467 U.S. 731, 102 S.Ct. 2690, 73 L.Ed.2d 349 (1982).
 

JUSTICE POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court.

The plaintiff in this lawsuit seeks relief in civil damages from a former President of the United States. The claim rests on actions allegedly taken in the former President's official capacity during his tenure in office. The issue before us is the scope of the immunity possessed by the President of the United States.

In January 1970 the respondent A. Ernest Fitzgerald lost his job as a management analyst with the Department of the Air Force. [T]he Air Force characterized the action as taken to promote economy and efficiency in the armed forces. Respondent's discharge attracted unusual attention in Congress and in the press. Fitzgerald had attained national prominence approximately one year earlier, during the waning months of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson [when he] appeared before the Subcommittee on Economy in Government of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress. To the evident embarrassment of his superiors in the Department of Defense, Fitzgerald testified that cost-overruns on the C 6A transport plane could approximate $2 billion. He also revealed that unexpected technical difficulties had arisen during the development of the aircraft.

Concerned that Fitzgerald might have suffered retaliation for his congressional testimony, the Subcommittee on Economy in Government convened public hearings on Fitzgerald's dismissal. ... At a news conference on December 8, 1969, President Richard Nixon was queried about Fitzgerald's impending separation from government service. The President responded by promising to look into the matter. Shortly after the news conference the petitioner asked White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to arrange for Fitzgerald's assignment to another job within the Administration. It also appears that the President suggested to Budget Director Robert Mayo that Fitzgerald might be offered a position in the Bureau of the Budget. Fitzgerald's proposed reassignment encountered resistance within the Administration. In an internal memorandum of January 20, 1970, White House aide Alexander Butterfield reported to Haldeman that "Fitzgerald is no doubt a top-notch cost expert, but he must be given very low marks in loyalty; and after all, loyalty is the name of the game." Butterfield therefore recommended that "We should let him bleed, for a while at lost his job, an inquiry into the President's motives could not be avoided under the kind of "functional" theory asserted both by respondent and the dissent. Inquiries of this kind could be highly intrusive.... This construction would subject the President to trial on virtually every allegation that an action was unlawful, or was taken for a forbidden purpose. Adoption of this construction thus would deprive absolute immunity of its intended effect. It clearly is within the President's constitutional and statutory authority to prescribe the manner in which the Secretary will conduct the business of the Air Force. Because this mandate of office must include the authority to prescribe reorganizations and reductions in force, we conclude that petitioner's alleged wrongful acts lay well within the outer perimeter of his authority.

A rule of absolute immunity for the President will not leave the Nation without sufficient protection against misconduct on the part of the chief executive. There remains the constitutional remedy of impeachment. In addition, there are formal and informal checks on Presidential action that do not apply with equal force to other executive officials. The President is subjected to constant scrutiny by the press. Vigilant oversight by Congress also may serve to deter Presidential abuses of office, as well as to make credible the threat of impeachment. Other incentives to avoid misconduct may include a desire to earn re-election, the need to maintain prestige as an element of Presidential influence, and a President's traditional concern for his historical stature. The existence of alternative remedies and deterrents establishes that absolute immunity will not place the President "above the law." For the President, as for judges and prosecutors, absolute immunity merely precludes a particular private remedy for alleged misconduct in order to advance compelling public ends. ...

CHEF JUSTICE BURGER concurring.

I join the Court's opinion, but I write separately to underscore that the presidential immunity derives from and is mandated by the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.

. . . The dissents are wide of the mark to the extent that they imply that the Court today recognizes sweeping immunity for a President for all acts. The Court does no such thing. The immunity is limited to civil damage claims. Moreover, a President, like Members of Congress, judges, prosecutors, or congressional aides all having absolute immunity, are not immune for acts outside official duties.2 . . . We have decided that in a
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2. In their "parade of horribles" and lamentations, the dissents also wholly fail to acknowledge why the same perils they fear are not present in the absolute immunity the law has long recognized for numerous other officials. At least 76,000 public officers have absolute immunity from civil damage suits for acts within the scope of their official functions. The dissenting opinions manifest an astonishing blind side in pointing to that old reliable that "no man is above the law." The Court has had no difficulty expanding the absolute immunity of Members of Congress, and in granting derivative absolute immunity to numerous aides of Members. United States v.. Gravel, [_ 6-6, supra].

We have since recognized absolute immunity for judges, Stump v. Sparkman, 436 U.S. 349, 98 S.Ct. 1099, 66 L.Ed.2d 331 (1978), and for prosecutors, Imbler v.. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 96 S.Ct. 984, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976), yet the Constitution provides no hint that either judges, prosecutors or Congressional aides should be so protected. Absolute immunity for judges and prosecutors is seen to derive from the common law and public policy, which recognize the need to protect judges and prosecutors from harassment. The potential danger to the citizenry from the malice of thousands of prosecutors and judges is at once more pervasive and less open to constant, public scrutiny than the actions of a President.
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similar sense Members of both Houses of Congress_and their aides_must be totally free from judicial scrutiny for legislative acts; the public interest, in other words, outweighs the need for private redress of one claiming injury from legislative acts of a Member or aide of a Member.5 . . . When litigation processes are not tightly-controlled_and often they are not_they can be and are used as mechanisms of extortion. Ultimate vindication on the merits does not repair the damage.

