Democrats’ latest proposal for a bill targeting the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling highlights their willingness to undermine a co-equal branch of government when they don’t like the outcome of its decisions, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Days after President Joe Biden called for a constitutional amendment making it clear “no President is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a bill that aims to reverse the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. Schumer’s “No Kings Act” introduced on Thursday doesn’t stop with reversing the Supreme Court’s decision, but would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to even consider challenges to prosecuting a former president for alleged crimes related to official acts, along with challenges to the bill itself.
“None of that is constitutional,” Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, told the DCNF in reference to the provisions of Schumer’s bill.
Shapiro said both Schumer’s bill and Biden’s proposal for an amendment are “making too much” of Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion. (RELATED: Chuck Schumer Introduces Bill To Roll Back Supreme Court’s Presidential Immunity Ruling)
“It’s a reasonable and fairly narrow decision,” he said. “The outcry about it is either disingenuous or just not understanding the law.”
The Supreme Court held on July 1 that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” taken in office. The majority opinion left the task of analyzing which allegations in former President Donald Trump’s indictment are official acts subject to immunity for the lower courts.
John Yoo, University of California, Berkeley law school professor, told the DCNF that “the call to override the Court on the presidential immunity decision is part and parcel of Kamala Harris’s progressive assault on the Constitution.”
“Overruling the Court — through unconstitutional means such as a statute — show the disregard progressives hold for a co-equal branch of government,” Yoo said. “It fits with the call to place term limits on the Justices, which Biden proposes and Harris supports, or even to pack the Court, which Harris called for in 2020. It is an obvious threat, even if it never passes, against the Court simply because progressives disagree with the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution.”
Vote line-ups from the past term conflict with Democrats’ narrative that the Supreme Court is “out of control.”
Several high-profile cases, including challenges to the abortion pill and former president Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 ballot, ended in unanimous rulings. Just half of the 22 decisions that split 6-3 were divided along expected ideological lines, with the Republican-appointed justices on one side and the Democrat appointees on the other, according to Empirical SCOTUS. (RELATED: Dems Want Us To Believe The Supreme Court Is ‘Out Of Control.’ Final Vote Tallies Demolish That Narrative)
Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson told the Daily Caller News Foundation the bill is just “the latest salvo in the Democrats’ war on the Supreme Court.”
“If Democrats want to abolish presidential immunity, they cannot do so retroactively, but could try to pass a prospective constitutional amendment,” Jacobson told the DCNF. “Recognizing the unlikelihood of a constitutional amendment, Schumer seeks an end run by trying to limit the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. Whether that work-around is viable remains to be seen, but there is nothing principled about it.”
Biden proposed on Monday implementing term limits for justices, passing a binding code of ethics and enacting a constitutional amendment clarifying presidents do not have immunity from prosecution for official acts.
The Founders were explicit: no man in America shall be a king.
But the MAGA Supreme Court threw out centuries of precedent and anointed Trump and subsequent presidents as kings above the law.
That’s why I’m introducing the No Kings Act to crack down on this dangerous precedent.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 1, 2024
Since Schumer’s bill would limit the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman highlighted in Reason that “a conviction of the President of the United States would stop with the inferior courts, and most likely, the D.C. Circuit, which by the way, will have a Democratic-appointed majority for at least the next two decades or so.”
Blackman noted the bill stands “no chance” of passing in the current Congress, but could pass if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election and Democrats take majorities in both houses.
“Once the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction is stripped for presidential immunity, it is only a matter of time before similar bills are passed for abortion, the Second Amendment, RFRA, and so on,” Blackman wrote. “This bottomless hole keeps going deeper.”
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