Praesides legibus soluti sint

The Court could have simply summarized its position yesterday by stating, Praesides legibus soluti sint.  If we could revive the old Commentators and ask them to make sense of the Presidential immunity with respect to criminal law, that is probably how they might state it.  

Some of the reasoning in support of this novel doctrine of 'absolute immunity' in the core executive functions of the Presidency, while new to the Federal judiciary, is very old, and their origins can be located in earlier sources - most notably in the medieval Decretalists of canon law.  Originally attributed to the Pope and what canonists described as the Pope's plenitude of power, the potestas absolvendi, the newest beneficiary of this exemption from the ordinary force of the laws is now the President of the United States.

What I'll be interested in seeing is how 'absolute' is treated in this body of jurisprudence.  'Absolute power' is a power of release, exemplified by the priestly (and papal) power of absolution.  To have absolute power is the power to absolve and release - whether from the bonds of sin or debt, or in this case, from the bonds of law.  It is, thus, more than just about being 'above the law' or 'outside the perimeter' of a constitutionally defined function.  

This is how Bodin chose to craft his theory of absolute power.  It remains to be seen how the Federal judiciary toys with this new notion of absolute immunity and if it will mutate into such a concept.