The US supreme court utterly distorted the true threat to American democracy | Lawrence Douglas

According to the court, a rogue prosecutor is somehow more dangerous to US rule of law than a rogue commander-in-chief

In its extraordinarily disturbing decision earlier this week granting presidents wide-ranging immunity from criminal prosecution, the US supreme court dramatically mis-weighed a competing set of risks to our constitutional democracy.

On the one side of the scale, the court placed the possibility that a future rogue prosecutor will seek to settle political scores by indicting a former president for “insufficiently enforcing … environmental laws”.

Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College

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