Cite as: 520 U. S. 681 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
tive capacity. See Forrester v. White, 484 U. S. 219, 229-230 (1988). As our opinions have made clear, immunities are grounded in "the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it." Id., at 229.
Petitioner's effort to construct an immunity from suit for unofficial acts grounded purely in the identity of his office is unsupported by precedent.
V
We are also unpersuaded by the evidence from the historical record to which petitioner has called our attention. He points to a comment by Thomas Jefferson protesting the subpoena duces tecum Chief Justice Marshall directed to him in the Burr trial,20 a statement in the diaries kept by Senator William Maclay of the first Senate debates, in which then-Vice President John Adams and Senator Oliver Ellsworth are recorded as having said that "the President personally [is] not . . . subject to any process whatever," lest it be "put . . . in the power of a common Justice to exercise any Authority over him and Stop the Whole Machine of Government," 21
and to a quotation from Justice Story's Commentaries on the Constitution.22 None of these sources sheds much light on the question at hand.23
20 In Jefferson's view, the subpoena jeopardized the separation of powers by subjecting the Executive Branch to judicial command. See 10 Works of Thomas Jefferson 404, n. (P. Ford ed. 1905); Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 751, n. 31 (quoting Jefferson's comments).
21 9 Documentary History of First Federal Congress of the United States 168 (K. Bowling & H. Veit eds. 1988) (Diary of William Maclay).
22 See 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1563, pp. 418-419 (1833).
23 Jefferson's argument provides little support for petitioner's position. As we explain later, the prerogative Jefferson claimed was denied him by the Chief Justice in the very decision Jefferson was protesting, and this Court has subsequently reaffirmed that holding. See United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683 (1974). The statements supporting a similar proposition recorded in Senator Maclay's diary are inconclusive of the issue before us here for the same reason. In addition, this material is hardly proof of the unequivocal common understanding at the time of the founding. Immediately after mentioning the positions of Adams and Ellsworth,
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