Legal analysts and liberal observers watched in horror on July 1, 2024, as the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Trump v. United States. The ruling granted former and future presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution, a move widely interpreted as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for Donald Trump.
Most commentary focused on the immediate political implication: the insulation of a lawless leader from accountability. Yet this analysis misses a deeper, more structural coup.
The conservative supermajority did not simply crown Donald Trump; the justices seized the crown for themselves.
Scholars argue that the Court’s decision was less about empowering the presidency and more about establishing the judiciary as the ultimate gatekeeper of executive authority.
By ruling that Congress cannot legislate regarding the president’s “core” official acts, the Court effectively erased the legislative branch from the system of checks and balances.
This maneuver leaves only one institution with the power to determine when a president has crossed the line: the Supreme Court itself.
Heather Cox Richardson noted in a recent discussion that the ruling essentially declared that “the courts will have to decide what is legitimate.” This mechanism ensures that every future dispute over presidential legality must pass through the narrow funnel of judicial review.
The Roberts Court has positioned itself not as a co-equal branch, but as the supreme arbiter of the other two.
The “Official Acts” Trap
The architecture of this judicial supremacy relies on the vague distinction between “official” and “unofficial” acts. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that a president enjoys absolute immunity for actions within his “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” and presumptive immunity for other official acts.
Crucially, the Court did not offer a clear definition of these categories. Instead, it mandated a “fact-specific” analysis for every allegation, a process that guarantees judicial oversight.
Federal judges now hold the power to parse the minutiae of presidential conduct. Every time a prosecutor seeks to charge a president, or a plaintiff seeks to sue one, they must first ask the judiciary for permission.
This effectively transfers the power of impeachment - formerly the domain of Congress - to the courtroom.
The standard for “presumptive immunity” requires prosecutors to prove that charging a president would pose “no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch,” a hurdle so high that only the Supreme Court can decide if it has been cleared.
Legal scholars Josh Chafetz and others describe this as “judicial aggrandizement,” a strategy where the Court expands its own influence at the expense of democratic institutions.
By making the “official acts” test the law of the land, the justices have ensured that no president can be held accountable without their explicit stamp of approval.
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The Unitary Executive Paradox
This judicial coup is the realization of the “Unitary Executive Theory,” a legal doctrine cultivated by conservatives for decades. Justice Samuel Alito, a key proponent, championed this view while working in the Reagan Justice Department in the 1980s.
The theory posits that the president possesses the “whole” executive power and cannot be restricted by Congress or the “administrative state.”
Proponents argue this theory restores the Founders’ vision of an energetic executive. In reality, it serves a modern political goal: dismantling the regulatory state.
By concentrating all enforcement power in the president and denying Congress the ability to insulate agencies from political firing, the Court clears the way for a deregulation agenda.
However, a “unitary” executive creates a “binary” government. If the president controls the bureaucracy and the Court controls the interpretation of the president’s powers, Congress is reduced to a spectator.
The Court creates a powerful president to destroy the administrative state, but it reserves the right to define the boundaries of that power.
This delicate balance assumes that the “unitary” executive will remain subservient to the Court’s legal judgments - a dangerous assumption with a leader like Trump.
The 2025 Tariff Showdown
The theoretical risks of this power grab became reality in late 2025. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs, claiming that trade deficits and drug trafficking constituted national emergencies.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. V.O.S. Selections in November 2025 to decide if these actions were legal.
Trump’s legal team used the Court’s own immunity ruling as a weapon. They argued that the president’s determination of a national security threat is a “core” official act, entitled to absolute deference and immunity from judicial review.
This placed the justices in a trap of their own making. If they uphold the tariffs, they concede that the president can usurp Congress’s taxing power, effectively rendering the Court irrelevant on economic matters. If they strike them down, they contradict their own expansive reading of executive power.
Reports from the time indicate that the administration began signaling it might ignore an adverse ruling, framing the tariffs as essential to national survival.
This is the inevitable outcome of judicial hubris. By stripping Congress of its checking power, the Court left itself as the only obstacle to an autocrat.
Echoes of the Fuller Court
History provides a grim precedent for a Supreme Court that aggressively shields capital and elites from democracy.
The Melville Fuller Court (1888–1910) similarly used the Constitution to strike down income taxes and block labor regulations.
That Court famously protected the “freedom of contract” in Lochner v. New York (1905), elevating economic theories to constitutional status to stop the government from protecting workers.
Today’s Court mirrors the Fuller era in its ambition. The immunity decision is the modern equivalent of Lochner: a judge-made rule designed to insulate a specific political order from democratic challenge.
The Fuller Court eventually destroyed its own legitimacy, leading to constitutional amendments and a complete reversal of its jurisprudence. The Roberts Court risks a similar fate.
Resistance is already mounting. The “No Kings” movement and legislative attempts like the “No Kings Act” demonstrate that the public and lawmakers are waking up to the judicial power grab.
The Court sought to coronate itself as the ultimate sovereign. Instead, it may have sparked a constitutional crisis that will strip it of the very authority it sought to hoard.
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So, in other words, the SCOTUS just crapped and wiped itself on the Constitution!
Bribery of the Justices should have been nipped in the bud as soon as it was discovered.
But in the end what this action really does is make the court irrelevant. Because a Unitarian Executive yields so much power, that he or she can ignore the courts rulings the executive branch doesn’t like.
So essentially, this court and lower courts will have been muted by this courts own shortsightedness.