Will Trump provoke a crisis of legitimacy for the US supreme court?
Trump’s appeal to the supreme court creates a crisis for the entire conservative methodology.
If the court denies certiorari, declining to rule on the case, or upholds the Colorado decision, Trump would face disqualification cases in states across the country, throwing the election into chaos.
The Republican sponsors of the conservative court are panicked and enraged.
The Wall Street Journal, the veritable mouthpiece of justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, is loudly decrying the Colorado “folly”.
The conundrum for the court is that it can rescue Trump only by shredding originalism and textualism.
There is no more originalist and textualist case to be made than this one.
But this time, the solidity of the case is not based on specious doctrine.
Here the logic can rightfully be said to be rooted in history and the constitution.
Two leading conservative legal scholars, William Baude, of the University of Chicago law school, and Michael Stokes Paulsen, of the University of St Thomas law school, arguing on strict originalist grounds, state unequivocally that Trump is constitutionally barred from running for office.
Section three of the 14th amendment prohibits anyone who has held public office sworn to uphold the constitution and who then engages “in insurrection or rebellion” from ever holding office again.
The amendment, Baude and Paulsen demonstrate, is “binding”, “general”, “prospective” and “self-executing”, requiring “no implementing legislation”, and they say “disqualification is sweeping in its terms”.
The Colorado supreme court found, without disagreement, and by clear and convincing evidence, that Trump indeed engaged in insurrection on January 6.
Consequently, the case is, on originalist and textual as well as historical grounds, open and shut.
On the facts and the law, the court majority faces a brutal dilemma:
either uphold Trump’s disqualification or shred the doctrine on which their conservative jurisprudence stands.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/26/trump-us-supreme-court-crisis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
@cdarwin I'd say it's really key that you didn't entirely quote the relevant part of the 14th Amendment.
And that highlights the problem here: a lot of people are insisting that this is an open and shut case by papering over important elements through such handwaving.
No, there are serious quesitons of law here, and it's entirely reasonable to say, based on the actual text, that the case really goes in favor of Trump.
Just proclaiming otherwise doesn't make it so.
