United States v. Fokker Services B.V.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge:

The Constitution allocates primacy in criminal charging decisions to the Executive Branch. The Executive’s charging authority embraces decisions about whether to initiate charges, whom to prosecute, which charges to bring, and whether to dismiss charges once brought. It has long been settled that the Judiciary generally lacks authority to second-guess those Executive determinations, much less to impose its own charging preferences. The courts instead take the prosecution’s charging decisions largely as -a given,…