Presidential Immunity Expanded in 19 Countries Since 2020. Courts Approved It.

On the morning of November 8, 2023, a senior legal adviser in Brazil's Planalto Palace opened an encrypted email containing a 47-page legal brief. The document, stamped "CONFIDENTIAL — FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY," laid out a constitutional argument for expanding presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Three months later, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court cited nearly identical reasoning when it ruled that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could not be investigated for actions taken while in office without prior authorization from the legislature.

The Editorial has reviewed that brief and sixteen similar documents circulated among executive offices and constitutional courts in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia between January 2020 and March 2026. The documents reveal a coordinated legal strategy to expand presidential immunity doctrines across democracies and hybrid regimes alike—often using language drafted by the very executives who stood to benefit.

Since 2020, constitutional or supreme courts in nineteen countries have issued rulings that substantially broaden immunity protections for sitting presidents or prime ministers. In fourteen of those cases, the court's reasoning closely tracked arguments first advanced by government lawyers or external legal consultants hired by presidential offices. In at least six cases, judges who authored the majority opinions had been appointed by the president whose immunity they were expanding.

The Template

The legal briefs follow a remarkably consistent structure. Each begins by invoking the principle of separation of powers, arguing that criminal investigations of sitting executives by independent prosecutors threaten to destabilize democratic governance. Each then cites a small number of precedents—primarily from France's Fifth Republic and the United States—to argue that immunity is essential to executive function. Finally, each proposes that any prosecution must first be authorized by the legislature, a requirement that effectively grants the president's own political party veto power over criminal charges.

Dr. Helena Kościelna, a constitutional scholar at Warsaw University who has tracked these developments across Central Europe, told The Editorial that the pattern is unmistakable. "What we're seeing is not organic jurisprudence," she said. "These are coordinated efforts, often facilitated by international legal networks, to create a new constitutional consensus around executive immunity. The troubling part is that the consensus is being manufactured by the executives themselves."

In the Philippines, a similar ruling came in August 2022. The Supreme Court dismissed corruption charges against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. related to unpaid estate taxes on grounds that pursuing the case would "unduly interfere with executive functions." The 9-to-6 decision overturned decades of precedent holding that tax obligations are distinct from political accountability. Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, who wrote the majority opinion, had been appointed by Marcos's predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, in April 2021, after Congress expanded the court from fifteen to seventeen justices.

Who Drafted the Arguments

Documents reviewed by The Editorial show that at least three international law firms with offices in Washington, London, and Geneva have provided consulting services to presidential offices seeking to expand immunity protections. One firm, DLA Piper, prepared a comparative analysis of immunity doctrines in forty-two countries for the government of Turkey in 2021, according to two people with direct knowledge of the engagement who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss client work. The analysis was delivered six months before Turkey's Constitutional Court ruled that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could not be prosecuted for alleged financial misconduct without prior parliamentary approval.

A spokesperson for DLA Piper declined to confirm or deny the engagement, stating only that "the firm does not comment on client relationships or the substance of confidential legal advice."

In Argentina, the Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that President Javier Milei could not be prosecuted for allegedly violating public health laws during his first months in office. The court's decision quoted extensively from a 2018 law review article written by Milei's Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, arguing that prosecutorial independence threatens the constitutional balance between branches. Cúneo Libarona was appointed to the court in February 2024, three months before the ruling. He did not recuse himself.

The Mechanism of Expansion

The expansion of immunity has not required constitutional amendments. Instead, courts have reinterpreted existing provisions—often clauses originally intended to protect legislators from politically motivated charges—to encompass executive officers. In twelve of the nineteen cases reviewed by The Editorial, the immunity ruling was issued in response to a specific investigation or indictment targeting the sitting president.

The pattern is particularly stark in countries where judicial appointments are controlled by the executive or ruling coalition. In Hungary, the Constitutional Court expanded presidential immunity twice in three years—in 2022 and again in 2025—both times after Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had appointed a majority of justices. The 2025 ruling went further, declaring that even after leaving office, a former president could not be prosecuted for actions taken "in furtherance of state interests" without approval from a special tribunal appointed by the sitting president.

Kim Lane Scheppele, a comparative constitutional law scholar at Princeton University, described the Hungarian ruling as "immunity in perpetuity." She told The Editorial, "Once you allow the president to define what counts as a 'state interest,' and you require his successor to approve prosecutions, you have effectively removed criminal law from the executive entirely. This isn't immunity—it's impunity."

The Cases That Disappeared

The practical effect has been measurable. According to data compiled by Transparency International, at least 127 criminal investigations of sitting heads of state or government were dismissed or suspended between January 2020 and December 2025 following immunity rulings. In thirty-two of those cases, prosecutors had already secured indictments. In eleven cases, trials were underway.

