argument essay main points

25 Thesis Paragraph Examples for Different Essay Types

Looking for thesis paragraph examples to get your essay or dissertation off to the right start? Look no further. In this guide, we present a comprehensive overview of the elements that make a thesis paragraph effective together with some insights into what not to include.

Let’s talk about something that’s both the gatekeeper and the showstopper of your writing game: the thesis paragraph. You know, that chunk of text right at the beginning of your essay that’s supposed to grab your reader’s attention, set the stage, and declare, “Hey, I’ve got something important to say”? Yeah, that one.

Despite it’s importance, the thesis paragraph is an area of concern our essay editors frequently encounter when editing theses, dissertations, and essays.

But here’s the deal: for many of us, nailing the thesis paragraph feels like trying to hit a bullseye blindfolded. It’s tough, it’s daunting, and heck, it’s downright frustrating at times.

Fortunately, this article is here to clear up all the confusion. We’ll show you exactly what you need to do to craft effective thesis paragraphs and present some specific examples that can guide your writing.

Basic Structure of a Thesis Paragraph

So, let’s break down what makes up a thesis paragraph.

• Topic or subject : Every thesis paragraph needs a star, a main topic or subject that it’s all about. This is what gives your writing direction and helps the reader understand your purpose.
• Assertion or claim : This is your bold statement, your “take a stance or go home” moment. This is where you declare what you’re arguing or trying to prove in no uncertain terms.
• Supporting points or arguments : This aspect of your thesis paragraph backs up your assertion with facts, analysis and data.

Now, let’s discuss why it’s crucial to make your thesis statement as clear and specific as possible.

Let’s say you’re giving someone directions. You don’t want to confuse them with vague instructions; you want to point them in the right direction straight away. That’s the same with your thesis – clarity means your reader knows exactly what you’re arguing, without any guesswork.

Specificity is key too. Instead of saying you want “a burger” in a restaurant, you specify if you want it with cheese, without onions, and so on. Similarly, your thesis paragraph should be specific about what you’re arguing or proving. It should leave no room for ambiguity and ensure your reader knows precisely what to expect from your essay or paper.

If you’re struggling to create a compelling thesis statement, check out our thesis statement generator .

Thesis Paragraph Example for an Argumentative Essay

Let’s take a look at our first example: an argumentative essay.

Imagine the topic is about the impact of social media on mental health. It’s a hot-button issue in today’s digital age, with opinions flying left and right about whether social media is a boon or a bane for our well-being.

Thesis paragraph example with a clear assertion and supporting arguments

Now, here’s a sample thesis paragraph for this argumentative essay:

In today’s hyperconnected world, social media platforms wield unprecedented influence over our lives. While proponents argue that they foster connectivity and community, a closer examination reveals a darker truth: the detrimental effects of excessive social media usage on mental health cannot be ignored. By perpetuating unrealistic standards, fostering comparison, and promoting addictive behaviors, social media platforms contribute significantly to the decline in mental well-being among users.

This thesis paragraph makes a bold assertion: that social media negatively impacts mental health. It’s not wishy-washy; it takes a clear stance. Then, it lays out three supporting arguments: unrealistic standards, comparison, and addiction. These points will form the backbone of the essay, providing evidence and analysis to back up the central claim.

With this thesis paragraph, the reader knows exactly what to expect from the essay. They’re going to read about the negative aspects of social media, explore how it creates unrealistic standards, fuels comparison, and hooks us in with addictive features. Each body paragraph will focus on one of these aspects, providing evidence and analysis to support the overarching argument. In essence, the thesis sets the stage for a comprehensive exploration of the topic and provides a blueprint for the essay that follows.

For ideas about basic thesis statements, take a look at our guide to thesis statement examples .

Thesis Paragraph Example for a Literary Analysis Essay

Let’s shift gears to our next example: a literary analysis. For this sample thesis paragraph, imagine we’re presenting an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” This timeless classic offers a rich tapestry of themes, characters, and symbols ripe for exploration.

Thesis paragraph example focusing on the main interpretation or analysis

Here’s a sample thesis paragraph honing in on a particular aspect of “The Great Gatsby”:

In ‘The Great Gatsby,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald employs the motif of the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock to symbolize Gatsby’s unattainable American Dream. Through Gatsby’s relentless pursuit of wealth and status to win back Daisy’s affection, Fitzgerald illuminates the elusive nature of the American Dream and the disillusionment that accompanies its pursuit. The green light, a beacon of hope and longing, ultimately serves as a poignant reminder of Gatsby’s futile quest for a past that can never be recaptured.

This thesis paragraph encapsulates a central interpretation of the novel: that the green light symbolizes Gatsby’s unattainable dream. It sets the stage for an exploration of the text, focusing on how this motif is woven throughout the narrative and what it signifies in the broader context of the American Dream.

Guided by this thesis, our analysis of “The Great Gatsby” takes on a focused trajectory. We’ll examine instances of the green light’s appearance, dissecting its symbolic significance and how it evolves over the course of the novel. By grounding our analysis in this central thesis, we gain clarity and direction, allowing us to uncover layers of meaning and nuance in Fitzgerald’s masterful work. In essence, the thesis serves as our compass, guiding us through the labyrinth of “The Great Gatsby” and illuminating its deeper truths along the way.

Thesis Paragraph Example for a Research Paper

Now, let’s take a look at our final example: a research paper. For this sample, consider a study examining the impact of climate change on global food security. Given the far-reaching consequences of environmental degradation on our ability to feed a growing population, this is a pressing issue that demands attention.

Thesis paragraph example presenting the main research question or hypothesis

Here’s a sample thesis paragraph outlining the main research question or hypothesis:

In this study, we seek to investigate the multifaceted relationship between climate change and global food security. Specifically, we hypothesize that rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events associated with climate change will exacerbate food insecurity by disrupting agricultural production, compromising food access, and increasing price volatility. By analyzing empirical data and employing predictive modeling techniques, we aim to shed light on the complex interplay between climate dynamics and food security outcomes, informing targeted interventions and policy responses to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on global food systems.

This thesis paragraph articulates the central research question or hypothesis: how climate change affects global food security. It lays out the variables of interest – rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events – and proposes a hypothesis about their impact on agricultural production, food access, and price volatility.

This thesis clearly tells the reader that we’re going to embark on a systematic investigation, gathering data, conducting analyses, and interpreting findings through the lens of our central hypothesis. Each section of the paper – from literature review to methodology to results and discussion – will be structured to address specific aspects of the research question, providing a comprehensive examination of the topic at hand. In essence, the thesis not only directs the research process but also shapes the organization and flow of the paper, ensuring coherence and rigor in our research into climate change and global food security.

Looking for specific ideas on what to study? Try our research question generator for inspiration.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Here are some traps to avoid when writing your thesis statement:

• A. Lack of specificity or clarity : Picture a foggy road without any signposts. That’s what a thesis paragraph lacking specificity or clarity feels like for your reader. Avoid vague assertions or ambiguous language that leaves your audience scratching their heads, unsure of your intended direction.
• B. Failure to address the complexity of the topic : Don’t oversimplify or gloss over the intricacies of your topic. Your thesis should acknowledge and engage with the complexity of the subject matter, demonstrating a nuanced understanding that goes beyond surface-level analysis.
• C. Overly broad or vague assertions : Beware of making grandiose claims that lack substance or relevance. A thesis paragraph should be focused and precise, honing in on a specific aspect of the topic and presenting a clear argument or perspective.
• D. Inconsistency between thesis and supporting arguments : Your supporting arguments should seamlessly align with and reinforce your thesis statement. Avoid introducing tangential or contradictory points that detract from the coherence and persuasiveness of your overall argument.
• E. Ignoring counterarguments or opposing viewpoints : Don’t sweep inconvenient truths under the rug. Acknowledge and address counterarguments or opposing viewpoints relevant to your thesis, demonstrating a willingness to engage with alternative perspectives and strengthen your own argument in the process.
• F. Failing to revise and refine : Crafting a compelling thesis paragraph is an iterative process that requires revision and refinement. Don’t settle for your first draft; take the time to revisit and revise your thesis statement, honing it until it shines with clarity, specificity, and persuasiveness.

