- The majority held that the president could not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers and was entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all other official acts.
The US Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on presidential immunity has raised serious alarm. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a powerful dissent joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, warned: ‘Under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution.’ She ended: ‘With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’
The court said that the president was not above the law, but deprived that statement of most of its content both by the width of what it said was covered by immunity and by how it narrowed the path for a prosecutor.
The government argued that a president enjoyed no immunity whatever from criminal prosecution. Trump argued that just as a president had been held to enjoy absolute immunity from civil damages liability for acts within the outer perimeter
