Is there a particular circumstance where the U.S. president can be tried for declaring war against another country? Is there a particular circumstance where the U.S. president can be tried for declaring war against another country? What are the criteria for the president to be tried for declaring war? Is there even a set criteria, or is the president immune in this situation no matter how or why the war was declared?
The President can’t declare war It’s not a power given to the President, the Constitution reserves it for Congress - Article One, Section Eight: Congress shall have power to ... declare War Congress has declared war 11 times, the last being on June 4, 1942. Declarations of war are largely an anachronism. However, that just begs the question ... Is there a particular circumstance where the U.S. president can be tried for [engaing in military action] against another country? Yes. If the President authorizes military action that is or is conducted in a manner that is against US domestic law then she can be impeached by the House and tried by the Senete. If it is a violation of international law then she could be tried by an International War Crimes Tribunal. However, this could not be the International Criminal Court since the US does not acknowledge its jurisdiction. It would need to be a tribunal established by the UN which means not vetoed by the USA - an unlikely circumstance. If he came into the custody of a foreign power, then they could try him under their own laws assuming they were willing to ignore the principle of sovereign immunity.
Sharing intelligence is an act of war inconsistent with neutrality However, so is supplying arms to a belligerent. A neutral State must never assist a party to the armed conflict, in particular it must not supply warships, ammunition or other war materials directly or indirectly to a belligerent power, but otherwise its trade with the belligerent States remains unaffected. However, it’s not a war crime.
There's not any well-defined notion of what a person with a Red Notice is "allowed" to do. The notice doesn't have any legal force of its own. You can read more about Red Notices on Interpol's web site: INTERPOL cannot compel any member country to arrest an individual who is the subject of a Red Notice. Each member country decides for itself what legal value to give a Red Notice within their borders. So it would be up to the US authorities to decide what, if anything, to do about the Red Notice, in compliance with US law. We can only speculate as to why they declined to flag his passport and/or detain him. Without knowing anything about the specific case in question, here are some possibilities: They may have felt there wasn't sufficient evidence against him to justify detaining him. The conduct of which he was accused may not have been a crime under US law. They may have believed the Brazilian arrest warrant was primarily politically motivated. They may have wanted to annoy the Brazilian government, or make a political statement against its actions, by failing to cooperate. They may have decided that it simply wasn't a good use of their funds to pursue the case. They may have been lazy or incompetent or oblivious and simply not known where he was or what he was planning to do. The fact that he was intending to travel to Brazil voluntarily may or may not have been a factor in their inaction.
There are two kinds of immunity: absolute and qualified. Absolute immunity is limited to the official discretionary acts of judges, prosecutors in the litigation process (but not in the investigatory process) and the President. And, in the cases of judges and prosecutors this is only immunity from civil liability and not criminal liability. Thus, for judges the scope of absolute immunity extends to legal rulings and conduct related to being a judge in a courtroom. In the case of a prosecutor, it pertains to litigation conduct (but not conduct physically dealing with a defendant or investigating a crime). This is usually an open and shut question which can be determined on the face of the legal complaint against the official. Only the President has relatively broad kinds of activities covered and his saying he is immune doesn't mean that a judge trying a case will agree with him. If he's murdering his wife, no judge will believe that he's acting in his official capacity to do so. Other government officials generally have only "qualified immunity" which means that they have liability if they intentionally violate clearly established law, which basically means that there is a binding judicial precedent governing the facts and circumstances at issue.
First of all, the wording in your question hints at the UK deliberately launching a missile (even if it is a test one) towards the USA. Nothing in the news piece you link to support that supposition, the general idea is a missile that was launched towards the Atlantic Ocean that steered off route. From your link: The treaty recognizes five states as nuclear-weapon states. The NPT limits other states from researching (including testing) nuclear weapons and/or delivery vehicles. In exchange, they get access to nuclear technology for civilian purposes. Treaty preambles are general, introductory texts that explain the intent of the treaty. They are not binding, and the language clearly shows it (Hint: It states "Desiring to", "Recalling to". Binding agreements use "Shall", "Shall not", "May" or "May not", and are more specific about what are the restrictions). As stated above, the test was not "in North-America". It was from international waters "towards Africa", probably to be sunk before it reached land1. There is no notion anywhere that there was an intention of violating the airspace of any country. Certainly, the UK would be responsable if one of their missiles test fails and the missile ends causing damages, and the USA can protest any violation of its airspace, even if unintentional. But it is not "a test of ballistic missiles in North America", and certainly the USA has no more rights outside its territorial waters than, say, Gambia does. The only restriction would be the internationally stablished procedures for testing missiles, which are setup to avoid any kind of issues (the test scheduled date and path is published2 with time enough for third parties to take notice). So yes, it is business as usual. 1Idea: African countries are countries, too, and they have the same right as the USA for their airspace not to be violated by the military from other countries. 2Both to allow for air traffic to avoid dangerous areas, and to ensure that anybody detecting the launch does not think that it is an attack.
