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Comment by ahmeneeroe-v2 | Hacker News Reader

It's within the court's purview to invent new tests which lower courts can use to decide cases. That's the entire point of a landmark case.

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> while the Supreme Court says “unofficial” acts are still prosecutable, the court has left nearly no sphere in which the president can be said to be acting “unofficially.”

Agreed, this is a key function of interpreting the law.

If the people don't like a landmark case (i.e. the disagree with the interpretation), Congress can pass a new law. If a new law contradicts the court's opinion, the law takes precedence.

> If the people don't like a landmark case (i.e. the disagree with the interpretation), Congress can pass a new law. If a new law contradicts the court's opinion, the law takes precedence.

Maybe.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Judic...

Right - constitutional interpretation is the one area where the court can overrule congressional law.

But even then, with enough agreement from the states, Congress can amend the Constitution.

Exactly, this isn't a gotcha. This is one of the basic checks on Congress.

Congress can also impeach justices, which is one of their checks on the Judicial branch. They also have the authority to confirm the Executive's judicial nominees (one of their checks on the Executive).

But, they didn't invent any new tests here. Baseline, what they want to achieve is to stop the prosecution of Donald Trump in its tracks, and they'd like to use no more and no less overreach to achieve that. If it comes back to them, and they need to hammer harder, they will do that. But, the key goal is to protect Trump.

So, they can invent tests later, after they see how this decision affects the prosecution.

If act = core constitutional power then absolute immunity elseif act = official then presumed immunity else no immunity end

how is that not a test?

> the court has left nearly no sphere in which the president can be said to be acting “unofficially.” And more importantly, the court has left virtually no vector of evidence that can be deployed against a president to prove that their acts were “unofficial.”

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