Lawsuit against Trump filed

[Belsnickel]

(01-24-2017, 11:46 AM)Benton Wrote: Completely forgot about that. Sued on behalf of Congress over not implementing Obamacare. Or something along those lines. Googled it and nothing came up outside of 2015 when courts agreed to hear the suit.

And correct on the rest. The courts already decided you can't sue the president for damages caused by being president (if he bombs your country or his motorcade makes you lose business, that's part of it). But you can still sue the guy for actions outside of those created by the office. I imagine, though, that if the case goes before a judge, his attorney will argue sovereign immunity extends to emoluments. Which should be enough to take it to the SCOTUS, which helps keep the issue tabled long enough to get through a first term.

I figured you knew all that (though in truth I keep trying to think of the name of the concept and had to do searches for other terms I knew were related to it) but I just like to lay out the civics lessons, sometimes. A better informed public is a good thing.

As for the SCOTUS thing, it could be fast-tracked. The Trump team will fight that tooth and nail, but it could happen. I can see pros and cons to it taking a while, or to it going quickly. Honestly, I am more concerned about the precedent. I've said before that since our courts can only work on justiciable questions, and not hypotheticals, the emoluments clause (really clauses, because there are two different mentions of it, one regarding states and the other regarding foreign powers) has never been ruled on, really. So getting a good legal guideline on this, especially when the clause was written at a time when global trade took months, if not years, compared to the instantaneous monetary transactions of today's world is important, IMHO.