Here’s what Stevens said for the majority in the Term Limits Case, wuoting from the Wikipedia article:
He further ruled that sustaining Amendment 73 would result in “a patchwork of state qualifications” for U.S. representatives, and called that consequence inconsistent with “the uniformity and national character that the framers sought to ensure.”
My personal view is that would apply even more to the election of the President and Vice-president, the only ones to hold nation-wide positions.
California passed a law before the 2020 election requiring that Presidential candidates release their tax returns in order to appear on the ballot (guess who that was aimed at). The Courts struck it down.
Good example, thanks.
But those additional requirements don’t affect any place but the city or state that passes them.
Additional qualifications to get on the ballot in one state can have an impact on a candidate’s viability in that state, and that in turn can affect the election in other states.
If Florida imposed a maximum age of 70 on the day of election to be on the Florida ballot, that effectively takes Biden out of the election in Florida. If the Dems nonetheless nominated Biden nationally, the new age requirement would move Florida from “battleground state” to automatic Republican win. (I’m assuming for the moment that Trump is not the GOP candidate).
Giving the Republican candidate an automatic win in Florida would have a significant effect on the electoral college politics.
That doesn’t happen if a Florida building has to meet stricter building codes to meet beach conditions, or hurricane conditions. That stricter Florida code doesn’t have any effect in Nevada or Wyoming.
That’s a more interesting question because many politicians have run races from prison, and won.
More generally:
In those cases, the body to which they are elected to may have internal rules that either refuse to seat them or expel them from office. The Presidency has no such rules.
Of course there are no Presidential precedents for this hypothetical either, but the example of Eugene V. Debs is a fun look at the possibilities.
Finally, in 1920, running with Seymour Stedman, Debs won 913,693 votes, which remains the all-time high number of votes for a Socialist Party candidate in a US presidential election. Notably, the Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920, granting women the federal right to vote across the country, and with the expanded voting pool, his vote total accounted for only 3.4 percent of the total number of votes cast.[31][32] The size of the vote is nevertheless remarkable since Debs was at the time a federal prisoner in jail for sedition, though he promised to pardon himself if elected.
But presumably having seated him, they would be within their rights to expel him - just I assume a higher bar in terms of vote count.
IIRC from the 1980 election(?) it was Anderson who spent a lot of effort fighting assorted measures that limited who was on the ballot for president in different states - thus clearing the way for future 3rd party candidates. So up until 1980, at least, nobody had a ruled against restrictive measures against putting one’s name on the ballot for president, since it served both parties’ interest. I dont know what Anderson got for judgements, but presumably it is harder to block a candidate today.
I think that the reason why the 14th Amendment specifically calls out Senators and Representatives, but not the President, is because they anticipated the argument that Senators and Representatives were officers of their individual states, not of the United States. That argument does not apply to the President, so there was no need to call out the Presidency specifically.
That said, the 14th Amendment does not say how to determine whether someone has engaged in “insurrection”, and it would presumably require a guilty verdict from a court on that charge (and is “insurrection” even a defined crime in the US code?).
Even better example!
But this is essentially an argument from consequences. The fact that there are potentially undesirable implications does not mean that the Constitution says something other than what it says. How much traction am I going to get with the observation that any fool buying a gun on a whim is clearly insane, so the 2A cannot possibly protect that?
The cite of the Courts having already addressed the issue with CA in 2020 is certainly significant. I don’t know how far that went, but this SC is obviously unlikely to reverse any kind of precedent that favors Trump. But for what it’s worth, here we’re talking about a Federal law potentially placing a further restriction on eligibility for presidential office, not a single state.
And then depression set in. . .
While I’ve stated the Congress cannot add to the Presidential qualifications in the Constitution, of course neither I nor anyone else can say for 100% certainty that the Supreme Court wouldn’t find differently. But the existing jurisprudence strongly suggests that it is impermissible. And existing jurisprudence also suggests that potential disqualifiers such as 18 USC 2071 and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment do not apply to the Presidency as it is not an “office/officer of the United States.”
