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Its ruling on Trump’s eligibility for the presidency contradicts the clear language of the 14th Amendment.
Excerpt:
It’s extremely difficult to square this ruling with the text of Section 3 [of the Fourteenth Amendment]. The language is clearly mandatory. The first words are “No person shall be” a member of Congress or a state or federal officer if that person has engaged in insurrection or rebellion or provided aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution. The Section then says, “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.”
In other words, the Constitution imposes the disability, and only a supermajority of Congress can remove it. But under the Supreme Court’s reasoning, the meaning is inverted: The Constitution merely allows Congress to impose the disability, and if Congress chooses not to enact legislation enforcing the section, then the disability does not exist. The Supreme Court has effectively replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office — a supermajority vote by Congress — with the lowest bar imaginable: congressional inaction.
This is a fairly easy read for the legal layperson, and the best general overview I've seen yet that sets forth the various legal and constitutional factors involved in today's decision, including the concurring dissent by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson.
Absolutely, it's insane that congress passed an ammendment that said a thing and now the Supreme Court is saying "no, it doesn't say that thing, if you wanted that to apply you'd need to pass a congressional act on a case by case basis."
Imagine if everytime someone committed tax fraud congress had to officially vote to investigate that specific person. Imagine if a country like America was unable to delegate any powers.
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It’s because they don’t actually care what the constitution or the bill of rights or any of the amendments says. The Tribunal of Six only cares about ensuring their political compatriots - that is, the GOP - can cement their power for good. And if that means that we sink into fascism… they don’t care. Because they’ll be calling the shots.
Literalism is just a tool for the corrupt Supremes to wield as a convenience.
That's exactly what they want. That's the goal. The goal is to stop the government from being able to function in any way whatsoever unless specifically delegated by Congress. That's been the Supreme Court and the Republicans legal modus operandi. That's why they're trying to dismantle the entire regulatory system. They want to dismantle every Federal agency. Because when in Congress has to individually do everything and they've turned Congress into a corrupt do nothing body, then none of it gets done. They get to do whatever they want with no repercussions and no one to stop them.
It's like the Supreme Court thinks it can supersede the constitution because it thinks the ammendment was poorly worded/thought out. cough cough second ammendment cough cough
It's been a shit show since day one with this court. If there's ever been a time to pack the court it is now. Hell, do it in response to this ruling. Allowing an insurrectionist on the ballot is plain unacceptable. We're already heading toward discourse we cannot solve. Make a stand, would someone?
Edit: Just clarifying it's the Supreme Court who doesn't think it has to adhere to the language in the amendment. Not myself.
The thing is it's not poorly worded. It clearly establishes the ban and clearly allows Congress to create legislation. It does not revoke the state power to administer elections. It does not require Congress to create legislation.
It's meant to be understood by anyone reading it and it was created with far more modern English than the original document. What you see is what you get, no semantics required.
It's the Supreme Court that thinks it, not me. I'll update my text to reflect that.
I thought I read that the decision was unanimous. If the liberals and conservatives on the court agree, it seems unlikely that packing the court would change the decision.
Also, as much as I'd love to see Trump excluded from ballots, we all know that states like Texas would turn around and do the same to Biden, just out of spite. It would change the nature of democracy, in a bad way, if individual states could just randomly decide to exclude candidates they don't like. Heck, what would stop them from excluding ALL candidates of a particular party, except perhaps some token losers or quislings no one ever heard of?
The liberals dessented by essentially saying the law should be "self executing" (a fucking joke) in that if he was part of an insurrection then he's just as ineligible as a 30 year old running for president. You simply can't run if you're under 35, so in some fantasy reality those judges live in Trump just wouldn't be able to be on the ballots automatically, as if no one has to actually ENFORCE that law (see: judges actions in removing him)
It's astounding how utterly deranged our laws are.
Trump has well earned the name "Teflon Don."
The ONLY thing that man has not lied about is "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any supporters (and he'd walk away into the sunset with 0 repercussions whatsoever)"
There is a remedy for that actually. If a state gets too far out of line with it's elections Congress can refuse to certify results from that state. This is what Trump supporters were hoping Congress would do in 2020 and why they rioted when it didn't happen.
And if we can't bar proven bad faith actors from office then our democracy is already dead. It just doesn't know it yet, like a person who overdosed on Tylenol. Furthermore the longer we push this confrontation with anti-democracy forces back the bloodier the resolution gets. We've seen this handled well and handled poorly in history. Handled well are cases like Bismarck and handled poorly are cases like the French Revolution. (Which if you think was just rich people dying, you really need to actually read about it.)
If the Supreme Court became a race to the bottom I seriously do not care. 150 justices represents 500 million better than 9 ever could. Cripple the courts, they're only famous for dealing out racism for the past 300 years.
I see that the decision is unanimous and that goes back to my original point. The court is showing they can supersede the constitution in this case so why not others where the constitution is failing? I don't pretend to know high level con law, I really don't. I do know stories about how some of the first justices struggled to pass down rulings that would effect so many with only their limited view. Not our current justices, though. If I remember correctly the constitution says very little about the scope of the Supreme Court other than its the highest court. It wasn't even till years after the founders had came and went that it started getting into this interpretating the constitution shit.
