It’sa question as old as the country itself. But it’snever really been resolved.
From the infamous interviews between British journalist David Frost and former president Richard Nixon in 1977:
The Supreme Court’s recent decision on presidential immunity has thrust this question of presidential powerbackinto the spotlight.
After the case was decidedtwo weeks ago, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a dire warning in her dissent.
“The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quothat has existed since the founding.Ironic,isn’t it? The man in charge of enforcing laws can now just break them,” she wrote.
We discuss five U.S. presidents who exploited their power to undermine democracy, the citizens who stopped them, and what we can learn from a history that hascontinued torepeat itself.
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