Yes it is. So? Considering the consquences of two possible interpretations of a legal clause is an accepted method of legal interpretation. Once you’ve considered the different consequences of two different interpretations, you go back to the statute as a whole, and ask, “which of these consequences is more consistent with the overall purpose of the statute?” That is an acceptable way to try to resolve an ambiguity in the clause.
Here, the consequences of one interpretation of the qualifications clause is that in an election for an national office, one of only two national offices and one with immense powers, the same rules as to eligibility will apply nation-wide.
The consequences of the other proposed interpretation, that each state can add additional qualifications, is that an individual for national office may not qualify in every state, which affects both the ability of the residents of that state to vote for the candidate of their choice, and which may have serous implications for the election to that office in other states.
Given those competing consequences, and going back to the qualifications clause, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the qualifications clause is meant to establish uniform qualifications for the entire nation.
You may not agree, of course, but simply saying it is a consideration of consequences does not render this analysis an inappropriate way to try to interpret the qualifications clause.
Plus, your last comment, “does not mean that the Constitution says something other than what it says” is essentially an assertion that your interpretation of what the Constitution says is the correct one, and strikes me as an attempt to foreclose debate. The issue here is that there is some ambiguity. There is nothing in the wording of the qualifications clause that says “States may add to these qualifications.” Nor is there anything that says “States may not add to these qualifications.” Faced with those two competing interpretations, it’s necessary to analyse the wording of the clause, and its role in Article I as a whole. Considering consequences of two competing interpretations is one interpretive approach.
Where in Article I or Article II is Congress given the power to legislate with respect to qualifications to be president?
There is just one president, but over 500 in Congress.
It occurs to me that Marbury v Madison casts some light on this issue.
Article III sets out the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, then defines its appellate jurisdiction.
The point in issue in Marbury was the federal Judicature Act, which conferred the power to issue mandamus on the Supreme Court. That’s what Mr Marbury cited in applying to the Supreme Court for an order that Secretary of State Madison deliver Marbury’s judicial commission.
Chief Justice Marshall held that the list of original jurisdiction in Article III was exhaustive. Congress lacked the power to add to it. If it wanted to create a mandamus power, it had to confer that on the lower federal courts, and then there could be an appeal to the Supreme Court under its constitutionally defined appellate jurisdiction.
That led to the Chief Justice striking down the portion of the Judicature Act which expanded the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction.
That type of argument applies equally here, it seems to me. The Constitution in Article II sets out the qualifications to be President. As in Marbury, that list is exhaustive, and unlike Marbury, there isn’t any provision to expand it in any lower forum, as there was with the lower federal courts.
OK, that’s a detail about Marbury v. Madison that I’ve never heard before… So the biggest expansion of the Court’s power in US history was them rejecting an expansion of the Court’s power?
Correct. That was the actual constitutional point in issue: could the Congress expand the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court?
That required the Court to consider whether they had the constitutional jurisdiction to review the constitutionality of an act passed by Congress.
They decided they did have the jurisdiction to review the constitutionality of the Judicature Act, then they reviewed the grant of mandamus in the Act against the list of original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court set out in Article III.
They concluded that Congress could not expand the list of original jurisdiction.
Therefore, the statutory provision for mandamus, giving the Supreme Court the power to order government officials to fulfill legal duties, was unconstitutional.
Since they did not have jurisdiction to order mandamus, the Court dismissed Mr Marbury’s application for mandamus to compel the delivery of his commission.
Without his commission, he never became a federal judge.
Now, there is a difference in that case from the presidential qualifications clause, in that Art. III said that the Court did have jurisdiction to hear such matters under its appellate jurisdiction, once a federal trial court had dealt with it.
But since there is no alternative in the presidential qualifications clause, I think that makes the argument that it can’t be added to all the stronger. There’s nothing else that allows an expansion, unlike the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which is in addition to the original jurisdiction.
Text of the jurisdiction clause is here:
But the President is really important. Why not include the President?
That argument is a good one.
I am gathering that the real FQ answer is that it’s like a Schrödinger’s Cat law. It both applies to POTUS and doesn’t at the same time. You don’t open the box to see if the cat is dead unless this ever gets to court.