It is odd that states can bar people from the ballot for age or place of birth without any enabling federal legislation.
@McPatrick in the arguments the point was made that there is a difference: something like age is generally uncontested while something like guilt for insurrection is contestable and judiciable.
Except in outlier cases, every state will agree on the age of a candidate. But different states might conclude differently on the question of guilt for insurrection.
That's the difference.
So?
I mean that seriously. So?
That’s when you go to court and make the courts resolve the conflict. This isn’t a new kind of concern, having conflicting decisions on a judicial matter.
@McPatrick it's kind of a legal shortcut.
Rather than take up court time resolving something that arguably is something for courts to handle, a thing like age verification is handled by state officers because it's anticipated that serious disputes will be so easily resolved and far between. So they built in a shortcut just to get it done with.
Technically, yes, any dispute about a nominees age could go through the rigmarole of court hearings and evidentiary hearings and due process and on and on, but they figure those cases should be so easy that they'll just use this shortcut instead.
But a question like is this person guilty of insurrection is much less straightforward, so it doesn't get the shortcut. It still has to go through courts.
It's a difference of practicality due to complexity.
The question DID go through the courts. They determined yes, he did.
SCOTUS said, you can’t take the issue up. This amendment, intended to defend us from oath-breakers, they say, means nothing. Not until Congress decides to create legislation to empower some action.
That’s *knowing* this Congress won’t, because it’s MAGAt-riddled. And despite the fact that the very Congress that set forth that amendment didn’t see any reason to create enabling legislation. Because not needed, right?
@McPatrick Well if you want to approach it from that direction, what the Supreme Court found was that no court has the legal authority to determine whether Trump is an insurrectionist for purpose of the 14th amendment.
So technically, it couldn't make that determination if it wanted to, because it found that it took lacked that legal authority.
That's not quite how it works, really the court just didn't answer the question because under the way US courts work they can't answer questions that they don't have to answer, and they didn't have to answer that question given their ruling.
Like you said, they didn't answer the deeper question. The reason they didn't answer it is because it WAS the deeper question and the answer to the shallow question resolved the matter before them.
However, yeah technically, even if they wanted to go to the deep question they couldn't have because they found that they legally couldn't.
@McPatrick but keep in mind that it is the Constitution itself that limits the issues that the Supreme Court can take on.
They wouldn't be acting to protect the Constitution should they so exceed the constitutional bounds of their offices, they would be violating their oaths.
And just because they may have violated the rules in one place doesn't make it not unconstitutional in a different place.
@volkris
I understand the legal theory.
But they too take oaths to defend and protect the Constitution. And not taking up fundamental issues like this *is* a fundamental failure to fulfill that oath.
“But we stayed strictly within the lines” won’t count for shit if the Republic goes down because of it.
And SCOTUS has scribbled outside of them repeatedly before — starting with Marbury. And this court, in trashing stare decisis to flush Roe.