Whether good or bad, the events that happened in 2024 also show that it is a good sign.

Amongst the many departures from accepted norms during the period dated 2024 C.E., one ought to include the judgement of July 1 of the U.S. high court on federal executive immunity from legal actions as being one of the most controversial and extreme. While the legal reasoning of the Majority in this case is fascinating on its own, deriving as it does from several innovations which are given labels such as "core powers"*(1), "unofficial acts" (to indicate a limit to the protection from the courts which is enjoyed)*(2), and "absolute immunity" (which does not occur in any previous legal reasoning so that its definition must be generated for the first time by the Majority)*(3), analysis presented by the two Dissents fulfill the task in my view of a wholly adequate treatment of it. While Justice Sotomayor provides a clear summary, pointing out that the single precedent invoked to support immunity from criminal liability derives from a judgement regarding liability in civil cases*(4), Justice Jackson pursues the notion of a paradigm shift which is deployed in the Majority's reasoning between the "accountability paradigm", denoting universal applicability of legal norms, and a new paradigm which requires distinguishing between what actions are "official" and which are "unofficial"*(5). Independent from the strictly legal issues, then, my interest here is to consider one which arises specifically from philosophy: the concept of "essence" deployed as a crucial factor in the Majority's judgement*(6).

In Justice Thomas's Concurrence, potential historical grounds are invoked where he points out that in spite of numerous instances of actions by federal executives in the past which are clearly criminal in nature if done by others, no former President has faced criminal prosecution for his acts while in office*(7). Not mentioned but in clear support of this is the fact that Amendment IX of the U.S. Constitution states that lack of codification does not preclude a right's legal protection so long as it is already "retained by the people". If the legal immunity asserted by the Majority can be claimed to be one of these rights, historical grounds for the constitutional claim could be provided.

The Majority does not argue in this way, however, and instead opts for a highly philosophical approach which asserts an "essence of immunity" rather than any accidents of its subsidiary use. Legal immunity's essence, according to the Robert's Court, i.e. that without which it could not be what it is, is freedom from fear of criminal prosecution*(8). Much is made of the "subjective effect" which constitutes this essence and that it must be insured by conditions which are favorable to it. It is argued that these conditions can be supplied only by the actual and factually executant inability of the legislative branch to supply standards to the executive. Thus an unverifiable mental state must be insured by a verifiable institutional one. Or differently, the persistence of an essential subjectivity must be insured by one variety of an accidental objectivity, which is a non-sequitur. One can't draw an essence from an accident without itself becoming an accident. In refusing to use a valid historical argument and opting instead for an invalid philosophical one, the Majority's opinion indicates an adumbrated failure of capacity for the lower courts to follow its guidance.
_________________
*(1) Opinion, p. 3.
*(2) ibid. pp. 5, 15.
*(3) ibid. pp. 9, 21, 23. Legal immunity derives from protections against self incrimination deriving from the Fifth Amendment denoting a special privilege of exemption from prosecution in a court of law even if prosecutable guilt is already established. Because prosecutorial authority therefore constitutes a determining factor in its previous occurrences, absolute or unconditioned immunity requires a new conceptual frame.
*(4) Nixon v. Fitzgerald; Opinion, pp. 4, 11-15; Sotomayor's Dissent, pp. 8, 13. The reasoning in Fitzgerald is inherited by the Majority's Opinion in the appeal to a natural quantitative increase in a potential defendant's anxiety level under threat of criminal indictment over civil (p.13), but it is pointed out in Sotomayor's Dissent (p.15) that since criminal indictment is much more unlikely than civil, assuming absence of criminal intent, the decrease in probability is incompatible with a causal claim of increased anxiety.
*(5) Jackson's Dissent, pp. 5, 9.
*(6) Opinion, pp. 30, 35.
*(7) Thomas's Concurrence, p.2.
*(8) Opinion, pp. 10, 15, 19, 36.

It’s crucial to examine how those in power often evade accountability. @temple run 2

That was very successful! gutter cleaning