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Hey guys, I'm going to be taking the AP World History exam soon and I'm a little stressed about the DBQ section. Can someone please explain the format and structure of the DBQ? And any tips on how to prepare for this part of the exam would be awesome. Thanks a bunch!

Hey there! No worries, the AP World History DBQ section can seem daunting at first, but with a better understanding of the format and some practice, you'll be able to tackle it with confidence.

The AP World History DBQ (Document-Based Question) consists of a series of documents, usually 6-7, that focus on a particular historical period or issue. You'll have 60 minutes to write an essay based on these documents, your historical knowledge, and the provided prompt. You'll also be asked to use a minimum of four documents to support your argument.

Here's a suggested structure for your DBQ essay:

1. Introduction (1-2 paragraphs):

- Start with a contextualization paragraph, explaining the broader historical context and setting the stage for your argument.

- Include a clear, concise thesis statement that outlines your argument and directly addresses the prompt.

2. Body paragraphs (2-4 paragraphs):

- Keep each paragraph focused on a single argument or idea, and explicitly connect it to your thesis.

- Use specific evidence from the documents and cite them properly (e.g., "According to Document 2, ...").

- Incorporate outside knowledge that supports your argument and shows a deeper understanding of the topic.

- Analyze the point of view, purpose, historical context, and/or audience of at least 3 documents to address "source perspective analysis" points.

3. Conclusion (1 paragraph):

- Restate your thesis in different words.

- Briefly summarize your main points and demonstrate how they support your argument.

- End with a broader statement connecting your essay to a larger historical context or significance.

To prepare for the DBQ:

1. Review key historical themes, events, and time periods in AP World History syllabus.

2. Practice analyzing documents and connecting them to historical context and themes.

3. Study examples of previous DBQ essay prompts, documents, and high-scoring student responses.

4. Write practice DBQ essays under timed conditions, focusing on structure, argument, use of documents, and source perspective analysis.

Remember that the graders follow the official AP rubric, so pay attention to the scoring guidelines and make sure you address all necessary components. With diligent practice and a solid understanding of the format, you'll be well-equipped to handle the DBQ section! Good luck!

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How to Write a Conclusion to an Essay - Year 7 PDF Download

Introduction to writing a conclusion.

• A conclusion serves as the final impression conveyed to the reader at the culmination of an essay. It is crucial as it gives closure and ensures the essay is complete and coherent.
• It is imperative for a conclusion to circle back to the initial essay question and succinctly recapitulate the key points, thereby consolidating all ideas to form a cohesive and impactful ending.
• Typically concise, a conclusion may also incorporate a closing reflection or thought that underscores the significance of the essay's central theme.

Video about how to reflect on your main points in a conclusion

Reflecting on the argument.

• Before crafting your conclusion, it is beneficial to revisit the concepts explored in your essay. Re-examining your introduction can help you grasp the insights gained and the paths explored during the writing process.
• Your conclusion serves as a platform to encapsulate your deeper understanding of the literary text and the essay's subject matter.

Drawing your essay to a close

• Ensure your conclusion stays connected to the essay's main question, title, or topic by incorporating key terms from the prompt.
• For instance, if the essay prompt asks, "Why is Jack an important character in the novel Lord of the Flies?"

In conclusion, Jack's significance in the novel stems from his embodiment of the darker aspects of human nature, particularly violence and brutality.

Summarise the main points

Concluding your essay involves more than just restating earlier arguments; it entails summarizing key concepts to reinforce your stance.

To conclude, Jack's portrayal in the novel symbolizes the inherent savagery and thirst for power in humanity. His transformation into a feared and influential figure among the stranded boys serves as a stark contrast to Ralph's leadership style.

Character of Jack in the Novel

• Jack symbolizes violence and savagery in the story.
• His pursuit of power and increasing bloodlust showcase the darker aspects of human nature.
• He is a charismatic figure who instills fear in the other boys on the island.
• Jack serves as a stark contrast to the character of Ralph.

Significance of Jack's Character

• Jack's character embodies the primal instincts and brutality inherent in humanity.
• His leadership style based on fear and dominance highlights the fragility of societal order.

Reflection on Jack's Role

• Jack's reign of terror ends with the arrival of the British Naval Officer, suggesting a glimmer of hope for positive change.
• This conclusion prompts readers to contemplate the capacity for transformation and redemption in individuals.

Which links back to the question?

• Linking back to the initial query is vital for maintaining coherence in your response.

Useful sentence starters

• When concluding an essay, consider utilizing these introductory phrases:
• In conclusion...
• In summary...

What to avoid

• It is advisable to steer clear of the following:
• Avoid introducing new concepts or points in your conclusion.
• Avoid prolonging your conclusion excessively.
• Avoid excessive repetition.
• Conclusions play a crucial role in tying up your arguments cohesively.
• Your conclusion offers a final opportunity to make a lasting impression on your audience.

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Comment rédiger un essai persuasif ?

• Équipe éditoriale de Smodin

À première vue, rédiger un essai convaincant peut ressembler à une promenade dans le parc. Vous choisissez une position, rassemblez des preuves à l’appui et la présentez à votre public. est-ce vraiment si simple?

Comme tout étudiant ou enseignant le sait, tous les essais persuasifs ne correspondent pas à un A. Si vous avez déjà soumis votre travail en espérant une excellente note uniquement pour recevoir un retour indiquant que votre argument était erroné ou peu convaincant, vous connaissez la frustration que cela peut entraîner.

La vérité est que l’élaboration d’un argument convaincant nécessite plus que la simple présentation de faits. Vous devez faire appel à la logique de vos lecteurs et émotions . Votre récit doit avoir du sens, être agréable à lire et aussi être unique.

Aujourd'hui, nous aborderons six façons simples de propulser vos essais persuasifs au niveau supérieur afin que vous puissiez ramener à la maison tous note que vous désirez.

1. Ne précipitez pas le processus

Saviez-vous que tous les mots du contenu publié subit de multiples révisions ? Cela est vrai pour les articles, les blogs, les livres, les périodiques et les essais.

Dans un cadre universitaire, de nombreux étudiants supposent que les seules brouillons qui parviennent à la pile de notation comptent, mais ce n'est pas le cas.

Une bonne écriture nécessite de nombreuses révisions pour bien faire les choses. Si vous souhaitez que votre essai convaincant se démarque des autres, il est toujours bon de rédiger au moins un brouillon avant de le soumettre pour notation.

Heureusement, il n'a jamais été aussi simple de générer un essai de haute qualité. Des outils comme L'auteur d'essais de Smodin peut vous aider à développer du contenu avec seulement quelques mots courts.

Contrairement à de nombreux autres outils d'IA, Smodin vous donne un contrôle total sur le processus. Vous serez en mesure de créer un essai engageant avec un flux clair qui sera un plaisir à lire pour votre professeur ou votre professeur.

Les algorithmes basés sur l'IA du logiciel génèrent également des références précises à partir de Google Scholar et d'autres ressources sélectionnées.