It’s like the Supreme Court thinks it can supersede the constitution because it thinks the amendment was poorly worded
That, or they had an outcome they wanted and found a way to get it
Where are all the states’ rights people now?
Too busy working to overthrow the government and implement a fascist dictatorship...
You know, in a sane universe, the President could legitimately actually declare a national emergency over the ongoing efforts to overturn representative democracy in the open, but we live in this one.
If we lived in a sane universe, the foreign-funded propaganda that Trump and his grift relies upon for energy, cash, and followers would have been turned off fifteen years ago back when Fox "News" openly misrepresented material facts regarding the Obama administration, or when they got sued the first time for not being actual news.
Too many people in here making lawful good arguments. you'll always lose to lawful evil. try being neutral good instead. i think the current times even call for being chaotic good.
The much vaunted checks and balances mean nothing when the SC is corrupt
Defund the Supreme Court.
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It’s not inconsistent with the court’s inconsistency though.
Scalia was a legal juggernaut on the bench and off it, as unfortunate his politics may be, he had a very large influence on the legal arena surrounding Constitutional law. He argued (correctly) for separated powers and the legislature doing the legislation on big and controversial topics instead of the court(s) - openly pointing out SCotUS’s composition as an unelected, politically appointed technocracy.
What changed and grew was the inconsistency of the conservative members at respecting that separation of powers whilst also not shying from their role as final legal arbiter. Trump v Anderson was correctly decided that states cannot deny candidates federal ballot access without due process, but they completely neglected to affirm or deny the lower courts ruling of what counts as attempted insurrection, kicking that to Congress.
This is political cowardice, not good and proper separated powers keeping each other in check. A legal case is the correct route to determine facts surrounding a candidates eligibility - not a political disqualification process without precedent nor established rules regarding evidentiary eligibility, rights of the accused, composition of the adjudicators, etc. any attempt to disqualify via US Congress will spurn a host of new legal challenges based on procedural questions
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This is political cowardice, not good and proper separated powers keeping each other in check.
That is democracy, they have to rule based on the law, and they err on the side of innocence. I think a court that prefers for the elected people to make policy decisions instead of them is better than a court that sets its own policy.
I have to disagree. Under the Marbury v. Madison precedent and the centuries of case law supporting it, the legislature writes the laws while the courts interpret any ambiguity (because lawyers and judges abhor ambiguity) and apply the law as interpreted.
A Federal circuit court had to decide if a newly threatened species of toad does, or does not get the protections given “endangered” as specified in the primary legislation… the highest court in the land is capable of answering what insurrection is, and if it was committed.
Pack the court.
This was a unanimous decision, the democrat appointees on the court agreed.
Or unpack it of neoliberalism.
Cool can we ignore the second amendment next?
God, I hate this timeline. Why couldn't we get the cool dystopian one.
Don't worry, let this one cook for a while and it'll turn into the cool dystopian one.
As if. The would be technocratic losers will never create synths, much less let us have sick katana arms.
I was really hoping for zombies, instead we get fascism and climate apocalypse.
No mention of the Court's reasoning that it should not be enforced at the State level, but instead at the Federal level?
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No mention of the Court’s reasoning that it should not be enforced at the State level, but instead at the Federal level?
See paragraphs 7, 10, and 12 of the article, which discuss factors already decided at the state level and how this ruling impacts the status quo.
I was speaking of the summary. A balanced summary is an intellectually honest summary.
Also, only paragraph 12 (kind of) covers what I asked about (Court's reasoning of Fed vs State enforcement; see above) ...
It would be clearly preferable if Congress were to pass enforcement legislation that established explicit procedures for resolving disputes under Section 3, including setting the burden of proof and creating timetables and deadlines for filing challenges and hearing appeals. Establishing a uniform process is better than living with a patchwork of state proceedings.
For reference sake, here are the three paragraphs you mentioned ...
From the article, paragraph 7 ...
But now Section 3 is different from other sections of the amendment. It requires federal legislation to enforce its terms, at least as applied to candidates for federal office. Through inaction alone, Congress can effectively erase part of the 14th Amendment.
From the article, paragraph 10 ...
As Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson point out, this approach is also inconsistent with the constitutional approach to other qualifications for the presidency. We can bar individuals from holding office who are under the age limit or who don’t meet the relevant citizenship requirement without congressional enforcement legislation. We can enforce the two-term presidential term limit without congressional enforcement legislation. Section 3 now stands apart not only from the rest of the 14th Amendment, but also from the other constitutional requirements for the presidency.
From the article, paragraph 12 ...
It would be clearly preferable if Congress were to pass enforcement legislation that established explicit procedures for resolving disputes under Section 3, including setting the burden of proof and creating timetables and deadlines for filing challenges and hearing appeals. Establishing a uniform process is better than living with a patchwork of state proceedings. But the fact that Congress has not acted should not effectively erase the words from the constitutional page. Chaotic enforcement of the Constitution may be suboptimal. But it’s far better than not enforcing the Constitution at all.
