Here’s the newest on the argument.

This argument boils right down to practicalities of governance: The stigma of being indicted and the burden of a trial would unduly intervene with a president’s capability to hold out his duties, Robert G. Dixon Jr., then the pinnacle of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in a memo in September 1973. This would forestall the chief department “from conducting its constitutional features” in a method that can’t “be justified by an overriding want,” he added.

Mr. Dixon, an appointee of President Richard M. Nixon, wrote his memo in opposition to the backdrop of the Watergate scandal, when Mr. Nixon confronted a prison investigation by a particular counsel, Archibald Cox. The subsequent month, Nixon’s solicitor common, Robert H. Bork, in a court docket transient, equally argued for an “inference” that the Constitution makes sitting presidents immune from indictment and trial.

(That identical month, Mr. Nixon had Mr. Cox fired within the so-called Saturday Night Massacre. Mr. Nixon’s legal professional common and deputy legal professional common resigned somewhat than perform his orders to oust the prosecutor; Mr. Nixon then turned to Mr. Bork, the division’s No. 3, who proved keen to do it. Amid a political backlash, Mr. Nixon was compelled to permit a brand new particular counsel, Leon Jaworski, to renew the investigation.)

The query arose once more a era later, when President Bill Clinton confronted an investigation by Kenneth Starr, an impartial counsel, into the Whitewater land deal that morphed into an inquiry into his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Randolph D. Moss, Mr. Clinton’s appointee to steer the Office of Legal Counsel, reviewed the Justice Department’s 1973 opinions and reaffirmed their conclusions.

Legal students, in addition to workers for prosecutors investigating presidents, have disputed the legitimacy of that constitutional principle. In 1974, Mr. Jaworski acquired a memo from his workers saying he might, in actual fact, indict Mr. Nixon whereas he was in workplace, and he later made that case in a court docket transient.

And in a 56-page memo in 1998, Ronald Rotunda, a distinguished conservative constitutional scholar whom Mr. Starr employed as a guide on his authorized workforce, rejected the view that presidents are immune from prosecution whereas in workplace. Mr. Starr later stated that he had concluded that he might indict Mr. Clinton.

“It is correct, constitutional, and authorized for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for critical prison acts that aren’t a part of, and are opposite to, the president’s official duties,” Mr. Rotunda wrote. “In this nation, nobody, even President Clinton, is above the legislation.”

Mr. Starr commissioned the Rotunda memo as he was drafting a possible indictment of Mr. Clinton, and Mr. Starr determined that he might cost the president whereas in workplace. In the top, nevertheless, each Mr. Jaworski and Mr. Starr determined to let congressional impeachment proceedings play out and didn’t attempt to carry indictments whereas Mr. Nixon and Mr. Clinton remained in workplace.

The query might by no means be definitively examined within the courts. In 1999, Congress allowed a legislation that created impartial counsels like Mr. Starr — prosecutors who don’t report back to the legal professional common — to run out, and the Justice Department issued laws to permit for the appointment of semiautonomous particular counsels for inquiries into potential high-level wrongdoing within the government department.

Special counsels are, nevertheless, sure by Justice Departments insurance policies and practices — together with the Office of Legal Counsel’s proclamation that sitting presidents are quickly immune from prison indictment or trial.