If the president was to assassinate a rival and resign from office before congress could do anything doesn't that mean with the new immunity ruling that nothing could be done about what they did? Or in the case of a president that has congress on his side he can trust them to do nothing about it at all.

@JoeW society isn't controlled by laws, its controlled by humans. Said person could be thrown into jail and the law could simply be ignored at will, if enough people think that's the right course of action. It would be a completely unprecedented situation and the punishment could also be completely unprecedented.

Society has rules that it follows and part of them are governed by laws and the ruling in question says that the president can't be punished by those laws if it is an official act. Unless we change into some sort of authoritarian government a former president isn't going to be thrown into jail just because someone doesn't like what they did.

@JoeW a President killing their opponent willy-nilly is such a massive violation of norms that the Supreme Court will no longer be powerful enough to protect said President against retaliation.

And the concern is if they do it through an official act that they would be immune from criminal punishment for it. While you say it is such a volitation of norms it wasn't that long ago that we thought it would be unthinkable for any president to try and overturn the results of an election that they didn't win.

In this case, we're not talking a "piece of paper" law, but rather a court ruling setting a "precedent". This a key feature of the common law system at work - which countries who inherited their legal system from England have. In this system, laws as they are intended to work, are most definitely not confined to what is written

@PeteW yeah under normal circumstances that's how it works. In the case of a gross norm violation all the regular rules go out the window. Just ask the Japanese people interned in camps during WWII.

Yes - as you can see the US attitude to rules can become extraordinarily malleable. Witness the so-called rules based order - which I always found somewhat akin to a Chicken-based McNugget (I.e. bearing little resemblance to the namesake). The whole episode is entirely on-brand, if you ask me

@PeteW its malleable everywhere under emergency circumstances. May 1968 in France would be one example. Every country is made of humans and no country lives perfectly according to law. End of the day only thing that matters is who has more guns and who is more willing to use them.

@JonathanReez - regarding the latter statement, while that's obviously true, it's also stated from a perspective of extreme situations. Which is not the case most of the time. Most of the time rules are useful, or at least there is a clear opportunity for useful rules to exist. I.e. arrangements for mutual benefit to provide means other than violence to resolve disputes, enforce justice and safety ... So the question of attitude a society has toward such things in situations short of dire emergency is I'd say pretty significant ... [steps off soapbox...]

@PeteW so far the U.S. has absolutely dominated the world in terms of military power, median income after tax and GDP/capita. My prediction is that it will continue dominating those areas for at least another decade. Everything else is noise and not worth paying attention to.

Immunity from prosecution doesn't make murder or any other unprosecuted action legal. And it doesn't protect someone from self defense. Police have the duty to prevent crimes, and that includes crimes that would fall under immunity. People have the right to defend themselves and others against crimes, and that sometimes includes lethal force.

@JonathanReez - dominated is past tense. Median income not much different from wealthy EU countries, but the difference is woeful cost-inefficient services in the US (ie health, education, transportation, law, housing). It means typical quality of life is better elsewhere. Reflected in health and edu stats. Militarily, the US Navy's Carrier group had to unceremoniously flee after a week or so exchanging fire with the Houthis. Suez semi closed. Bases in Iraq held hostage. Fled from Afghanistan too, after US + local allies spent a decade losing on the kill ratio there vs Taliban (see wiki)

@PeteW key stat is after tax. Look it up, it beats everyone in the OECD.

@PeteW a court ruling setting precedent is also a piece of paper. It is in no sense "unwritten."

In the US its very likely that such an assassination will be seen as extremely controversial and society will find a way to remove such a President from power. — I hope that is true today, but even if it is, democratic decline can go quickly and it may not be true in the future. Getting rid of a dictator is possible (as history has clearly shown), but it is quite risky to assume that society will find a way to do so (the way it is phrased makes it sound easy). This way might go through civil war.

You are also assuming that "good guys with guns" will stop a dictator, and not that "bad guys with guns" will prop up a dictator. What proportion of the people present on Jan 6th were gun owners (even if they weren't carrying in that instance)?

