example - https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526906?seq=8.

Not sure what you're getting at here or how it addresses the substance of my point. Seems like a pathetic attempt to strawman by attempting to nitpick a tiny irrelevant aspect of my comment, and even that failed badly for you because I never claimed other sides did not also use drones or that both sides were as good or bad as one another. Come on, pull yourself together, if you can't cope with talking about this like a normal person, just refrain from commenting.

Do you deny that Obama ordered extrajudicial execution of a US citizen and relied on and was widely believed to be shielded by presidential immunity for that action? Or that it was not a controversial mainstream legal opinion before Trump that presidents operated the executive branch under presidential immunity?

> You're right about that one.

I know.

[elcritch]

> Obama's love of drones and his ordering extra-judicial execution of US citizens

Yes, so many Americans forget about this or gloss over it. Even the fact you’re getting downvoted show how biased most folks are.

Trump has in many ways done less than previous administrations. He just makes it very public and brash.

> Presidential immunity was the defacto operating principle and most legal experts outside the fringe really agreed that an action like the killing of an American citizen abroad by the executive branch could not be prosecuted, despite it otherwise meeting all elements of the criminal statute for murder.

Which leaves me with mixed feelings. The idea that the President basically gets to do whatever he wants as long as congress won’t impeach him is scary for the rule of law. However on the other hand, it does allow the President the power to do things that may need doing.

It’s been that way since Thomas Jefferson sent the marines to fight Barbary wars without congresses approval. Perhaps earlier.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the fact you’re getting downvoted show how biased most folks are

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Happy to unflag once edited.)

[stinkbeetle]

> Trump has in many ways done less than previous administrations. He just makes it very public and brash.

Maybe. My point wasn't that one was better or worse, and I did try to add some "balance" to that by including both W and O examples of presidential immunity :) Presidential immunity I just used as one (of many) issues where there are basically irreconcilable differences between people who are otherwise quite intelligent, sane, rational.

There are equivalents going the other way too where conservatives think something is bad or wrong or extreme but it really isn't. I chose the example of this particular disconnect because of the context, it would not have worked going the other way. The assertion was that Trump / Trump cases are more extreme. And furthermore that may even be true, I do nothing to disprove that with my example, I just try to show show why as I see it, it is extremely difficult to judge something like that objectively or even for people to discuss it calmly and rationally.

> Which leaves me with mixed feelings. The idea that the President basically gets to do whatever he wants as long as congress won’t impeach him is scary for the rule of law.

All systems are flawed in some ways, but this seemed to make sense to me. Prosecutions are brought to courts by the executive branch, so having the executive prosecute itself has a fundamental problem. Having executive overseen by the legislature at least avoids that particular catch. Executive holds power to physically enforce anything of course so that's always a problem, but at least it's not hiding away behind "national security" or "prosecutorial discretion" or "ongoing investigation" or "lost the evidence", rather it makes the issue public and forces the executive to openly defy the representatives of the people and the states, and the people can then decide their next course of action much better informed. Which is about as best you can hope for I think, it's the people who are really the final arbiters of all this, so if they're kept informed then that's the best thing.

Having the executive prosecute itself in some ways could be worse than nothing because it kind of delegitimizes the congressional impeachment process. Let's say if Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election and took power, then his DOJ prosecuted and carefully and secretly sabotaged the trial and he was found innocent in court, then congress came along and tried to impeach for the same crime and convicted him, where would that leave things? The executive and judicial branches found him not guilty, so it could appear that congress is defying the other two branches.

That's all my own idle musings though, and way above my pay grade!

[elcritch]

> Maybe. My point wasn't that one was better or worse, and I did try to add some "balance" to that by including both W and O examples of presidential immunity :)

For sure, president's from both major parties in the US have done those things. My point was that by some standards Trump hasn't been worse (or better) but different.

If you step back and consider just the actions that violate the US constitution, then Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, Trump, Biden have all done it. Their parties justified it at the time, but nonetheless it grows the scope of the presidential power each time.

> All systems are flawed in some ways, but this seemed to make sense to me. Prosecutions are brought to courts by the executive branch, so having the executive prosecute itself has a fundamental problem.

Good point, though without congress stepping up and keeping the president in check it means a president can accomplish a lot. Good or bad depends on someone's perspective.

Hopefully that's a current cultural issue which could change if / when folks realize that that's not a good thing. For example congress members start pushing back on executive power.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Would you characterize the items they hand to the court as similarly extreme in both ways?

It's really difficult to answer this separate from one's biases.

I'd also note that Trump, then Biden, then Trump again escalated the use of the shadow docket way beyond historical norms [1]. This was a deliberate choice by both Presidents.

> there is something fishy with both sidesing it

Didn't mean to both sides this, at least not at the level of the Court. The Court has had a conservative majority for a decade; one could argue Jackson and Sotomayor are balancing the court by leaning against its centre of pressure. But it's not unexpected for the Court to be a bit more deferential towards a Republican President. We haven't been appointing and confirming neutral arbiters for a while.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_docket#Since_2017

[matthewdgreen]

> I'd also note that Trump, then Biden, then Trump again escalated the use of the shadow docket way beyond historical norms [1]

The President does not choose to use the shadow docket. The use of the shadow docket is controlled by the court justices, who (as you pointed out) have been a conservative majority for a decade.

You are correct that the use of the shadow docket increased under Trump and then Biden, but this is consistent with the (somewhat obvious) explanation that the conservative justices began to use this tool as a partisan weapon for Trump and the GOP and then later against Biden's policies.

[JumpCrisscross]

> President does not choose to use the shadow docket. The use of the shadow docket is controlled by the court justices

Oh wow, I didn't know this [1]. Thank you...what in the actual fuck.

I'm having trouble parsing how the shadow docket relates to a party requesting emergency relief. Do you have a good source on this?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_docket#Procedure