‘A bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune’: Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson sketch out ‘nightmare scenarios’ in Trump immunity dissents

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, on the left, and Kentanji Brown Jackson, on the right

Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson pose at a courtesy visit in the Justices Conference Room prior to the investiture ceremony of Justice Jackson, Sept. 30, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)

Near the end of her fierce dissent from the opinion granting Donald Trump vast immunity from criminal prosecution, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor employed repetition to clarify her point about the broad-based nature of the ideological 6-3 majority’s decision.

“Immune,” she writes. “Immune, immune, immune.”

The opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts in Trump v. United States briefly sketches out a never-before-ventured legal concept: when the “core constitutional powers” are exercised by a president, their immunity from criminal prosecution “must be absolute.”

The impact of what absolute immunity means, in real terms, for the use of those core powers is explored by Sotomayor and, to a lesser degree, in a separate dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

You May Also Like

Man who murdered pregnant ex-girlfriend in front of her children while she unpacked baby shower gifts whines about his ‘constitutional rights’ during sentencing

Share copy link Background: News footage of the memorial in New York,…

‘This unlawful impost must fall’: Conservative group sues Trump claiming tariffs are ‘unconstitutional exercise of legislative power’

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an Iftar dinner in…

‘Threaten to fundamentally fracture the country’: Groups tell SCOTUS Trump’s arguments in birthright case could recreate divisions like those ‘between slave and free states’

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an Iftar dinner in…

Cory Booker’s Challenge

The Democrats have been under intense pressure to find an effective way…