Perfecting Our Submission? Mann and Trump, Ruffin and Roberts

Authors

Joseph Scott Miller, University of Georgia School of Law

First Page

295

Abstract

Presidential power is vast, both under law and in practice. Who holds presidents accountable, and by what means? Courts wrestle with these intertwined questions of power and accountability. The majority opinion in the 2024 presidential immunity case, Trump v. United States, is eerily resonant, rhetorically, with a notorious judgment enhancing one person’s power over others by shielding that power utterly from criminal-law accountability. That judgment, from 1829, is Judge Thomas Ruffin’s infamous slavery-law opinion for the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Mann. I juxtapose the two opinions, which share jarringly similar claims about the nature of power, rule, and accountability under law.

Recommended Citation

Joseph S. Miller, Perfecting Our Submission? Mann and Trump, Ruffin and Roberts, 29 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 295 (2025).
Available at: https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/lclr/vol29/iss2/3