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Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

College

College of Arts and Letters

Keywords

U.S. Supreme Court, Presidential immunity, Official acts, Donald Trump, Criminal lawsuits, 2020 election interference, Absolute immunity, Presumptive immunity, Executive office, Unofficial acts, Evidence exclusion, Trump v. United States, Landmark decision, Reelection, Kamala Harris, Party-line vote, Legal scholars, Human rights organizations, Joe Biden, Presidential power abuse, Constitutional powers, Judicial precedent, Political controversy, Prosecutorial limitations, Historical inconsistency

Document Type

Article

Abstract

On July 1st of 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president of the United States is entitled to varying degrees of immunity for his official acts. This decision sent criminal lawsuits filed against President Donald Trump back to lower courts, nullifying many of the arguments and evidence used against the president for his interference in the 2020 election. The U.S. Supreme Court held that absolute immunity protects the president’s exercise of “core constitutional powers,” while presumptive immunity protects all other official acts within the “outer periphery” of his executive office. Most notably, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that no official act may be used as evidence in the investigation of an unofficial act, effectively incapacitating most prosecutions against the president. Just four months after this landmark decision, Donald Trump won reelection to the presidency in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris. Considering Trump’s return to the White House, the ruling of Trump v. United States demands revisiting. Made by a 6-3 vote divided along party lines, this decision has had a polarizing effect on the nation and has been widely questioned by legal scholars, human rights organizations, and even the former president, Joe Biden. With this controversy in mind, this paper investigates how the Trump v. United States decision is inconsistent with the history of presidential immunity rulings and opens the door for gross abuses of presidential power, specifically due to its prohibition against using official acts as evidence.

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