@PeteW that's not how my dictionary defines "written," and reported court opinions are published in books that are as durable as statute books.

@Caleth in complete chaos either side might prevail, yes. Could be the dictator, could be the other side.

@gerrit yep, civil wars happen all the time! And Supreme Courts are unable to stop them.

If the President assassinated a political rival and this was known to be certain, they would be impeached and removed by the end of the day. Whether one argues it's an official act or not is completely irrelevant to removing them from office, as Congress' power of impeachment has no such limitations. It's unlikely that criminal immunity would be found to exist, either, but, at a minimum, the President would definitely be impeached and removed.

@phoog - you appear to be mistaking the metaphor for the meaning. the point in question, about common law systems vs civil law, is that common law creates an extra degree of freedom beyond the legislative process. this extra degree of freedom lies outside of prescribed and systematized process by which legislatures make laws, and is often at the discretion of an individual judge or a small panel of judges. At times some extremely contrived results happen eg interpretation of constitutional amendment freeing slaves to justify corporate personhood. IMO it's contrary to rule-of-law concept.

@reirab You have a lot of faith in Congress.

@PeteW Not past tense at all. Take a look at the stats on OECD. Not a single European country, not even Luxembourg, comes close to the U.S. on household disposable income, even after adjustments for what is paid by the state vs. by the individual. Europe's policies hold back innovation relative to the U.S. It's unlikely that Europe will come close any time soon without major policy changes.

@PeteW Just to emphasize how vast and comprehensive the difference is, not only is the PPP-adjusted GDP/capita in the U.S. higher than almost any country in Europe, each U.S. state individually - all 50 of them - has a higher RPP-adjusted GDP per capita than the U.K. The EU average is slightly lower than that of the U.K. France is slightly higher, so they might beat out the poorest state or two.

@reirab - 2024 rankings of Median Wealth per Adult (USD), in order from #1 on down: Iceland, Luxembourg, Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Denmark, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, UK, France, Norway, Japan, Taiwan, Italy, Spain, Qatar, Malta, Sweden, United States ... worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/…

re: the chart of OECD adjusted disposable household income numbers.... the US figure is pretty much the same as the ENTIRE median household income from the 2020 census (68k ish), so something there doesn't seem right to me. I think it might be a mean vs median issue (I.e. "per capita" is a mean, and as the old stats teacher said, "mean is not a robust measure of central tendency")

@PeteW Wealth != income and, except at the highest levels, is not a good measure of standard of living. Also, their data source is Wikipedia, but doesn't agree with the figures either on Wikipedia or Wikipedia's cited sources. OECD also has median household income data available. By that measure, Luxembourg does come out on top, but the U.S. is #2 and still comes out pretty far ahead of most European nations. While that link shows some mixed years, I checked the individual years and this pattern still held for both 2020 and 2021 data (latest.)

@reirab very important is to look at income after tax (including all obligatory payments to various private insurance and social schemes). In the U.S. the median person pays almost no federal tax and very little state tax. In Europe the median person pays around 30% to taxes. Plus Europeans pay VAT which is a highly regressive tax.

@reirab - here's something that seems to represent the overall situation ... pbs.twimg.com/media/… ... to the earlier assertion that the typical US household is massively wealthier than its peers. That claim is true at the top end only. In the middle, the US is not far from the developed country average (dotted line). For the low end, which argue is the true measure how well the system is working (I.e., palaces don't translate into national power), the US is lagging, too.

@PeteW Your own link disagrees with your assertion. The only country with a higher median on the graph is Switzerland, with Norway roughly equal and the U.S. is well above the dotted line for the same year (but the U.S. data series ends earlier on that graph for some reason, apparently around 2018. By the more recent data I mentioned above, the U.S. was also ahead of both Switzerland and Norway and had a larger gap to other EU countries.)

@reirab and the Swiss are also suffering from the worst housing regime in the world. What’s the point of wealth if you can’t even buy a home? politics.stackexchange.com/questions/87121/…