Means and Ends

I don’t think the Democrats understand the Constitution of the United States, especially the far-left progressive wing of the party.

The recent Supreme Court decision on former President Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for the January 6th riot has caused outrage from leftists, progressives and even a few justices of the Supreme Court. They claim it was a partisan decision from a partisan court. President Biden felt it was important enough to break away from a family meeting at Camp David to return to the White House to denounce the decision. He stated, “No one — no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States. With today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all — for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”

But that’s not what the Court said. Keeping in mind that I am not a constitutional scholar nor a legal expert (as is the case for the vast majority of people in the US), the Court said that the president (any president) has immunity for “official acts. ” Official acts outlined in Article 2 of the US Constitution are considered “core constitutional powers” where the president’s immunity is absolute. Congress also passes laws upon which the president must act and these actions are considered presumptively immune along with other actions necessary for the completion of the president’s duties and obligations. The president is not immune for unofficial actions.

Mr. Trump, in his appeal, asserted that all of his activities on January 6, 2021 were official acts. The Supreme Court noted in its decision that ‘The first step in deciding whether a former President is entitled to immunity from a particular prosecution is to distinguish his official from unofficial actions. In this case, no court thus far has drawn that distinction, in general or with respect to the conduct alleged in particular. It is therefore incumbent upon the Court to be mindful that it is “a court of final review and not first view.”’

It is not the job of the Supreme Court to determine which acts are official or unofficial. It is not an evidentiary court. It is up to the lower courts to take evidence and determine whether an action was official or not official.

Justice Roberts was acutely aware that any ruling on presidential immunity would have lasting impact for future presidents. He wrote regarding the dissents of the progressive justices, “Conspicuously absent (in the dissent) is mention of the fact that since the founding, no President has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office. And accordingly no court has ever been faced with the question of a President’s immunity from prosecution. All that our Nation’s practice establishes on the subject is silence.”

Democrats, and especially progressive Democrats, often believe that the end justifies the means. They have very clear ideas on the outcomes they want to achieve and believe that it is the government’s obligation to try and achieve those outcomes. They do not want the three branches of government to check and balance each other, they want all three branches of government to work together to achieve their objectives. What President Biden and other far-left Democrats wanted was for the Court to exceed its Constitutional authority to deny the former President’s plea for immunity by determining that the actions on January 6th were not official acts. That’s not the Supreme Court’s job. That is the end (an outcome) desired by the left but which ignores the means needed to get there. The Court’s decision is a victory for Trump but not because the Court decided in his favor but because its action to send the case back to the lower courts will likely mean that there will be no trial before the election. That’s not the outcome the Democrats wanted.

There is a reason that the Supreme Court has consistently overturned most of the initiatives of the Biden Administration. It is because the Biden Administration has been so focused on the ends (outcomes) that it has ignored the means (the Constitutional processes). If you want to forgive student debt you need an appropriation from Congress, not an executive order. If Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan wants to make substantive rules changes to increase the FTC’s regulatory power she must go to Congress to get that authority. If any president is acting as if he is above the law, it is Joe Biden.

Progressives see the decisions of the originalist justices as a betrayal of their desired  social justice outcomes. That’s not how the Founders envisioned our country and it is not how the Framers wrote the Constitution to operate. Constitutional change requires broad and sustained consensus not a slim majority that could change at a moment’s notice. The only ends or goals in the Constitution are those included in the Preamble. The bulk of the Constitution is a framework for how the government is supposed to operate. The Constitution is about the means to good governance. Not about the ends desired by some segments of the population.

The Constitution and the Supreme Court are not intended to help a bunch of zealots impose their will on the American people but to protect the American people from anybody who would use the power of government to control a free people. The January 6th riot is not the only threat to our Republic.