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Prosecutorial discretion don't real?
Prosecutorial discretion doesn't make crime legal.
Would you have been the ninth vote in US v. Texas to affirm that proposition, had you magically been in Scalia's vacant seat at the time? Because best as I can tell, the judgment below to the contrary was affirmed.
I really get the sense that you have an amazing blind spot for how powerful selective prosecution can be. The Legislature can write a law, but if the Executive simply doesn't enforce it, is it really illegal? Conversely, given Legislatures that write many vague laws, when the Executive decides to selectively enforce extremely vague wording, possibly taken out of context of the broader scheme in order to get at one particular action/defendant, possibly in a way that could not have been anticipated by the Legislature which passed said law, to what extent can it be said that the Legislature actually made it illegal?
It's certainly true that the American executive is granted a lot of latitude by the American legislature. It doesn't have to be this way of course - Congress could pass laws like Germany's requiring prosecution where sufficient proof exists to gain a conviction. But that isn't likely to happen soon.
More importantly though, control of prosecution powers is temporary and divided. If Trump succeeds in becoming President again, he can get the DoJ off his back... but in four years he's out again and someone else controls the federal prosecution power. Meanwhile the DoJ only enforces federal law, and most crimes are state crimes. President Trump might be able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters, but he would still be convicted of murder under New York law. So no, winning an election does not mean he gets to decide what is and is not legal.
I don't think they could. Likely would require a Constitutional amendment, given the currently dominant legal theory about the "Executive power" clause of the Constitution.
I think you are far too focused on Trump. The question is not whether Trump gets to decide what is and is not legal. The question is whether the Legislature really, actually, completely controls the matter. If anything, your point that the reality is decided by temporary/divided powers within the Executive actually supports the point that, in many more cases than is ideal (though probably a small fraction of overall cases), it is actually the Executive which decides what is illegal, not the Legislature.
It literally is. That was the point I was responding to. If you find that point uninteresting, no worries, but then we've not got anything to talk about.
Along the way, you made a vastly broader claim. If you find that vastly broader claim now undefendable, no worries, but then you might have to reconsider what you wanted to talk about.
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