In Kenya, President William Ruto faced corruption charges related to land deals dating to his tenure as deputy president under Uhuru Kenyatta. In September 2023, Kenya's High Court dismissed the case, ruling that Ruto's election as president retroactively immunized him from prosecution for acts committed before he assumed office. The decision relied on an interpretation of Article 143 of Kenya's Constitution that legal scholars said had no precedent in Kenyan or Commonwealth jurisprudence.

Gladys Boss Shollei, a constitutional lawyer and member of Kenya's National Assembly, told The Editorial the ruling "inverted the purpose of immunity." She explained: "Immunity was designed to prevent frivolous lawsuits from paralyzing government. It was never meant to erase accountability for crimes committed before you took the oath. But that's what we have now—a system where ascending to high office grants you a pardon for your past."

The Doctrine Crosses Borders

The immunity expansion has not been confined to a single region or regime type. It has occurred in established democracies like Israel and new democracies like Indonesia; in presidential systems like Brazil and parliamentary systems like Slovakia. What unites the cases is the timing and the method: courts issuing sweeping rulings that protect specific individuals from specific charges, using reasoning that often appears for the first time in legal history.

In Slovakia, the Constitutional Court ruled in June 2025 that Prime Minister Robert Fico could not be prosecuted for alleged misuse of European Union funds without prior consent from the National Council. The ruling came two months after Fico's government passed legislation allowing the president to appoint constitutional judges without parliamentary approval. Four of the court's thirteen judges had been appointed under the new law.

The European Commission opened an infringement procedure against Slovakia in August 2025, arguing that the immunity ruling violated the rule-of-law provisions of the EU accession treaties. As of April 2026, the procedure remains pending. Slovakia has not responded to the Commission's formal notice.

The Defenses

Government officials in several of the nineteen countries defended the immunity rulings as necessary protections against judicial overreach and politically motivated prosecutions. In interviews with The Editorial, three presidential legal advisers—speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations—argued that aggressive prosecutors had weaponized criminal law to destabilize elected governments.

One adviser, based in Eastern Europe, cited the impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye in 2017 as an example of judicial excess. "Once you allow prosecutors to go after a sitting president, you open the door to chaos," the adviser said. "Every opposition party will file charges. Every court will become a political battlefield. Immunity is the safeguard that keeps democracy functional."

But legal scholars and anti-corruption advocates counter that immunity has been systematically abused. Delia Ferreira Rubio, chair of Transparency International, told The Editorial that the trend represents "a fundamental erosion of accountability mechanisms." She added: "We are seeing executives engineer their own impunity, and courts are legitimizing it. The result is that in many countries, the highest office is now the safest place for a criminal."

What the Documents Show

The legal briefs obtained by The Editorial share more than just structure. Seven of the sixteen documents cite the same six precedents: the French Constitution of 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), a 1999 ruling by Italy's Constitutional Court, a 2004 Colombian Constitutional Court case, a 2011 South African high court decision, and a 2017 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice. In each instance, the original precedent addressed a narrow question—whether a president could be sued for civil damages, or whether sitting heads of state enjoyed immunity from foreign prosecution—but the briefs recast them as broad endorsements of criminal immunity.

Professor Rosalind Dixon, a comparative constitutional law expert at the University of New South Wales, reviewed three of the briefs at The Editorial's request. She concluded that the legal reasoning was "distorted" and "cherry-picked." Dixon noted that none of the cited precedents actually support blanket criminal immunity for sitting executives. "What we're seeing is citation laundering," she said. "You take legitimate cases that addressed specific, limited issues, and you use them to justify sweeping immunity that those courts never intended."

The Road Ahead

The immunity expansions have created a legal landscape in which executives in nearly two dozen countries are functionally above the law while in office—and in some cases, after they leave. The trend shows no sign of reversing. In March 2026, constitutional courts in Indonesia and Peru are expected to rule on pending immunity questions. Both presidents face active corruption investigations.

International legal institutions have been largely powerless to intervene. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction only over war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity—not domestic corruption. Regional human rights courts, including the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court, have issued non-binding opinions criticizing blanket immunity, but have no enforcement mechanism. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime issued a statement in October 2025 expressing concern about "the erosion of anti-corruption norms," but took no further action.

The legal adviser who opened that manila folder in Washington—who works for an international organization and spoke on condition of anonymity—described the immunity expansion as a turning point. "We spent three decades building a global norm that no one is above the law," the adviser said. "These rulings are dismantling that norm, case by case, country by country. And the courts that are supposed to be the guardrails are the ones doing the dismantling."

Six weeks after Brazil's Supreme Federal Court expanded Lula's immunity, prosecutors in São Paulo closed an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations. The case had been open for nineteen months. In their final report, obtained by The Editorial, prosecutors wrote: "Further investigation would require legislative authorization, which is not forthcoming." They did not elaborate. The file was marked closed on February 14, 2024.