Au lieu de vous asseoir à votre bureau et de vous arracher les cheveux par frustration, laissez Smodin vous guider tout au long du processus de rédaction d'un essai en toute confiance.

2. Connaître son auditoire

Un aspect crucial mais souvent sous-estimé de la rédaction d’un essai est la compréhension de votre public. Cela signifie savoir qui sont vos lecteurs et adapter votre écriture pour qu'elle résonne avec leurs émotions fondamentales.

Par exemple, si vous êtes un étudiant qui rédige un essai pour un cours d’histoire, votre public est simple : c’est votre professeur.

De même, supposons que vous rédigiez un essai pour une revue ou une publication scientifique. Dans ce cas, votre public comprendra les personnes qui approuvent la publication de l’essai et les lecteurs qui le verront éventuellement une fois partagé publiquement.

De nombreuses personnes échouent dans la rédaction d’essais simplement parce qu’elles n’étudient pas leur public cible. 

Vous devez vous rappeler que vos lecteurs sont des êtres humains et que tous les êtres humains ont certains préjugés et préférences.

Comprendre ces préjugés et préférences peut vous aider à rédiger votre essai d'une manière qui fait directement appel aux intérêts et aux convictions de votre lecteur.

Do peut vous pouvez étudier votre public. Entrez dans leur tête et découvrez comment ils pensent, puis utilisez ces connaissances pour faire appel à leurs émotions fondamentales.

Les rédacteurs professionnels gagnent beaucoup d’argent pour comprendre les émotions de leurs lecteurs lorsqu’ils vendent des biens ou des services. Vous ne « vendez » peut-être rien au sens monétaire, mais vous vendez vos écrits pour obtenir le résultat souhaité.

Pour devenir un rédacteur d’essais à succès, commencez à penser comme un vendeur. Qu’est-ce qui impressionnerait votre lecteur ? Que pouvez-vous écrire sur lequel personne d’autre n’écrit ?

Une fois que vous avez compris cela, vous avez déjà fait la moitié du travail.

3. Comprendre les modes de persuasion

Maintenant que vous comprenez parfaitement votre public, la prochaine étape consiste à élaborer un argument convaincant. Ici, prenez un moment pour comprendre les trois formes de raisonnement.

L'éthos fait référence à l'établissement de votre crédibilité ou de votre caractère en tant qu'écrivain. Pour persuader efficacement votre public, le(s) lecteur(s) doivent vous considérer comme digne de confiance et bien informé sur votre sujet.

Démontrer une solide compréhension du sujet et que vous avez consacré du temps et des efforts pour le maîtriser.

Pathos, en revanche, fait appel aux émotions de vos lecteurs. L’objectif est de faire ressentir quelque chose à vos lecteurs, en influençant leur point de vue ou leur processus de prise de décision.

Pour les étudiants, cela peut impliquer d'exploiter les émotions sous-jacentes du sujet ou de faire appel à certains préjugés pour impliquer l'enseignant ou le professeur.

Cela signifie structurer votre essai d'une manière qui a un sens logique et utiliser des statistiques, des preuves factuelles et un raisonnement solide pour étayer vos affirmations. Tous les arguments doivent reposer sur une base solide et rationnelle.

Pour rédiger efficacement un essai convaincant, vous must combinez l'éthos, le pathos et les logos.

N'oubliez pas que les enseignants, les professeurs, les éditeurs et les membres des comités de révision ont des dizaines, voire des centaines d'essais à lire. Vous devez élaborer un argument complet qui touche tous les boutons pour vous démarquer.

Si vous êtes désespéré d'obtenir un A pour votre prochain essai, envisagez d'utiliser Le niveleur d'IA de Smodin pour obtenir des commentaires personnalisés sur votre essai ou article.

De cette façon, vous pouvez prendre votre essai et le réviser avant de le soumettre. Et c'est sans doute mieux que de supplier un enseignant ou un professeur de vous accorder une réécriture.

4. Abordez directement les arguments opposés

C'est une chose de choisir une position et de s'y tenir ; c'en est une autre d'ignorer complètement les points de vue opposés.

Lorsque vous élaborez un argument convaincant, vous devez, à un moment donné, aborder les opinions et points de vue dissidents. Ne pas le faire ne fera qu’affaiblir votre propre argument. Voici quelques conseils pour intégrer cela efficacement dans votre écriture.

Connaître les contre-arguments

Vous ne pouvez aborder les arguments opposés que si vous les recherchez au préalable. Étudiez les contre-arguments d’un sujet tout autant que vous étudiez votre position.

Lorsque vous discutez d’arguments opposés, vous devez être objectif et impartial. Si vous déformez ou simplifiez à l’excès ces choses, vous minerez votre crédibilité et affaiblirez votre essai.

Utiliser des techniques de réfutation

Une fois que vous avez abordé le point de vue opposé, vous devez le réfuter en utilisant un raisonnement logique, des preuves et d'autres techniques de persuasion. (Pensez comme un avocat.) Voici quelques stratégies courantes.

• Techniques fondées sur des preuves : Utilisez simplement des données ou des études plus récentes pour contester la validité de l’argument opposé.
• Techniques logiques : Aucun argument n'est à 100% (même le vôtre). Identifiez les erreurs de l’argument opposé et expliquez pourquoi la conclusion est erronée.
• Techniques comparatives : Enfin, comparez directement votre thèse et expliquez pourquoi votre point de vue est plus solide. Si cela est fait correctement, cela peut être le point le plus validant de votre essai.

Reliez TOUT à votre thèse

Lors de vos recherches sur un sujet, vous risquez de vous retrouver enfoui dans une pile d’arguments périphériques qui peuvent ou non être liés au sujet en question. Arrêtez-le si vous ne pouvez pas lier directement un argument ou un contre-argument à votre thèse.

N'ayez pas peur de concéder

Aussi contre-intuitif que cela puisse paraître, reconnaître la force d’un contre-argument peut renforcer votre crédibilité. Vous pouvez concéder un point sans compromettre votre position globale en montrant que votre thèse est toujours valable quelles que soient les concessions.

Bien entendu, parcourir des dizaines d’articles ou d’essais universitaires peut prendre beaucoup de temps. Pour accélérer considérablement le processus de recherche, vous pouvez utiliser Récapitulateur de texte de Smodin pour analyser de grands corps de texte et les condenser en quelque chose de plus digeste.

5. Écrivez avec votre voix et lisez toujours votre écriture à haute voix

Ne passez pas trop de temps à essayer d'utiliser des mots fantaisistes ou des phrases compliquées. Oui, la grammaire, la syntaxe et la ponctuation sont essentielles, mais votre objectif principal doit toujours être une communication claire et authentique.

Consulter occasionnellement un thésaurus n'est pas grave, mais si vous remplissez constamment votre texte avec des mots qui ne semblent pas naturels, vous nuisez probablement au message de votre essai.

Lire votre essai à voix haute est un excellent moyen de vérifier son déroulement. Si vous essayez de lire vos propres mots et que vous trébuchez dessus, il y a de fortes chances que quelque chose ne va pas.

Une bonne écriture doit passer de manière transparente d’un mot à l’autre, d’une phrase à l’autre et d’un paragraphe à l’autre.

Idéalement, vous devriez pouvoir vous asseoir sur votre essai pendant un certain temps – disons trois jours ou jusqu'à une semaine – puis y revenir lorsque votre esprit est frais.

Lisez vos mots avec un esprit clair et voyez si vous pouvez suivre la logique de votre propre argument. Si cela ne vous semble pas correct, envisagez d'utiliser Le réécrivain de l'IA de Smodin.

