Penn State Dickinson Law professor weighs in on U.S. Supreme Court ruling

The Spark

This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for official acts conducted while in office. Former President Donald Trump is facing several charges for his actions in connection to the January 6 attack at the capitol.

Emily Spottswood, Professor from Penn State Dickinson School of Law says the news came as a partial surprise.

“I wasn't shocked that the court recognized some degree of immunity. You know, there's a lot of parallels for that in other contexts, right? Like prosecutors can't be prosecuted if they even if they flagrantly and egregiously bring charges against a wrong person is absolute prosecutorial immunity. Judges can't be prosecuted for putting the wrong person in prison or even finding them guilty, and they get executed. Right. So, there's a variety of those sorts of immunities that are built into the structure of government. And so, saying some amount of presidential conduct might be similar. There are arguments back and forth. And I'm not a, you know, executive power scholar. So, I'm maybe not the most authoritative person on this subject, but I thought it wasn't incredibly unlikely that the court would say there was some kind of immunity. What was surprising to me was the scope of what they suggested. The extent to which, you know, the sort of this very broad sphere in which he couldn't be prosecuted, and the lack of any guidance given to lower courts about what among the acts in this indictment probably would fall outside of that. Probably would. So, they had a very broad notion of what is his office and what are his official acts. And without giving a lot of guidance that could help streamline things”.

With this ruling, Spottswood believes this will change how constitutional law is taught to law students moving forward.

“If you're teaching a constitutional law class, you know, a big part of those classes traditionally are these things about how the Constitution structures government, how these various checks and balances and how the separation of powers works on our system. And there's aspects of this decision that cut counter to, you know, previous decisions that definitely are evolving the law in new directions and others that might influence the future course of what powers Congress has to regulate the president. And you know, how the president and the executive branch conducts their work. You know, so I think it's not just as a narrow precedent about, specifically prosecuting presidents, which, you know, we can hope isn't something that will come up as often going forward. But this is also a decision about how the branches relate to each other. And I don't teach constitutional law, but I'm quite sure that my colleagues who do, will think this is an important case to discuss and teach in class.”

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