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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

> Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions.

Hrm. Surely the implication you're outlining here is that the President will be breaking the law while carrying out "the roles of the office"? Is that not a concern?

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The next sentence addresses that—there are reasonable disagreements to the extent that some actions are legal or not.

Why is a court the wrong place to settle those disagreements? That is to say, why is it preferable for a President to face the possibility of impeachment by Congress over a jury of everyday citizens? Seems considerably easier to rig the former than the latter.

Let's take Biden's student loan forgiveness as an example. Some say that he overstepped his authority.

The courts should decide if that act is legally permitted, but it would be a tough pull to think that he should be personally responsible for that, including potential jail time.

Now egregious cases that fall outside of the reasonable expectations of the role of the President. Sure, those should go to the courts. But I don't think this case prevents that. Most of what Trump did after the election, IMO, was clearly as a candidate, not a President.

If Biden disregarded the court's ruling and went ahead and made it happen anyway, then yes, personal jail time please.

Because the people are stupid?

Why do we even let them vote at all? Hello, slippery slope.

Yeah but your argument ignores the fact that this all has to be hashed out after the fact. Before this ruling, presidents could ask counsel if something was legal or not (ex: there are tapes of Trump doing this during his attempt to steal the election) and they could answer based on statutes and case law. Now the answer always has to be "depends on what judge we get, there are no precedents". Jackson makes this argument in her dissent, and I think she's right that this is a sea change in the relationship between the US and its president.

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