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Tell me you are unfamiliar with American military law without telling me you are unfamiliar with American military law.
This is not new, and not the incredibility you think this is, because distinction between lawful and unlawful orders has already litigated and legislated at length, while your incredibility relies on conflating lawful and unlawful actions as both being under the scope of the President's immunity as described by the Supreme Court. The basic Supreme Court rejoinder to your incredibility could simply be 'the President does not have conclusive or preclusive authority to issue illegal orders, duh,' and then point at the Constitutional chain under which the President can give orders.
The American Constitution provides the power "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces" is allocated to Congress, not the President. The President and Executive Branch works through these parameters, in part, through the Uniform Code of American Military Justice (UCMJ), which is Congressional legislation. The UCMJ in, in turn, sets the requirements of obeying lawful orders, and the contrasting limitation on illegal orders. Lawful orders in turn derive from, well, laws and regulations allowing their issuance/execution/funding, while unlawful orders violate the laws.
There is no authority to the military (or the President) to give illegal orders, because the President's constitutional role is to give orders within the Congressionally-defined rules and regulations for giving lawful orders. Orders contrary to those- the unlawful orders- are outside the scope of the President's constitutional role. If they are outside the scope of office or duties, there is no immunity.
This is the very old 'where does 'following orders' apply as a legal defense?', and the established answer is mundane. Soldiers are obligated to follow lawful orders, and thus legally protected even when those orders result in negative consequences, and are not obligated to follow, and thus not protected if they do follow, unlawful orders. Now take this distinction all the way to the top.
By eliminating the category of unlawful orders outside of the broader category of lawful and unlawful orders the President could give, what you have left (by definition) is the scope of lawful orders within the scope of authorities...
...which is the context of the only reference to the Armed Forces in the opinion, on page 14, in a paragraph listing constitutional authorities.
There are reasons the Opinion Dissents don't appeal to the Armed Forces angle, and among them is that the SEAL Team 6 assassination argument is one only protected under this ruling if SEAL Team 6 assassinations are already legal orders to give.
You might as re-express your incredibility at the shock that the none of the Democratic justices thought to argue that the President should be prosecutable for giving legal orders.
This rests under the assumption that the power of Congress, "to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces," trumps (heh) the president’s role as “commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States.” The opinion spends ample time dispelling the notion that congress can regulate the president’s article 2 powers. Why do you assume that regulations on what kind of orders the president can issue acting in his constitutionally mandated role as commander in chief are constitutional? You say this has been litigated, but where? Who would have article 3 standing?
Because making Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces, which is what establishes the authorizations and limits to the military, is not preclusive to the Commander of Chief.
The Trump v. United States opinion makes no claim that all of the President's official acts fall within the conclusive and preclusive authorities. From the opinion-:
Given this is literally page 2 of the opinion, which explicitly expands the area in which Congress can regulate Article 2 powers to all scopes on conduct in where his authority is shared with Congress, I propose that the notion that the Court dispelled the notion that Congress can regulate the President's Article 2 powers to be itself dispelled instead as a misrepresentation of the Court's position. An erroneous motte for a much more banal bailey: Congress can regulate what it has the power to regulate, which is not everything the President is empowered by the Constitution to do.
Article 1, Section 8 is still a thing, as are all the military-related aspects of it, which would not be preclusive to the President.
Defense appeals to following orders in the course of unlawful conduct has been as old as corruption within the military and/or war crime defenses, so take your pick. Congress's right to dictate what is / is not law regarding the military regardless of what the Executive prefers is demonstrated through all the military-governing legislations ranging from UCMJ to the late Cold War intelligence community reorganization to basing and expenditures. The standing comes via all normal standing principles.
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Although I agree with you, an alternate “bad end” had the potential to happen during the armed FBI raid on Mar A Lago. If President Trump had been shot, President Biden would not be prosecutable as the raid ostensibly fell under item one. An impeachment for a high crime would have been the only recourse other than Civil War II, and there’s little doubt its fate in the Senate would have been short.
That's correct, and I think no one thinks Joe Biden would have been prosecuted for any deaths which occurred during the raid on Mar a Lago. This decision just says the same courtesy applies to Republicans also.
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That is not a bad-end of the court opinion. That's what can already, and could already, occur.
Arguing against a Supreme Court opinion on the grounds that a tyrannical person will ignore it with sufficient congressional support is an infinitely generalizable argument- it's no longer a failure state of the actual opinion in question, but a failure of the broader system in who two branches of Government are colluding against the third.
Note that if you remove the presumption of capitulation, Congressional investigation by the opposition can still choose to dig in and find illegalities in the basis of action, which re-reverts item one to 'nope, outside of official scope,' or find evidence of resistance to oversight (such as, say, actual resistance to oversight), which is itself outside of the bounds of item one, or the other ways for additional information to be raised for public awareness. Will it un-assassinate a political rival? No. But would item one provide immunity? Also no, not unless there is sufficient coordination/agreement between the Branches of government such that the offense wouldn't have been prosecuted/pursued regardless.
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