Prosecuting a president: What can US learn from other nations?

AUSTIN, TEXAS; BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA; AND TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – The United States might be the world’s oldest democracy, but there is one thing it has never done: It has never held a former leader accountable for criminal wrongdoing.

That inexperience sets it apart from other democracies. Countries from France to Argentina to South Korea have held that former presidents were not above the law. In the process, both the countries and the individual leaders had to face the consequences. These trials invariably strain countries – sowing mistrust of other democratic institutions, like the courts, and dividing the public itself – with varied final outcomes.

America may be inching toward its own such moment.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before in American history,” says James Hollifield, director of the Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at Southern Methodist University.

“You can’t have [former] presidents being constantly harassed and prosecuted,” he adds. But “if you don’t have accountability, your democracy is on the ropes.”

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