There is a broad sense right now that, no matter what side of the political spectrum one falls on, the government isn’t remotely responsive to the desires of the American populace in any way. to regulate the environment and public health, among other issues. Federal agencies will face a multitude of challenges in court. “It affects the authority of the agencies that protect our water and air, our food safety, our nuclear safety, the economy-tremendously important government institutions. And the Supreme Court has just gutted the structure that we’ve been operating under for decades,” Sloan says. “It basically has shrunk the power of the government agencies and the experts, and it has dramatically increased the power of federal judges who have absolutely no expertise in these very important and complicated areas.” George Washington University Law School Professor Paul Schiff Berman went even further than Sloan in his criticism of the Supreme Court, saying it is waging a sustained “assault on democracy” this term while expanding the court’s role as “the principal arbiter of American life.” “The court made it more difficult to protect voting rights of racial minorities, more difficult for administrative agencies to fulfill their congressionally mandated role and far more difficult for anyone to hold the president accountable — even if that president acts to overthrow democracy itself,” Berman said. “The result will be a continued disconnect between the court and the wishes of the American people, with grave consequences for the rule of law and the court itself.” Perhaps the most high-profile ruling the Supreme Court issued was in Donald Trump v. United States, which weighed whether and to what extent a former president enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. The case related to presidential immunity as it relates to Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The court ruled 6-3 that presidents are entitled to immunity from prosecution for official acts taken in connection with the exercise of their core constitutional responsibilities and a presumptive immunity with regard to other official acts. But they decided that presidents are not entitled to immunity for unofficial acts. The justices sent the case back to a lower court to decide which of Trump’s actions were official and which were unofficial. It is expected, based on the opinion of the majority written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that the lower court will take an extremely generous interpretation of “official Presidential acts.” Roberts and other justices are believers in the “unitary executive theory,” which grants the president extremely broad powers and very few checks on the president’s authority. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in one of two dissenting opinions, wrote that the majority’s ruling, “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law. The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he will now be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.” The ruling is shockingly undemocratic, but it’s what the American public has come to expect from this Supreme Court. These are unelected officials completely reshaping our government, piling one wildly authoritarian and undemocratic ruling on top of another. 16
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