No, it would not be unofficial. The Constitution does not have to explicitly give the executive branch such power. The President now has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. If the President has Citizen A or journalist B murdered, there is no legal recourse. They are cloaked in the veil of immunity by simply declaring such act "official."
The Supreme Court punted on deciding official vs. unofficial until after the election, because who wins will ultimately decide if specifics will need to be made.
~ obviously the decision in the trump case is gross, but US Presidents already have assassinated citizens, and courts have held such cases to be non-justiciable under the political question doctrine etc (in addition to issues of standing). see Al aulaqi vs Panetta. if you included assassinated by 'allied' governments that both relied on US weapons to execute and which the US govt provided cover for after the fact, then ofc that list is a hundred times longer.
~ im a bit confused by some of the posts abt things like the president using the military to arrest all political opponents. a supreme court decision cannot directly prevent or enable a military coup, bc... its a coup it suspends the existing legal system, and the supreme court does not have its own military. not to ignore that a high court may choose to ally or cut a deal in the event of a coup and that this can have an impact in terms of the ideological side of the effectiveness of a coup.
this high court case may propogate ideology that could influence ppl toward being accepting of a coup, but materially immunity from prosecution rly does not have bearing on the possibility of carrying out a coup as such a prosecution could not take place during a military dictatorship anyway.
not 'invalid' to talk about danger of a coup and potential mechanisms obstacles etc, and in places that have faced military coups before ppl may alr be more attentive to it compared to those of us speaking from the perspective of [living under the government responsible for orchestrating a majority of the military coups that have happened around the world]. but "the supreme court needs to give approval first" is not such a mechanism or obstacle.
~ the legal system is deliberately obtuse, and sure ofc its better to have read the decision if ppl want to talk about legal specifics but dont taunt ppl with 'just read the decision' as if not having read is the reason for someone's pov. esp in this case where official vs unofficial is a determination of fact that is sent back to the lower courts, "just read the decision" isnt rly going to make it any easier to anticipate exactly what this dialectic is going to look like. in a similar vein, condescension like "we told you so" is rly not fair, none of us have "perfect politics" and if what u are thinking about is being 'smug' to ppl who didnt analyze or anticipate xyz then who exactly are u trying to improve the world etc for? we all live in a world with propoganda systems designed to confuse us and ofc sometimes we will get upset with ppl we know / interact with for not seeing what we think they should see and thats ok, it cant be the default orientation tho and if any of us are one day lined up to be shot by the State as in the described scenario, then we lost wtf is there to be smug about?
~ relying on sotomayor's dissent is fine ofc as long as its in the context of being from her own subjective position etc. for example liberal judges may not want to acknowledge that things such as the political question doctrine already gave the executive immunity from prosecution to a very large extent, and ofc there is a history of non-prosecution even in clear and extreme cases such as watergate.
it was never stated so openly and abrasively tho to make presidential immunity from prosecution the official law of the land even if it already was the case in practice to a great extent, which is the aspect that stands out most to me personally, but also since its a bit hard to tell what exactly the material side of it will look like due to so much of the substance being sent back to the district court and then potentially brought back up on appeal.
~ it is a bit frustrating that raikou presumed in the initial post that there was only one supreme court case you could be talking about. grants pass has immediate consequences for millions at a time where houseless people are already among the primary targets of State violence across the 'us', including where i live 41.18 and the apparatuses that enforce it representing maybe the most intensified state violence against houseless ppl that ive seen and with the City attorney filing an amicus brief in favor of the decision that was made (more or less, obv the court decision is rarely going to be 100% identical to what any party requested). the overturning of Chevron is obv a big change as well, even if in my understanding it is still largely tbd what doctrine(s) will replace chevron as the district and circuit courts to come up with their own paradigms, agencies structure basically the whole executive branch.
