Cite as: 505 U. S. 788 (1992)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
I am aware of only one instance in which we were specifically asked to issue an injunction requiring the President to take specified executive acts: to enjoin President Andrew Johnson from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts. As the plurality notes, ante, at 802-803, we emphatically disclaimed the authority to do so, stating that " 'this court has no jurisdiction of a bill to enjoin the President in the performance of his official duties.' " Mississippi v. Johnson, 4 Wall. 475, 501 (1867). See also C. Burdick, The Law of the American Constitution § 50, pp. 126-127 (1922); C. Pyle & R. Pious, The President, Congress, and the Constitution 170 (1984) ("No court has ever issued an injunction against the president himself or held him in contempt of court"). The apparently unbroken historical tradition supports the view, which I think implicit in the separation of powers established by the Constitution, that the principals in whom the executive and legislative powers are ultimately vested—viz., the President and the Congress (as opposed to their agents)—may not be ordered to perform particular executive or legislative acts at the behest of the Judiciary.2
For similar reasons, I think we cannot issue a declaratory judgment against the President. It is incompatible with his constitutional position that he be compelled personally to defend his executive actions before a court. Many of the reasons we gave in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, supra, for acknowledging an absolute Presidential immunity from civil damages for official acts apply with equal, if not greater, force to requests for declaratory or injunctive relief in official-capacity suits that challenge the President's performance of executive functions: The President's immunity from such judicial relief is
2 In Mississippi v. Johnson, 4 Wall. 475 (1867), we left open the question whether the President might be subject to a judicial injunction requiring the performance of a purely "ministerial" duty, see id., at 498-499; cf. Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 12 Pet. 524 (1838) (Postmaster General); Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803) (Secretary of State). As discussed earlier, the President's duty here was not that.
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