It was totally an “arc of liberal universe is long but..” talk

Me too, but there is a range of bad things, which are not at all speculative (as you “hypo” is so far), many of which have been treated as normal. That doesn’t make this less bad. It just raises the familiar problems of distinguishing and limiting as well as selecting what to care about when.

But the point is that the al-Awlaki killing etc. never even reach the courts, so no defenses or immunities even necessary, at least so far.

Oh, yes, beyond for sure, but partly by revealing the foreign affairs exceptionalism of prior debate—no rule of law long treated as completely normal tolerable for presidents there, even when it came to killing fellow citizens (not just fellow humans).

Serious q: Do you think there should be a public authority exception to relevant statutes (e.g., federal murder statute) in case of targeted killing of US citizens? The DoJ has already signed off on that. Because then the main difference in your hypo is who counts as a political rival?

What if law interpretation is law revision, so courts are inevitably political, which is we would should give them up? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Fight Club

Another possibility is that the description isn’t actually, you know, true

Opportunity cost?

Yeah, I think that's about right, with the added wrinkle that disclaiming power is one of the rhetorical strategies the courts use most often to justify claiming more power for themselves.