Cet outil peut examiner votre propre écriture et la réviser pour lui donner un son nouveau ou prendre le contenu existant et le modifier pour le rendre complètement unique.

6. Maintenez toujours l’intégrité académique

Cela va probablement sans dire, mais vous devez toujours faire de votre mieux pour maintenir l’intégrité académique de vos écrits. La dernière chose que vous souhaitez est d’être signalé pour du contenu plagié ou généré par l’IA.

Heureusement, ce sont deux domaines dans lesquels Smodin peut vous aider. Notre Détecteur de contenu IA peut facilement détecter si votre écriture contient du contenu généré par l’IA. En même temps, notre Vérificateur de plagiat peut garantir que votre essai ne contient aucun texte direct provenant d’articles universitaires publiés.

Ensemble, l'IA de Smodin offre un ensemble d'outils complet qui donne aux étudiants et aux universitaires tout ce dont ils ont besoin pour rédiger un essai convaincant.

Essayez Smodin gratuitement dès aujourd'hui pour voir si c'est ce dont vous avez besoin pour améliorer votre écriture.

Q : Comment choisir une position ferme pour mon essai persuasif ?

Sélectionnez un sujet qui vous passionne ET pour lequel vous pouvez trouver de nombreuses preuves à l’appui. Vous devez également choisir un sujet qui permet d’argumenter clairement contre la partie adverse.

Q : Quels sont les meilleurs endroits pour trouver des preuves à l’appui de mon essai ?

Les revues savantes, les organes de presse ou les livres d'auteurs universitaires respectés et bien connus sont toujours un bon point de départ. Vous pouvez utiliser des outils tels que Google Scholar ou JSTOR pour identifier les articles et données académiquement acceptés.

Q : Comment puis-je être sûr que mon essai persuasif est facile à lire ?

Vous souhaitez toujours utiliser un style d’écriture clair et engageant. Idéalement, vous devriez écrire d'une manière unique qui vous aide à vous démarquer des autres essais. Inclure des faits ou des anecdotes intéressants de manière logique et facile à suivre et utiliser une structure de phrase et un vocabulaire variés peut également améliorer la lisibilité. Ne le forcez pas.

Q : Comment puis-je renforcer ma réfutation des arguments opposés ?

Comprendre les contre-arguments est la première étape pour les surmonter. Lorsque vous répondez à un argument avec des preuves bien documentées qui présentent une meilleure solution ou perspective, vous solidifiez votre cas et le rendez plus convaincant et crédible pour votre (vos) lecteur(s).

Q : Et si je souhaite modifier ma thèse après avoir commencé à rédiger ?

Si vous trouvez de meilleures preuves pour un argument au cours de vos recherches, réviser votre thèse à mi-chemin du processus de rédaction est parfaitement acceptable. Cette adaptabilité ne fera que renforcer votre écriture à long terme.

Q : Combien de temps dois-je consacrer à la recherche ?

En règle générale, passez autant de temps que nécessaire à comprendre le sujet sans perdre trop de temps. Il est courant de perdre des heures ou des jours en recherches sans écrire un seul mot. Encore une fois, les outils d'IA comme Smodin peuvent vous aider dans les tâches procédurales et libérer votre esprit pour des tâches plus passionnantes.

Q : Quelle est la meilleure façon de conclure un essai convaincant ?

Une conclusion solide doit être approfondie sans être trop verbeuse. Vous souhaitez reformuler votre thèse à la lumière des arguments que vous avez présentés et résumer les principaux points de votre essai. Pensez à laisser un appel à l'action ou une question suscitant la réflexion dans le dernier paragraphe qui laissera une impression durable au lecteur.

Points clés à retenir

Rédiger un essai convaincant et gagnant implique bien plus que la simple présentation d’arguments et de faits. Vous devez élaborer avec soin un récit qui fait appel à la logique, aux émotions et aux valeurs éthiques de votre lecteur.

En exploitant des outils d'IA tels que Smodin AI, vous pouvez définir des stratégies, effectuer des recherches et accélérer le processus d'écriture avec seulement quelques invites simples et quelques minutes de votre temps.

Vous devez faire un effort global pour vous assurer que vos essais sont rationalisés, puissants et très attrayants. Ce type d'écriture trouvera un écho auprès des lecteurs universitaires et vous garantira d'obtenir la note souhaitée.

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Justices Seem Ready to Limit the 2020 Election Case Against Trump

Such a ruling in the case, on whether the former president is immune from prosecution, would probably send it back to a lower court and could delay any trial until after the November election.

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Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer

Charlie Savage reported from Washington, and Alan Feuer from New York.

Here are four takeaways from the Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s claim to immunity.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday about Donald J. Trump’s claim that the federal charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election must be thrown out because he is immune from being prosecuted for any official act he took as president.

Here are some takeaways.

Several justices seemed to want to define some level of official act as immune.

Although Mr. Trump’s claim of near-absolute immunity was seen as a long shot intended primarily to slow the proceedings, several members of the Republican-appointed majority seemed to indicate that some immunity was needed. Some of them expressed worry about the long-term consequences of leaving future former presidents open to prosecution for their official actions.

Among others, Justice Brett Kavanaugh compared the threat of prosecution for official acts to how a series of presidents were “hampered” by independent counsel investigations, criticizing a 1984 ruling that upheld a now-defunct law creating such prosecutors as one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. criticized an appeals court ruling rejecting immunity for Mr. Trump, saying he was concerned that it “did not get into a focused consideration of what acts we are talking about or what documents are talking about.”

“It’s a serious constitutional question whether a statute can be applied to the president’s official acts. So wouldn’t you always interpret the statute not to apply to the president, even under your formulation, unless Congress had spoken with some clarity?” “I don’t think across the board that as serious constitutional question exists on applying any criminal statute to the president.” “The problem is the vague statute — obstruction and 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States can be used against a lot of presidential activities historically with a creative prosecutor who wants to go after a president.” “I think that the question about the risk is very serious. And obviously it is a question that this court has to evaluate. For the executive branch, our view is that there is a balanced protection that better serves the interests of the Constitution that incorporates both accountability and protection for the president.”

The Democrat-appointed justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — asked questions indicating greater concern about opening the door for presidents to commit official crimes with impunity.

“This is what you’re asking us to say, which is that a president is entitled not to make a mistake — but more than that, a president is entitled for total personal gain to use the trappings of his office. That’s what you’re trying to get us to hold — without facing criminal liability.” “Your honor, I would say three things in response to that. First, the doctrine that immunity does not turn on the allegedly improper motivation or purpose is something that this court has reaffirmed in at least nine or 10 —” “That’s absolute immunity. But qualified immunity does say that whatever act you take has to be within what a reasonable person would do. I’m having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe, and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that.”

The arguments signaled further delay and complications for a Trump trial.

If the Supreme Court does place limits on the ability of prosecutors to charge Mr. Trump over his official actions, it could alter the shape of his trial.

A decision to send all or part of the case back to the lower courts could further slow progress toward a trial, increasing the odds that it does not start before Election Day.

Of the matters listed in the indictment, some — like working with private lawyers to gin up slates of fraudulent electors — seem like the private actions of a candidate. Others — like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do things — seem more like official acts he took in his role as president.

At one point, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that prosecutors could simply drop Mr. Trump’s arguably official actions from their case and proceed to a swift trial focused only on his private actions. And D. John Sauer, the lawyer for Mr. Trump, told the court that no evidence of Mr. Trump’s official actions should be allowed into the trial.

