In dissent from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to grant presidents some immunity from criminal prosecution, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked whether a president would really be immune if he used his military authority to assassinate a political rival, or took a bribe for exercising his pardon power. (All the justices used the male gender.) Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson similarly asked whether immunity would apply if a president exercised his removal power by poisoning the attorney general to death.

All three questions invoked uses of powers given to the president in the Constitution, so-called “core” authority, for which a five-justice majority announced a broad “absolute” immunity. (Justice Amy Coney Barrett, former President Donald Trump’s third appointee, disagreed and said that a president’s protection from prosecution should be “narrow.”)