{"id":9207,"date":"2017-04-26T20:34:43","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T01:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=9207"},"modified":"2017-04-26T20:34:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T01:34:43","slug":"just-who-are-you-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/04\/26\/just-who-are-you-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Who Are You Now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quinta Jurecic on Lawfare <\/b><\/i>discusses <\/a>the resemblance between the medieval theory of monarchy, wherein a King has a mortal body but embodies an immortal essence, and similarities to President Trump and its legal ramifications<\/i>:<\/p>\n

In short, the distinction between the \u201cpersonal\u201d [Twitter] account and the \u201cofficial\u201d account is far from a dispositive one; the King\u2019s Two Bodies exist layered on top of one another. With that in mind, how are we to identify a tweet from the Office of the President versus a tweet from Donald Trump in his personal capacity\u2014if there is even a difference at all?<\/p>\n

Amusing as this question may be, it actually does matter, across a number of different axes. I\u2019m not talking here merely about maintaining the cognitive distinction between the statements of a person and the statement of the institutional presidency. But there are important legal implications too.<\/p>\n

Consider the problem first in terms of its litigation implications. Delineating the scope of presidential immunity from civil suit in Fitzgerald, <\/em>the Supreme Court ruled that the President enjoys absolute immunity when acting \u201cwithin the \u2018outer perimeter\u2019 of his official responsibility.\u201d Writing sixteen years later<\/span><\/span> in Jones, <\/em>the Court further held that Fitzgerald<\/em>\u2019s \u201creasoning provides no support for an immunity for unofficial<\/em> conduct,\u201d denying that \u201cthe President \u2026 has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones <\/em>never considered what \u201cunofficial conduct\u201d undertaken by the President in office might look like, because it focused on conduct that took place before President Clinton assumed the presidency. But the Court\u2019s arguments regarding the divisions between official and unofficial conduct in these two cases can arguably apply to behavior carried out within a president\u2019s time in office as well. I feel confident the Trump administration will produce litigation fleshing out the boundaries of non-immune presidential conduct in office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the questions are whether anything said on any Trump Twitter account is immune to litigation – or if none of them are. It isn’t like being impolitic near a hot microphone, since tweeting by accident seems highly unlikely; it’s a deliberate act. So when is the President immune, and when isn’t he?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quinta Jurecic on Lawfare discusses the resemblance between the medieval theory of monarchy, wherein a King has a mortal body but embodies an immortal essence, and similarities to President Trump and its legal ramifications: In short, the distinction between the \u201cpersonal\u201d [Twitter] account and the \u201cofficial\u201d account is far from \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9208,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9207\/revisions\/9208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}