But Michael R. Dreeben, a Justice Department lawyer arguing on behalf of the special counsel’s office, said the indictment laid out an “integrated conspiracy” in which Mr. Trump took the official actions to bolster the chances that his other efforts to overturn the election would succeed.

He argued that even if the court holds that Mr. Trump has immunity from liability for his official actions, prosecutors should still be allowed to present evidence about them to the jury because the actions are relevant to assessing his larger knowledge and intentions — just as speech that is protected by the First Amendment can still be used as evidence in a conspiracy case.

The hearing revolved around two very different ways of looking at the issue.

Looming over the hearing was a sweeping moral question: What effect might executive immunity have on the future of American politics?

Not surprisingly, the two sides saw things very differently.

Mr. Sauer claimed that without immunity, all presidents would be paralyzed by the knowledge that once they were out of office, they could face an onslaught of charges from their rivals based on the tough calls they had to make while in power. He pictured a dystopian world of ceaseless tit-for-tat political prosecutions that would destroy the “presidency as we know it.”

If a president can be charged, put on trial and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office, that looming threat will distort the president’s decision-making precisely when bold and fearless action is most needed. Every current president will face de facto blackmail and extortion by his political rivals while he is still in office. The implications of the court’s decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case. Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for obstructing an official proceeding or allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq? Could President Obama be charged with murder for killing U.S. citizens abroad by drone strike? Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies? The answer to all these questions is no.

Envisioning the opposite scenario, Mr. Dreeben worried that any form of blanket immunity would place presidents entirely outside of the rule of law and encourage them to commit crimes, including “bribery, treason, sedition, even murder,” with impunity.

“The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong,” he said.

This court has never recognized absolute criminal immunity for any public official. Petitioner, however, claims that a former president has permanent criminal immunity for his official acts unless he was first impeached and convicted. His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability; for bribery, treason, sedition, murder and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power. Such presidential immunity has no foundation in the Constitution. The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong.

Both sides found advocates for their positions on the court.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. clearly seemed worried that without some form of criminal immunity, former presidents would be vulnerable to partisan warfare as their successors used the courts to go after them once they were out of office. And that, he added, could lead to endless cycles of retribution that would be a risk to “stable, democratic society.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared more concerned that if presidents were in fact shielded by immunity, they would be unbounded by the law and could turn the Oval Office into what she described as “the seat of criminality.”

If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country? If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office? It’s right now the fact that we’re having this debate, because O.L.C. has said that presidents might be prosecuted. Presidents from the beginning of time have understood that that’s a possibility. That might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center that I’m envisioning. But once we say no criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want, I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office.

What happens next?

There did not seem to be a lot of urgency among the justices — especially the conservative ones — to ensure that the immunity question was resolved quickly. That left open the possibility that Mr. Trump could avoid being tried on charges of plotting to overturn the last election until well after voters went to the polls to decide whether to choose him as president in this election.

And if he is elected, any trial could be put off while he is in office, or he could order the charges against him dropped.

It could take some time for the court to do its own analysis of what presidential acts should qualify for the protections of immunity. And even if the justices determine that at least some of the allegations against Mr. Trump are fair game for prosecution, if they do not issue a ruling until late June or early July, it could be difficult to hold a trial before November.

That would become all but impossible if the court took a different route and sent the analysis back to the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan. If Judge Chutkan were ordered to hold further hearings on which of the indictment’s numerous allegations were official acts of Mr. Trump’s presidency and which were private acts he took as a candidate for office, the process could take months and last well into 2025.

Aishvarya Kavi

Reporting from Washington

A spectacle outside the Supreme Court for Trump’s defenders and detractors.

Just as the Supreme Court began considering on Thursday morning whether former President Donald J. Trump was entitled to absolute immunity, rap music started blaring outside the court.

The lyrics, laced with expletives, denounced Mr. Trump, and several dozen demonstrators began chanting, “Trump is not above the law!”

Mr. Trump was not in Washington on Thursday morning — in fact, he was in another courtroom , in New York. But the spectacle that pierced the relative tranquillity outside the court was typical of events that involve him: demonstrations, homemade signs, police, news media, and lots and lots of curious onlookers.

One man, Stephen Parlato, a retired mental health counselor from Boulder, Colo., held a roughly 6-foot-long sign with a blown-up photo of Mr. Trump scowling that read, “Toxic loser.” The back of the sign featured the famous painting by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge of dogs playing poker, adorned with the words, “Faith erodes … in a court with no binding ethics code.” He made the sign at FedEx, he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision to even hear the case, which has delayed Mr. Trump’s election interference trial , was “absurd,” he said.

“I’m a child of the late ’60s and early ’70s and the Vietnam War,” said Mr. Parlato, dressed in a leather jacket and cowboy hat. “I remember protesting that while in high school. But this is very different. I’m here because I’m terrified of the possibility of a second Trump presidency.”

Inside the court, Jack Smith sat to the far right of the lawyer arguing on behalf of his team of prosecutors, Michael R. Dreeben, a leading expert in criminal law who has worked for another special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump, Robert S. Mueller III.

Among those in attendance were Jane Sullivan Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, who is married to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

In an orderly line outside along the side of the court, people were calmly waiting to listen to the arguments from the court’s public gallery. More than 100 people, many of them supporters of Mr. Trump, were in line as of 8:30 a.m. Reagan Pendarvis, 19, who had been waiting there since the middle of the night, said the first person in line had gotten there more than a day before the arguments began.

Mr. Pendarvis, a sophomore at the University of California, San Diego who is living in Washington for the spring semester, was wearing a black suit and bright red bow tie. He said he had been struggling to keep warm since he took his place in line.

Mr. Pendarvis, a supporter of Mr. Trump, said he thought that the cases brought against the former president were an uneven application of the law.

“I think a lot of the cases, especially that happen for Donald Trump, don’t really happen for Democrats on the other side,” he said. “That’s just my take on it.”

David Bolls, 42, and his brother, Jonathan, 43, both of Springfield, Va., also in line for the arguments, also contended that the prosecutions against Mr. Trump were an abuse of judicial power.

“For me, I want to see an even application of justice,” David Bolls said.

For others in line, the Supreme Court’s deliberations were not the main draw. Ellen Murphy, a longtime Washington resident, was trying to sell buttons she designs, though she acknowledged that it was unlikely she would be allowed in with all of her merchandise.

Dozens of the buttons, which said, “Immunize democracy now” and “Trump is toast” over a toaster with two slices of bread, were pinned to a green apron she was wearing.

“We lose our democracy,” Ms. Murphy said, “if the president can do whatever he wants just because he’s president.”

Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.

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Adam Liptak

What’s next: Much will turn on how quickly the court acts.

The justices heard arguments in the immunity case at a special session, the day after what had been the last scheduled argument of its term. Arguments heard in late April almost always yield decisions near the end of the court’s term, in late June or early July.

But a ruling in early summer, even if it categorically rejected Mr. Trump’s position, would make it hard to complete his trial before the election. Should Mr. Trump win at the polls, there is every reason to think he would scuttle the prosecution.

In cases that directly affected elections — in which the mechanisms of voting were at issue — the court has sometimes acted with unusual speed.

In 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the court issued its decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush the day after the justices heard arguments.

In a recent case concerning Mr. Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s primary ballot, the justices moved more slowly, but still at a relatively brisk pace. The court granted Mr. Trump’s petition seeking review just two days after he filed it , scheduled arguments for about a month later and issued its decision in his favor about a month after that.

In United States v. Nixon, the 1974 decision that ordered President Richard M. Nixon to comply with a subpoena for audiotapes of conversations with aides in the White House, the court also moved quickly , granting the special prosecutor’s request to bypass the appeals court a week after it was filed.

