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 So the US Supreme Court can either cancel section 3 of the 14th amendment, flying in the face of both textualism and originalism and weakening the constitutional ban on slavery, or via certiorari let stand Trump's exclusion from the ballot in Colorado and any other state that rules he is an insurrectionist, canceling forever the candidate that put 33% of the justices on the US Supreme Court. It will be quite the cancellation either way. #scotus #14thAmendment #Trump #CancelCulture
@opalmirror or they can point out that a lot of people are misreading the amendment.
Which is entirely the case, whichever side one might be on.