I propose we go out in mass this weekend and let them know we are pissed.
What's next? No more basic human rights? Maybe make it ok to own slaves if the owner really really wants to?
Let's say, I'm at a bus stop and I see this other guy next to me.... really big guy who looks like a gym manager....and I tell him to be my slave? What then?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision striking Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot, even insurrectionists who’ve violated their previous oath of office can hold federal office, unless and until Congress passes specific legislation to enforce Section 3.
In the aftermath of the oral argument last month, legal observers knew with near-certainty that the Supreme Court was unlikely to apply Section 3 to Trump.
But instead of any of these options, the court went with arguably the broadest reasoning available: that Section 3 isn’t self-executing, and thus has no force or effect in the absence of congressional action.
We can bar individuals from holding office who are under the age limit or who don’t meet the relevant citizenship requirement without congressional enforcement legislation.
In one important respect, the court’s ruling on Monday is worse and more consequential than the Senate’s decision to acquit Trump after his Jan. 6 impeachment trial in 2021.
It would be clearly preferable if Congress were to pass enforcement legislation that established explicit procedures for resolving disputes under Section 3, including setting the burden of proof and creating timetables and deadlines for filing challenges and hearing appeals.
The original article contains 948 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It was a unanimous decision and the precedent they set was that states don't have the right to declare who is and who is not a traitor, only the federal government can decide that. I don't like Trump, but the precedent needed to be set and I agree with the supreme court on this one. You can still try to prove he is a traitor in federal court, and then he would be knocked off the ballot in all states.
Honestly, that part of the amendment is just horribly written. It reads like a rush job, which is probably was given it was written to remove/keep out former Confederates. There's no mechanism in there to determine guilt or any definition of what constitutes insurrection or rebellion. Seceding, forming a new government, and declaring war on the US is obvious, but it doesn't say what the minimum threshold actually is. The entire thing is just two sentences. This very comment has a similar word count.
It was written that way to welcome back the confederates. This was a war where it was brother against brother, father against son, so it was written in a way to welcome back the south. Like "yeah, we kicked your ass, but we're still friends, we're only going to change things a little bit", and it has to be a super majority so anything less than 2/3's in both houses isn't enough. A super majority like that can impeach AND remove a sitting president. It could also recall a Continental Congress which has powers not used since the revolutionary war.
I don't think that was the majority opinion, but the concurring opinion. The majority was party lines and stated that no, federal Court is also not enough, only action by congress will count.
Yeah, if you get a super majority from both houses of Congress then it supercedes the president and the supreme court, but that does not happen very often.
Also, i thought states were given the right to determine their own ballot rules.
Or is that mute because this is a federal election?
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This was...a bad decision. Quite frankly, they are abdicating responsibility with a sophomoric "not it!" when it comes to finally doing what the 14th requires. I wouldn't say it rises to the level of the Bush v. Gore decision at the turn of the millennium, but it is quite close.
Using their logic, Jefferson Davis could have run for president.
Has Trump actually been found guilty of insurrection? It seems this could be where the issue lies. I know he's an insurrectionist, you know he is an insurrectionist but unless convicted how do you apply the law?
He was found by the Colorado court to have engaged in insurrection, yes. No court since has overruled that finding. Not even the scotus in this decision disagreed with the finding. They just said, basically, "He did it but Colorado doesn't have the power to determine eligibility under the 14th; That's for congress."
The "trump was never convicted of insurrection" meme is dead.
It requires no conviction.
So... what's to stop a Texas or a Mississippi or a Florida from deciding that Biden has participated in an insurrection, and requiring no conviction, uses this as grounds for removal from the ballot in November?
As much as I want Trump off ballots and believe he's an insurrectionist, it's important to remember that anything that can be done to hamper his chances that requires no (or a low bar) legal framework can also be done to help his chances.
If a court in Colorado can sit down and decide he's off the ballot because of their opinions, and that decision is enforceable and unassailable, then we're establishing that a state court can strike any name from any ballot because they say so.
With that precedent, I would fully expect states with GOP leadership to appoint judges who would then find reasons to call some aspect of Biden's presidency an insurrection (in a similar vein as the Mayorkas impeachment), and remove him from their state's ballot.
Yes, that was the ruling of the Colorado state Supreme Court. This is the federal Supreme Court saying "the courts can't do that, only congress can" which is a very very strange way to read that amendment.
And then when it gets to Congress they'll throw their hands up and say "He's not president we can't impeach him!" as if that's all they could do. Then when he is president (I fully expect him to win...) they'll say "impeachment is just a political tool it's not about crimes!" So they can continue to do absofuckinglutley nothing about it, again pretending that this is an impeachment thing.
I'm almost 40 and I've never lived in a time where Congress served any useful purpose. We already don't have any representation yet we pretend like we do because like 6 people exist (AOC, Porter, Sanders etc...)