The court heard arguments about five weeks later — compared with some eight weeks in Mr. Trump’s immunity case. It issued its decision 16 days after the argument , and the trial was not delayed.

Abbie VanSickle

The oral argument lasted nearly three hours, as the justices tangled with a lawyer for the former president and a Justice Department lawyer. A majority of the justices appeared skeptical of the idea of sweeping presidential immunity. However, several of them suggested an interest in drawing out what actions may be immune and what may not — a move that could delay the former president’s trial if the Supreme Court asks a lower court to revisit the issues.

Many of the justices seemed to be considering the idea that presidents should enjoy some form of protection against criminal prosecution. The devil, however, will be in the details: How should that protection extend?

And that question will have profound relevance not only for future presidents, but much more immediately for Donald Trump. The court could decide to draw those rules itself in a broad way for history. Or it could send this case back to a lower court to set the rules of what form immunity could take. If the case is sent back for further proceedings, it could have a dramatic effect on the timing of Trump’s trial, pushing it well past the election in November.

Looking back, one of the main points of discussion turned on the question of which situation would be worse: a world in which presidents, shorn of any legal protections against prosecution, were ceaselessly pursued in the courts by their rivals in a never-ending cycle of political retribution, or allowing presidents to be unbounded by criminal law and permitted to do whatever they wanted with impunity.

Charlie Savage

Sauer, Trump’s attorney, declines to offer a rebuttal. The argument is over.

If the court finds that there is some immunity for official actions, one of the most important questions will be whether prosecutors can still present evidence to the jury of Trump’s official actions (like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do certain things) as evidence that helps illuminate Trump’s knowledge and intent for his private acts as a candidate. Dreeben says the jury needs to understand the whole “integrated conspiracy” but prosecutors would accept a jury instruction in which the judge would say they cannot impose liability for the official actions but may consider them as evidence of his knowledge and intent for the other actions. That’s how courts handle protected speech that is evidence to a larger conspiracy, he notes.

Justice Barrett picks up the question of timing again. She suggests that if prosecutors want to take Trump quickly to trial, they could simply drop those parts of the indictment that seem to be his official acts as president and proceed with only those parts of the indictment that reflect Trump’s private actions taken as a candidate for office. Dreeben is not wild about that idea.

Dreeben suggests that allegations in the “private acts bucket,” as Justice Jackson just called it, would include things like the scheme to create fake electors and the way in which Trump fomented a mob of his supporters to violently attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Justice Barrett seems to signal that she is less likely to find that presidents have blanket immunity for their official acts. When Dreeben says the system needs to balance the effective functioning of the presidency and accountability for a former president under the rule of law, and the existing system does that pretty well or maybe needs a few ancillary rules but that is different from the “radical proposal” put forward by Trump’s legal team, she says: “I agree.”

Dreeben, in a balancing act that seems to acknowledge that the court is looking for some form of criminal immunity for presidents, says he is trying to do two things at once, neither of them easy. He wants to design a system to find some rules that preserve the “effective functioning of the presidency” but that still allows for “accountability” if presidents violated the law.

Kavanaugh asks Dreeben about Obama’s drone strike that killed an American citizen suspected of terrorism, Anwar al-Awlaki, which Trump’s lawyer invoked in his opening. Dreeben notes that the Office of Legal Counsel analyzed the question and found that the murder statute did not apply to presidents when they were acting under public authority, so authorizing the strike was lawful. This is the way the system can function, he said — the Justice Department analyzes laws carefully and with established principles.

Justice Kavanaugh signals that he is likely to find that presidents must have immunity for their official actions. He talks about how the threat of prosecution by independent counsels (under a law that lapsed in 1999) hampered Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton, and says a 1984 ruling upholding that structure as constitutional was one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. (Notably, Kavanaugh was a prosecutor on the staff of independent counsel Ken Starr during his investigation into President Bill Clinton, before becoming a White House lawyer under President George W. Bush.)

Dreeben tries to push back on Kavanaugh’s argument by saying that even after Watergate, even after all of the independent counsel investigations mentioned above, the legal system has survived without “having gone off on a runaway train” of actual criminal prosecutions against former presidents.

The Supreme Court rejected Bill Clinton’s claim of immunity.

In Clinton v. Jones in 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office, discounting concerns that it would distract him from his official responsibilities. Both of his appointees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, voted against him.

“The president is subject to judicial process in appropriate circumstances,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court, adding, “We have never suggested that the president, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.”

The case was in one sense harder than the one against Mr. Trump, as it involved a sitting president. In another sense, though, it was easier, as it concerned an episode said to have taken place before Mr. Clinton took office (Paula Jones, an Arkansas state employee, said Mr. Clinton had made lewd advances in a hotel room when he was governor of the state).

The case is best remembered for a prediction in Justice Stevens’s majority opinion that “it appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of petitioner’s time.” In fact, it led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.

In the same paragraph, Justice Stevens made a second prediction.

“In the more than 200-year history of the Republic, only three sitting presidents have been subjected to suits for their private actions,” he wrote. “If the past is any indicator, it seems unlikely that a deluge of such litigation will ever engulf the presidency.”

Suits against Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were dismissed, and one against President John F. Kennedy involving a car accident during his 1960 campaign was settled. The case against Mr. Clinton added a fourth.

Justice Stevens, who died in 2019, failed to anticipate the enormous volume of civil and criminal litigation in which Mr. Trump and his businesses have been named as defendants.

We are now over the two-hour mark of the Supreme Court’s arguments in the Trump immunity case. The Justice Department lawyer has continued to face skeptical questions from many of the court’s conservatives, several of whom appear particularly focused on how to draw the line between a president’s core powers and non-core powers. In other words, what actions by a president might be shielded from prosecution and what would not. The questioning suggests that some of the justices may favor a ruling that could lead to more lower-court proceedings, perhaps delaying the trial.

The Supreme Court’s relatively new process (coming out of Covid) of letting each justice ask questions at the end in order of seniority has an interesting consequence, as seen here. Dreeben kept wanting to say these things about government legal memos and to go into the details about the actions Trump is accused of taking, but the Republican-appointed justices kept cutting him off. It’s the turn of Kagan, a Democratic appointee, to ask any final questions she wants, and she is letting him talk on and on.

Much of the discussion this morning has swirled around the question of whether, without immunity, presidents will be hounded by their rivals with malicious charges after leaving office. Alito and other conservatives on the court seem concerned that the Trump prosecutions will open the door to endless attacks against future presidents.

The other main topic of discussion has been whether presidents enjoy some form of immunity for carrying out their official duties and, if so, how those official actions are defined. That’s an important question for the Trump election case because Trump has claimed he was acting in his role as president when, by his own account, he sought to root out fraud in the 2020 vote count. It’s also important for a different reason: the justices could send the official acts question back to a lower court to sort out, and that process could take a long time, delaying the case's trial until after this year’s election.

Justice Alito suggests that there is a risk to our stable democracy if presidents who lose close elections would not be allowed to retire in peace but could face prosecution. He has essentially flipped the situation under consideration upside down: that Trump is being prosecuted for having used fraud to remain in power after losing a close election.

A part of this exchange between Justice Alito and the Justice Department's lawyer, Dreeben, gets at a pressure point in American-style democracy and the rule of law. One of the safeguards against illegitimate prosecutions of ex-presidents, Dreeben says, is that if the Justice Department has advised the president that doing something would be lawful, the department could not later turn around and prosecute the now-former president for relying on that advice and doing that thing.

