Guest Op-Ed by Emil McLeod
A recent ruling from the Supreme Court has declared that Donald Trump can claim immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken during his presidency. The ruling comes in the midst of Trump’s ongoing trials regarding charges of alleged subversion of the presidential election in 2020. The Supreme Court, rejecting a prior ruling from the federal appeals court in February declaring Trump enjoyed no immunity from such actions, stated in a 6-3 decision that Trump has “absolute immunity” from “official acts”, and that the presidency in general should have immunity in relation to a wide range of acts.
While the case that produced this ruling was centered on Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 elections, the legal precedent that has emerged from this trial will have wide-ranging consequences, something even noted by commentators from the monopoly media and in the minority opinion penned by liberal justice Sonya Sotomayor. While commentators have taken issue with the particulars of the ruling in regards to what constitutes “official” and “unofficial” acts, in reality the decision is a further expression of the profound economic and political crisis that U.S. imperialism finds itself in.
Imperialism is capitalism in its death throes. During this stage the State begins to increasingly militarize to combat revolution, prevent its outbreak, and repress the people as the political system and economy lurch from crisis to crisis, and the rebellion of the masses becomes more acute. This stage is also characterized by the reactionization of the State, embodied in a further transfer of powers to the executive branch. As the bourgeoisie is a historically doomed class, it tries to keep hold of its class rule and the exploitative system of capitalism by any means necessary.
In this process, the imperialists continue to find themselves in greater contradiction with their own political philosophy, necessitated by the deepening crisis of imperialism. In this decision specifically, we can see how the doctrine of the separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branch is subtly negated in favor of consolidating more powers in the executive.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, stated:
“We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient.”
Roberts continues:
“True, there is no ‘Presidential immunity clause’ in the Constitution. But there is no ‘separation of powers clause’ either.… Yet that doctrine is undoubtedly carved into the Constitution’s text by its three articles separating powers and vesting the Executive power solely in the President.”
And further, “…Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution.”
Roberts does note that the separation of powers is outlined in the Constitution, but gives privilege to the executive branch to carry out its “responsibilities” free of criminal prosecution if the president deems the “official act” necessary as a part of the duties charged to the executive branch.
It does not take much predictive power to see the dangerous legal precedent that has been created by this ruling for the masses and revolutionaries. The president may take extra-legal action if it can be deemed justified as an “official act” as a part of the “responsibilities” of the executive branch and will be able to both bypass any legislative counter-action and stand immune from any criminal prosecution.
As rulings from the Supreme Court extend past the specific case they emerge from and become legal precedents that inform application and interpretation of the law across a wide range of instances, one can see how these sweeping powers and immunity can be applied in the State’s repression against the organization and activities of the masses and revolutionaries if these are decided to be a threat to the State.
Anticipating the just and correct outcry against this legal precedent, Roberts says that such objection is nothing but “fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals”, and that “The dissents overlook the more likely prospect of an Executive Branch that cannibalizes itself, with each successive President free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next…. The enfeebling of the Presidency and our Government that would result from such a cycle of factional strife is exactly what the Framers intended to avoid.”
Roberts tries to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses, describing this reactionary decision as reinforcing the separation of powers and something that will check the power exercised by the executive branch. The real “extreme hypothetical” here is Roberts claiming that if the executive was to be prosecuted, then this would create an endless cycle of each president prosecuting the last, thus “enfeebling” the presidency and government.
The reality is—and it’s no mere hypothetical but a logical deduction based on the nature of imperialism itself—that this decision will become another legal tool in the arsenal of the State to persecute the masses and the revolutionaries in their righteous rebellion.
It must be said that everything has two sides, a positive and negative aspect. The negative aspect of this decision has been mentioned, but the positive side of this ruling should also be noted. Namely, this ruling is another blow to reformists and liberals that still harbor illusions about the imperialist state being “democratic” and a “neutral arbiter” in the sense that it is both representative of the will of the people and that it has internal mechanisms for checking its own power for the benefit of the people. This decision again reminds us that the State is an instrument of class rule, and is a weapon of repression used against the working class to maintain the rule of the capitalists. The nature of imperialism necessitates the imperialists more and more to negate the norms of liberal democracy as it decomposes in order to preserve their own rotten system. Day by day this is confirmed with greater clarity before the eyes of the masses through events such as this decision.
The solution is not, as the monopoly media and liberal justices like Sotomayor claim, to raise an outcry against this ruling and counter it with liberal democracy—as if this decision is not a logical and inevitable outcome of a dying system bent on preserving itself—but to understand that this decision reflects the development of imperialism independent of anyone’s will. Try as the reformists and liberals might, they cannot change the nature of imperialism as it marches toward its inevitable conflict with the working class of this country, and the working classes and oppressed nations of the whole world.
The imperialists will continue to arm themselves to the teeth, to craft new laws and utilize and create new legal loopholes in their own political systems to stave off their certain demise. The answer from the revolutionaries must not be to try to prop up liberal democracy and to try to reform the State, as the reformists and liberals do, but to organize and lead the working class for revolution to destroy the power of the ruling class by smashing its means of class rule, the bourgeois state, and to conquer and defend power by constructing a new State in order to sweep imperialism and reaction from the face of the earth as part of, and in service to, the world proletarian revolution.
