POTUS vs SCOTUS

This will be short. I have been reading all of the posts regarding Obamacare and the Fifth Circuit reprimand to the DOJ. I read a post that implied the President was "losing it" emotionally. I don't know if this is true but it brings to mind a question.

My question is, does the President of the United States have the authority and power to arrest any or all members of the Supreme Court? I think he has the authority but I don't know if he has the power to carry it off.

What do you think. I am interested.

reply to post by Nite_wing


No.

Separation of powers. SCOTUS is constitutionally protected.

reply to post by loam

Forgive me if I am wrong but I think you are saying,

if a judge was a shoplifter, he could not be arrested by any of the officers of the Executive Branch of Government?

or if a Congressman had a wad of money in his refrigerator, the Executive Branch of Government could not arrest him?

The Executive Branch is where the power of arrest lays. I should have stated that in the question.

Originally posted by loam
reply to post by Nite_wing

 

No.

Separation of powers. SCOTUS is constitutionally protected.

Sure.... when the Constitution isn't being used as a piece of toilet paper to wipe the President's and Congress' asses.

SCOTUS Justices aren't above the law themselves as individual people, and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Obama and friends were to figure out a way to frame and criminalize one or two of them to put puppets in their place before a ruling is made on the health care law.

I've never seen such an abuse of power in my lifetime, and never thought a day would come to see it go this far in my country. Where is the respect for the rule of law?

~Namaste

reply to post by Nite_wing


Only congress may impeach a sitting Supreme Court justice.

You know what is really starting to bug me about all of the Supreme Court threads is that everyone uses SCOTUS for the Supreme Court. The proper acronym is USSC, anytime you are researching case law on a legal search engine such as Lexis One or Lexisnexus the Supreme Court is referred to as USSC. The same goes for case listings in law journals, such as Roe v Wade USSC 740 (1214 Supp) 1973.

Where everyone came up with SCOTUS is beyond me but it is rather annoying to see everyone doing it. I'm not trying to be the speech police or spelling police. It would just be nice to see people on a forum for intelligent discussion using the proper language in their discussions.

I know this is off topic but just my 2¢.

reply to post by Nucleardiver


Just cuz it sounds good. Nobody really knows what USSC stands for in the street.

I think the Secret Service started using POTUS for the President. The news media probably started using SCOTUS.

reply to post by loam


I wasn't speaking of impeachment. I was speaking of charging a member of the Court with a crime or high misdemeanor and then arresting them setting the stage for impeachment.

Could they arrest a member of SCOTUS while they were in session from the first Monday in October through their entire session?

reply to post by Nite_wing


Uhmm, the POTUS does not have the constitutional power to arrest anyone......period. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the United States and the Commander in Chief once our military is called to action. He is not the Sheriff of the US nor is he a judicial officer at all. This is why the seperation of powers is so very important, it prevents any one branch or person from accumulating total power. Anyone can see that Obama's goal is absolute power over every aspect of our government.

Jefferson said that when you have an accumulation of all powers judicial, legislative and executive in one branch, that is the definition of tyranny.

Obama is also the definition of tyranny since he seeks to accumulate complete power and appoint himself "ruler" of America.

reply to post by Nite_wing


POTUS is the military acronym for the president and has been used for about 100 years now.

reply to post by Nucleardiver

Originally posted by Nucleardiver
You know what is really starting to bug me about all of the Supreme Court threads is that everyone uses SCOTUS for the Supreme Court...

...

Where everyone came up with SCOTUS is beyond me but it is rather annoying to see everyone doing it. I'm not trying to be the speech police or spelling police. It would just be nice to see people on a forum for intelligent discussion using the proper language in their discussions.

I know this is off topic but just my 2¢.

The acronym appears to have been first used during the period of telegraph use.

Link.

See also:

Press telegraphers made use of a system of hundreds of abbreviations known as the Phillip's Code. For example, if he sent by Morse code "IWR TT T SCOTUS YA CFMD" the receiving operator at the distant office would have typed in full "IT WAS REPORTED THAT THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES YESTERDAY CONFIRMED." The Phillip's Code was used only for press stories and not permitted for sending commercial telegrams.

Link.

Striking similar to texting speech today.

Essentially POTUS and SCOTUS share the same origin.

One is no less inappropriate than the other.

reply to post by Nite_wing

Originally posted by Nite_wing
I was speaking of charging a member of the Court with a crime or high misdemeanor and then arresting them setting the stage for impeachment.

Same answer. Only Congress.

POTUS has no such authority.

The House indicts. The Senate conducts the trial.

The POTUS doesn't have the power to arrest a Justice, however, Congress has the power to regulate the Supreme Court.

the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Congress can pass a bill that limits the term of justices, expand the number of justices, make it that the SCOTUS needs a super majority to rule on a case, etc...

reply to post by Nite_wing


He has equal power, but no power over them. The entire point of not giving that kind of power to the President is to prevent Dictators.

What Obama was saying is simply not true and since he knows that it's hard to defend a person who is knowingly lying for political gain.

His beliefs are not exactly a secret since he taught and lauded Alinsky's works. That is his core belief I think. He wants to knock down the Constitution and replace it. He views the Constitution as an obstacle to imposing a minority ideology on the majority.