Alito points out that this creates an incentive for presidents to appoint attorneys general who will just tell them that anything they want to do would be legal. Indeed — that is a critique of the Office of Legal Counsel system, in which politically appointed lawyers decide what the law means for the executive branch.

An example: During the George W. Bush administration, memos about post-9/11 surveillance and torture were written by a politically appointed lawyer with idiosyncratically broad views of a president’s supposed power, as commander in chief, to authorize violations of surveillance and torture laws. The Justice Department later withdrew those memos as espousing a false view of the law, but held that officials who had taken action based on those memos could not be charged with crimes.

Justice Alito suggests there are not enough legal safeguards in place to protect presidents against malicious prosecution if they don’t have some form of immunity. He tells Dreeben that the grand jury process isn’t much of a protection because prosecutors, as the saying goes, can indict a ham sandwich. When Dreeben tries to argue that prosecutors sometimes don’t indict people who don’t deserve it, Alito dismissively says, “Every once in a while there’s an eclipse too.”

If you are just joining in, the justices are questioning the Justice Department lawyer, Michael Dreeben, about the government’s argument that former President Trump is not absolutely immune from prosecution on charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election. Dreeben has faced skeptical questions from several of the conservative justices, including both Justices Alito and Kavanaugh, who have suggested that the fraud conspiracy statute being used against the former president is vague. That statute is central to the government’s case against Trump.

Justice Alito now joins Justice Kavanaugh in suggesting that the fraud conspiracy statute is very vague and broadly drawn. That is bad news for the indictment brought against Trump by Jack Smith, the special counsel.

The scope and viability of this fraud statute, which is absolutely central to the Trump indictment, wasn’t on the menu of issues seemingly at play in this hearing. Kavanaugh and Alito appear to have gone out of their way to question its use in the Trump case.

Justice Sotomayor points out that under the Trump team’s theory that a criminal statute has to clearly state that it applies to the presidency for it to cover a president’s official actions, there would essentially be no accountability at all. Because only a tiny handful of laws mention the president, that means a president could act contrary to them without violating them. As a result, the Senate could not even impeach a president for violating criminal statutes, she says — because he would not be violating those laws if they don’t apply to the president.

Dreeben is under heavy fire from the court’s conservatives.

The precedent most helpful to Trump: Nixon v. Fitzgerald.

In 1982, in Nixon v. Fitzgerald , the Supreme Court ruled that former President Richard M. Nixon had absolute immunity from civil lawsuits — ones brought by private litigants seeking money — for conduct “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”

The ruling is helpful to former President Donald J. Trump, establishing as it does that immunity can be expansive, lives on after a president leaves office and extends to the very limits of what may be said to be official conduct.

But the decision also falls well short of dictating the outcome in the case that is being argued on Thursday, which concerns a criminal prosecution, not a civil suit.

The 1982 case arose from a lawsuit brought by an Air Force analyst, A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who said he was fired in 1970 in retaliation for his criticism of cost overruns. By the time the Supreme Court acted, Nixon had been out of office for several years.

“In view of the special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the majority 5-to-4 decision, “we think it appropriate to recognize absolute presidential immunity from damages liability” for Nixon’s official conduct, broadly defined.

But the decision drew a sharp line between civil suits, which it said can be abusive and harassing, and criminal prosecutions like the one Mr. Trump is facing.

“In view of the visibility of his office and the effect of his actions on countless people, the president would be an easily identifiable target for suits for civil damages,” Justice Powell wrote, adding, “The court has recognized before that there is a lesser public interest in actions for civil damages than, for example, in criminal prosecutions.”

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger underscored the point in a concurring opinion. “The immunity is limited to civil damages claims,” he wrote.

Even in the context of civil suits, Nixon v. Fitzgerald conferred immunity only on conduct within the “outer perimeter” of a president’s official duties. Jack Smith, the special counsel, has said that Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy are well outside that line.

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The Last Thing This Supreme Court Could Do to Shock Us

There will be no more self-soothing after this..

For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. There were promising signs: They had, after all, refused to wade into the Trumpian efforts to set aside the election results in 2020. They had, after all, hewed to a kind of sanity in batting away Trumpist claims about presidential records (with the lone exception of Clarence Thomas, too long marinated in the Ginni-scented Kool-Aid to be capable of surprising us, but he was just one vote). We promised ourselves that there would be cool heads and grand bargains and that even though the court might sometimes help Trump in small ways, it would privilege the country in the end. We kept thinking that at least for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts , the voice of reasoned never-Trumpers might still penetrate the Fox News fog. We told ourselves that at least six justices, and maybe even seven, of the most MAGA-friendly court in history would still want to ensure that this November’s elections would not be the last in history. Political hacks they may be, but they were not lawless ones.

On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States , the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act. These justices fear that it is Trump’s prosecution for election subversion that will “destabilize” democracy, requiring them to read a brand-new principle of presidential immunity into a Constitution that guarantees nothing of the sort. They evinced virtually no concern for our ability to continue holding free and fair elections that culminate in a peaceful transfer of power. They instead offered endless solicitude for the former president who fought that transfer of power.

However the court disposes of Trump v. U.S. , the result will almost certainly be precisely what the former president craves: more delays, more hearings, more appeals—more of everything but justice . This was not a legitimate claim from the start, but a wild attempt by Trump’s attorneys to use his former role as chief executive of the United States to shield himself from the consequences of trying to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. After so much speculation that these reasonable, rational jurists would surely dispose of this ridiculous case quickly and easily, Thursday delivered a morass of bad-faith hand-wringing on the right about the apparently unbearable possibility that a president might no longer be allowed to wield his powers of office in pursuit of illegal ends. Just as bad, we heard a constant minimization of Jan. 6, for the second week in a row , as if the insurrection were ancient history, and history that has since been dramatically overblown, presumably for Democrats’ partisan aims.

We got an early taste of this minimization in Trump v. Anderson , the Colorado case about removing Trump from the ballot. The court didn’t have the stomach to discuss the violence at the Capitol in its sharply divided decision, which found for Trump ; indeed, the majority barely mentioned the events of Jan. 6 at all when rejecting Colorado’s effort to bar from the ballot an insurrectionist who tried to steal our democracy. But we let that one be, because we figured special counsel Jack Smith would ride to the rescue. Smith has indicted Trump on election subversion charges related to Jan. 6, and the biggest obstacle standing between the special counsel and a trial has been the former president’s outlandish claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal charges as a result of his having been president at the time. Specifically, Trump alleges that his crusade to overturn the election constituted “official acts” that are immune from criminal liability under a heretofore unknown constitutional principle that the chief executive is quite literally above the law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in February that the president does not have blanket or absolute immunity for all actions taken in office, including “official” acts performed under the guise of executing the law (for example, Trump’s attempt to weaponize the DOJ against election results under the pretense of investigating fraud). The D.C. Circuit’s emphatic, cross-ideological decision should have been summarily affirmed by SCOTUS within days. Instead, the justices set it for arguments two months down the road—a bad omen, to put it mildly . Even then, many court watchers held out hope that Thursday morning’s oral arguments were to be the moment for the nine justices of the Supreme Court to finally indicate their readiness to take on Trump, Trumpism, illiberalism, and slouching fascism.