Because the nations that made the list (which was modified at the time of the SCOTUS hearing) were selected based on their ability to provide the US with documentation for vetting of immigrants (or rather their lack of an ability), not religion, and the courts give the legislature (Congress) and the executive branch (President) wide discretion when matters of security are involved as they are related to foreign relations where the Judiciary have very limited powers. The specifics of the law which the Executive order modifies do not limit the President beyond a bona fide reason for which the selection was made. The court also ruled that the document contains no mention of any religion specifically or any matters pertaining to religion, and that several nations on the list have no Muslim Majority (they cite 2, but I am only aware of Venezuela being on the list). Additionally, the nation of Chad was removed from the list after their standards were brought up to scratch. In the original opinion, they did say that the campaign remarks were considered in that they pointed to the plaintiff's standing in the case (you need to show a potential harm is inflicted on you by the law in order to get a court case. Or in other words, I cannot ask the court to hear a case on rights of a vampire, because I am not a vampire) but found that the request to probe for malice in the minds of the President and his staff was not an area they could tread as there was a good reason for the law and several prominent Muslim Majority nations were not included. Basically, if the government could show that the order was made by some objective standards that neither favored nor disfavored a religion, then it is not a violation of the first amendment. For five of the justices, the government satisfied this requirement.* *Note, I am still reading through the ruling... my PDF of it keeps crashing and I lose my place.
To start, for this hypothetical to happen, a whole bunch of decisions contrary to sanity have to happen: The Vice President and President Pro Tempore do not invoke the 25th Amendment to temporarily remove the President from office Congress does not issue Articles of Impeachment The President does not pardon himself The District Attorney decides to prosecute the sitting President rather than waiting for his term to be over There are probably more I'm missing. With that out of the way, in theory there's no law that says a President cannot serve while in prison, and simply being a felon does not disqualify him from the Presidency. The judge might order that while he was still serving as President, he serve his time under house arrest - he'd constantly be surrounded by police officers, so it would be pretty difficult for him to run, and it would keep him as as able as possible to keep performing the official functions of the office. The judge could also just defer his sentence. Putting him in regular prison would have serious national security implications, both in terms of protecting his person and in allowing him to effectively serve as Commander-in-Chief, so the government could probably make a compelling case against putting a sitting President in prison. According to this Senate Report, the President will also continue to receive Secret Service protection once he leaves office, so long as he is not removed by Impeachment. There doesn't seem to be a provision against that protection if the President is in prison, so the Secret Service would be obliged to find a way to protect him while he is in prison. Most likely this would mean he would be put in an isolated prison wing, possibly with Secret Service protecting his section.
The question has no definitive resolution other than the authorities cited and some other related authorities such as the protocol rules of the Secretary of State for diplomatic purposes and the Presidential succession statute. It has never been litigated any reasonable interpretations of the the constitution and relevant law could be argued. There is also some case law under the appointments clause regarding which departments count as principal departments. There is a broad consensus regarding the existence of 15 principal departments of the United States government and which departments those 15 departments are in practice. I would say that the majority view is that the highest ranking person in each department is the principal officer of that department (which is provided for by statute in the event of vacancies) but there is also an argument that only the Congressional ratified and Presidentially nominated Secretary of a department (and the Attorney General in the Justice Department similarly appointed) count. In the event of a dispute, either Congress or a court could resolve the issue depending upon how the issues ended up being presented for a decision. If asked, the White House Counsel would render a formal opinion that would be binding upon all members of the Executive Branch. Triller novel writer Tom Clancy has explored some of the scenarios as have other writers in the same genre, but since the 25th Amendment has never been invoked in this manner, there is no definitive answer or even a non-judicial precedent to provide us with guidance on the question.