The idea's he embraces are really simple. The majority are like children who need parenting. The minority who agree with this are more intelligent and therefore it is necessary to remove the power from the majority and place it in the the hands of the elite, intellectual minority. To do so the Constitution and our system must be amended for our own good. They think the reason that their idea's failed in the past is they were not the ones running the show.

This is the same mindset the world has seen too many times. The Constitution was made the law of the land to protect us from this exact mindset. It is this mindset that leads directly to a dictatorial government and total government control. It's the exact same idea that lead to the former Soviet Union among others.

The end product is an elite class who are the only ones in the society to have power and money, a lapdog class that are members of a Party or Union who get special privilege for serving the elite and finally the majority which are forced to live and do exactly as the elite class dictates.

To people like Obama the average person is simply to stupid to be allowed to make their own decisions or be trusted with money or power.

They sell this by convincing the masses they will be part of the lapdog class and use the willing to help them topple the current government and replace it with themselves. Those who help are rewarded just enough to buy their loyalty.

What they take away is Freedom. Freedom to make our own choices and our own mistakes. They take away any motivation or chance to improve ourselves other than by serving them directly. They convince the lapdogs to turn on their own to obtain the privileges they control. They impose their wishes through fear and intimidation. They replace real courts with courts who do their bidding because they are the law.

The world has seen this over and over and this crowd is always just beneath the surface in any Free Society. Look how easily the Free nation of Germany was taken into control even though it was an educated populace. Our Constitution, imperfect as it may be, protects us from that. The Supreme Court protects us from the greatest danger, which is a single Party and a single ideology having control of Congress and the White House.

To understand how far he has drifted, the Senate voted unanimously against his 2011 budget and the House voted unanimously against his last budget proposal. Even his own Party is fearful of his idea's.

Trying to negate the Supreme Court should send chills up and down all our spines, no matter our political stances. It reveals his true nature. He can't pursue his agenda to equalize the playing field and to allow the intellectual elite to take over worldwide as long as he is constrained by our Freedoms and the Constitution.

Again I remind people that the most important thing he said at his last State of the Union, was his statement he would ask Congress to increase his powers. He always telegraphs his true intentions.

The most powerful tool he has is a way to reward his lapdogs. Pass out enough candy to fool people into supporting him and he can prevail. Sadly there is a class that can be bought.

Lincoln may been thinking of something along that line !

The Taney Arrest Warrant is a conjectural controversy in Abraham Lincoln scholarship. The argument is that in late May or early June 1861 President Lincoln secretly ordered an arrest warrant for Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but abandoned the proposal. The arrest order is said to have been in response to Taney's Circuit Judge ruling in Ex parte Merryman, which found Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to be unconstitutional.

As McGinty (2008) concludes, if there was such a plan to arrest Taney it would have been both reckless and inflammatory on Lincoln's part, for it would have dramatically escalated political tensions. McGinty, like all of Lincoln's major biographers, concludes there never was any arrest warrant.

Taney Arrest Warrant


Lincoln's 'Great Crime'

reply to post by Nucleardiver


Is the power of arrest not inherent with the Executive Branch? The Courts cannot arrest, the Congress cannot arrest. They can only issue warrants. They cannot arrest. They would send a federal marshall to make the arrest.

The police agencies in our country are all part of the Executive Branch. Sheriff's are enabled under the Executive Branch. Erik Holder is part of the Executive Branch. Holder can have people arrested. Obama is his boss. Can he direct a federal marshall to arrest a member of the Court?

reply to post by loam


Nice response on POTUS origination. Thank you.

reply to post by Nite_wing


No Obama cannot direct a marshal to arrest anyone, he can suggest that they investigate someone but the US Marshal Service is under the DOJ and regardless Obama must follow criminal procedure.

Also all court justices and magistrates are protected under sovereign immunity for just such reasons and historically can only be prosecuted or removed from the bench in cases of severe malfeasance. I highly doubt that ruling against Obamacare and upholding the US Constitution could be construed in any way, shape, or form as malfeasance since malfeasance is defined as the wrongful or unjust doing of some act which the doer has no right to perform, or which he has stipulated by contract not to do, according to Blacks Law Dictionary.

Since the USSC has a constitutional duty to rule on the constitutionality of laws then they would be doing exactly what their obligated to do. Personally I think Obama is a sociopath that seeks absolute control and I wouldn't be surprised if he tried something stupid like remove a justice or worse. However anything he did to the USSC would be highly illegal.

reply to post by Nucleardiver


I am not being clear. I am speaking of arrest only.

I am not speaking of Obama as putting the cuffs on physically but could he direct the arrest? The sovereign immunity would apply only to members of Congress sitting in session but excludes high crimes. I see nothing that protects the Court from the inherent powers of the Executive Branch's exercise of arrest powers.

As a side note, when I was in law school, a loooong time ago, I heard that one of the Justices way back then or even earlier had been deemed a shoplifter in DC. I don't know if that is true. It was just rumor. I have looked for it but can't find it on the net.

Any officer could have arrested him if charges would be pressed as I understand it.

reply to post by Nite_wing


If you were in law school then you should have learned of sovereign immunity of court officers including justices. I am not saying or trying to imply that they are immune from being arrested for crimes as they must obey all laws. However they cannot be arrested or otherwise prosecuted for their actions and rulings as long as their rulings and decisions are conducive with their said duty as required for their job on the bench.

I took 1 year of prelaw and am aware of a judicial officers implied sovereign immunity.