It was not to be. Justice Samuel Alito best captured the spirit of arguments when he asked gravely “what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society” (good start!), then answered his own question: total immunity for criminal presidents (oh, dear). Indeed, anything but immunity would, he suggested, encourage presidents to commit more crimes to stay in office: “Now, if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” Never mind that the president in question did not leave office peacefully and is not sitting quietly in retirement but is instead running for presidential office once again. No, if we want criminal presidents to leave office when they lose, we have to let them commit crimes scot-free. If ever a better articulation of the legal principle “Don’t make me hit you again” has been proffered at an oral argument, it’s hard to imagine it.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke to this absurdity when she responded in what could only be heard as a cri de coeur: “Stable democratic society needs good faith of public officials,” she said. “That good faith assumes that they will follow the law.” The justice noted that despite all the protections in place, a democracy can sometimes “potentially fail.” She concluded: “In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?”

But it was probably too late to make this plea, because by that point we had heard both Alito and Gorsuch opine that presidents must be protected at all costs from the whims of overzealous deep state prosecutors brandishing “vague” criminal statutes. We heard Kavanaugh opine mindlessly on the independent counsel statute and how mean it is to presidents, reading extensively from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in a case arguing that independent counsels are unconstitutional. (Yes, Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr , the independent counsel.) If you’re clocking a trend here, it’s gender. Just as was the case in Anderson , it’s the women justices doing the second-shift work here: both probing the thorny constitutional and criminal questions and signaling a refusal to tank democracy over abstractions and deflections. As was the case in the EMTALA arguments, it’s the women who understand what it looks like to cheat death.

Is the president, Sotomayor asked, immune from prosecution if he orders the military to assassinate a political rival? Yes, said John Sauer, who represented Trump—though it “depends on the circumstances.” Could the president, Justice Elena Kagan asked, order the military to stage a coup? Yes, Sauer said again, depending on the circumstances. To which Kagan tartly replied that Sauer’s insistence on specifying the “circumstances” boiled down to “Under my test, it’s an official act, but that sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” (Cue polite laughter in the chamber.)

This shameless, maximalist approach should have drawn anger from the conservative justices—indignation, at least, that Sauer took them for such easy marks. But it turns out that he calibrated his terrible arguments just right. The cynicism on display was truly breathtaking: Alito winkingly implied to Michael Dreeben, representing Smith, that we all know that Justice Department lawyers are political hacks, right? Roberts mocked Dreeben for saying “There’s no reason to worry because the prosecutor will act in good faith.”

The conservative justices are so in love with their own voices and so convinced of their own rectitude that they monologued about how improper it was for Dreeben to keep talking about the facts of this case, as opposed to the “abstract” principles at play. “I’m talking about the future!” Kavanaugh declared at one point to Dreeben, pitching himself not as Trump’s human shield but as a principled defender of the treasured constitutional right of all presidents to do crime. (We’re sure whatever rule he cooks up will apply equally to Democratic presidents, right?) Kavanaugh eventually landed on the proposition that prosecutors may charge presidents only under criminal statutes that explicitly state they can be applied to the president. Which, as Sotomayor pointed out, would mean no charges everywhere, because just a tiny handful of statutes are stamped with the label “CAN BE APPLIED TO PRESIDENT.”

The words bold and fearless action were repeated on a loop today, as a kind of mantra of how effective presidents must be free to act quickly and decisively to save democracy from the many unanticipated threats it faces. And yet the court—which has been asked to take bold and fearless action to deter the person who called Georgia’s secretary of state to demand that he alter the vote count, and threatened to fire DOJ officials who would not help steal an election—is backing away from its own duty. The prospect of a criminal trial for a criminal president shocked and appalled five men: Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch suggested that Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional; meanwhile, Roberts sounded eager at times to handle the case just a hair more gracefully: by cutting out its heart by preventing the jury from hearing about “official acts” (which lie at the center of the alleged conspiracy). Justice Amy Coney Barrett was far more measured, teasing out a compromise with Dreeben that would compel the trial court to tell the jury it could not impose criminal liability for these “official” acts, only “private ones.” Remember, drawing that line would require months of hearings and appeals, pushing any trial into 2025 or beyond. The president who tried to steal the most recent election is running in the next one, which is happening in mere months.

The liberal justices tried their best to make the case that justice required denying Trump’s sweeping immunity claim, permitting the trial to move forward, and sorting out lingering constitutional issues afterward, as virtually all other criminal defendants must do. They got little traction. Everyone on that bench was well aware that the entire nation was listening to arguments; that the whole nation wants to understand whether Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election was an existential threat to democracy or a lark. Five justices sent the message, loud and clear, that they are far more worried about Trump’s prosecution at the hands of the deep-state DOJ than about his alleged crimes, which were barely mentioned. This trial will almost certainly face yet more delays. These delays might mean that its subject could win back the presidency in the meantime and render the trial moot. But the court has now signaled that nothing he did was all that serious and that the danger he may pose is not worth reining in. The real threats they see are the ones Trump himself shouts from the rooftops: witch hunts and partisan Biden prosecutors. These men have picked their team. The rest hardly matters.

Stars host Golden Knights in Game 7: 'Nothing better'

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The Boston Bruins escaped blowing a 3-1 series lead in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs by beating the Toronto Maple Leafs with a 2-1 overtime victory in Game 7.

After missing a chance to eliminate the defending Stanley Cup champions in a tightly contested Game 6 on Friday, Dallas Stars coach Peter DeBoer was already looking forward to Sunday's home showdown with the Vegas Golden Knights.

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Madueke urges Chelsea to go all out in bid for European football

Chelsea need to focus on what they can control and win their last three games of the Premier League season to put themselves in the best position to qualify for Europe next season, winger Noni Madueke said after their 5-0 thrashing of West Ham United.

Following an inconsistent start to the season, Cleveland Guardians right-hander Triston McKenzie may have found his rhythm.

Zack Wheeler is looking to win his fourth consecutive start as the Philadelphia Phillies close a four-game series against the visiting San Francisco Giants on Monday afternoon.

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Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Trevor Noah are pretty sure Trump can't just say no to impeachment

If you were wondering when America will arrive at a constitutional crisis, "it's here," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show . The White House sent House Democrats an "officially bitchy eight-page letter" Tuesday informing them President Trump won't cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, he said. "Don't get him wrong — Trump would like to help with their inquiry into his conversation with Ukraine, but tragically, he has developed phone spurs."

"You can't just not participate in your own impeachment," Colbert said. The White House letter "is full of absolutely bonkers arguments ," like that House Democrats have "denied the president the right to cross-examine witnesses" — the main "witness," he noted, being "Trump's incriminating phone transcript, which he released." Also, he added, "obstruction of an impeachment inquiry is itself grounds for impeachment — this whole thing is like that MC Escher print 'Hands Cuffing Themselves.'" He laughed at Trump and his allies fixating on kangaroos and huffed helium to make a point.

It is "crazy" that the White House thinks it needn't cooperate with House investigators, Trevor Noah agreed at The Daily Show . "Trump can't just decline to participate — this isn't the Vietnam War." Trump also blocked U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland from testifying before three House committees Tuesday, he noted. "What a completely innocent thing to do! Yeah, I bet Trump was just scared that that ambassador would exonerate him too much." This is "a big deal," Noah added, because Sondland is at the middle of Trump's Ukraine efforts, and his text exchanges with fellow top diplomats "look hella suspicious."

Trump and his team are "also withholding text messages from Sondland's personal phone — because that's what innocent presidents do," Jimmy Kimmel said at Kimmel Live . "And while we absolutely should have the opportunity to hear his testimony, really we don't need to hear his testimony. We already have the White House's own transcript of the call with the Ukrainian president where Trump specifically asked him to investigate the Bidens, days after suddenly withholding their military aid" — something White House lawyers clearly identified as "a criminal act," according to a memo from the whistleblower . Watch Kimmel describe Trump's meltdown, and drag in Matt Damon, below.

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