I fully agree that the constitutional concept of separation of independent co-equal powers dictates that a President be immune from civil damage actions based on acts within the scope of Executive authority while in office.7 Far from placing a President above the law, the Court's holding places a President on essentially the same footing with judges and other officials whose absolute immunity we have recognized.

JUSTICE WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN, JUSTICE MARSHALL, and JUSTICE BLACKMUN join, dissenting.

The majority holds that a] President acting within the outer boundaries of what Presidents normally do may, without liability, deliberately cause serious injury to any number of citizens even though he knows his conduct violates a statute or tramples on the constitutional rights of those who are injured. Even if the President in this case ordered Fitzgerald fired by means of a trumped-up reduction in force, knowing that such a discharge was contrary to the civil service laws, he would be absolutely immune from suit. By the same token, if a President, without following the statutory procedures which he knows apply to himself as well as to other federal officials, orders his subordinates to wiretap or break into a home for the purpose of installing a listening device, and the officers comply with his request, the President would be absolutely immune from suit. He would be immune regardless of the damage he inflicts, regardless of how violative of the statute and of the Constitution he knew his conduct to be, and regardless of his purpose.

The Court intimates that its decision is grounded in the Constitution. If that is the case, Congress can not provide a remedy against presidential misconduct and the criminal laws of the United States are wholly inapplicable to the President. I find this approach completely unacceptable. I do not agree that if the office of President is to operate effectively, the holder of that office must be permitted, without fear of liability and regardless of the function he is performing, deliberately to inflict injury on others by conduct that he knows violates the law.

We have not taken such a scatter-gun approach in other cases. ... Members of Congress are absolutely immune under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, but the immunity extends only to their legislative
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5...

In this case Fitzgerald received substantial relief through the route provided by Congress: the Civil Service Commission ordered him reinstated with backpay. SimiIarly situated persons are therefore not without an adequate remedy. In addition, respondent Fitzgerald has also received a settlement of $142,000 from Nixon]. It can hardly be said he has had no remedy.

7. In footnote 27, ante, the Court suggests that "we need not address directly" whether

Congress could create a - damages action against a President. However, the Court's holding, in my view, effectively resolves that issue, once it is established that the Constitution confers absolute immunity, as the Court holds today, legislative action cannot alter that result. Nothing in the Court's opinion is to be read as suggesting that a Constitutional holding of this Court can be legislatively overruled or modified.
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acts.... Members of Congress, for example, repeatedly importune the executive branch and administrative agencies outside hearing rooms and legislative halls, but they are not immune if in connection with such activity they deliberately violate the law.... Judges are absolutely immune from liability for damages, but only when performing a judicial function, and even then they are subject to criminal liability. The absolute immunity of prosecutors is likewise limited to the prosecutorial function. A prosecutor who directs that an investigation be carried out in a way that is patently illegal is not immune.

Attaching absolute immunity to the office of the President, rather than to particular activities that the President might perform, places the President above the law. It is a reversion to the old notion that the King can do no wrong.... Taken at face value, the Court's position that as a matter of constitutional law the President is absolutely immune should mean that he is immune not only from damages actions but also from suits for injunctive relief, criminal prosecutions and, indeed, from any kind of judicial process. But there is no contention that the President is immune from criminal prosecution in the courts under the criminal laws enacted by Congress or by the states for that matter. Nor would such a claim be credible. The Constitution itself provides that impeachment shall not bar "Indictment, Trial, Judgment, and Punishment, according to Law." Art. I, _ 2, cl. 7. Similarly, our cases indicate that immunity from damages actions carries no protection from criminal prosecution.

Neither can there be a serious claim that the separation of powers doctrine insulates presidential action from judicial review or insulates the President from judicial process. No argument is made here that the President, whatever his liability for money damages, is not subject to the courts' injunctive powers. [N]either subjecting presidential actions to a judicial determination of their constitutionality, nor subjecting the President to judicial process violates the separation of powers doctrine. Similarly, neither has been held to be sufficiently intrusive to justify a judicially declared rule of immunity. With respect to intrusion by the judicial process itself on Executive functions, subjecting the President to private claims for money damages involves no more than this. If there is a separation of powers problem-here, it must be found in the nature of the remedy and not in the process involved. ...27

[The dissenting opinion of BLACKMUN, J., joined by BRENNAN and MARSHALL, JJ., is omitted.]
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 27. The Court has never held that the "public policy"conclusions it reaches as to the appropriateness of absolute immunity in particular instances are not subject to reversal through congressional action.  Implicitly therefore, the Court has already rejected a constitutionally-based, separation of powers argument for immunity for federal officials.