Looking at a less highly-charged example: Ted Cruz. Suppose someone had challenged his eligibility, arguing he was not a « natural born citizen », as required by the Constitution.
The facts there are pretty clear:
Ted was born in Canada and was a Canadian citizen from the moment of his birth.
His mom was a US citizen, his dad was not, at the moment of his birth.
Under US citizenship law, he was a US citizen at birth, by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.
Question: given those facts, is Ted a « natural born citizen »? That term is not defined by the constitution, but it is a legal term.
A court faced with Ted’s case would have to decide the legal meaning of the term, independently of the facts of the case, and then apply that meaning to the facts.
Since that analysis requires legal determinations, that part of a trial court’s decision would be subject to appellate review.
For example, section 1 of the 14th Amendment creates rights to due process and equal protection of the law. Those rights can be enforced through the courts without any need for federal legislation.
Section 1 also provides that, generally, anyone born in the US is a citizen. No federal legislation is needed to implement that provision.
Section 3 is the insurrection disqualification clause. The issue is whether it stands on its own and can be enforced by the executive and the courts without the need for federal legislation, in the same way as the provisions of s. 1.
Not even remotely close. The rules on eligibility is in the US Constitution. Saying the eligibility requirement can vary from state to state is like saying the popular election of Senators can vary from state to state and if your state legislature wanted they could appoint the Senators.
There is another way SCOTUS can punt. They can say it is up to Congress but Congress already acquitted Trump of insurrection therefore he is eligible. Don’t blame us, blame Congress.
This would not surprise me. However, nowhere in the 14th does it give Congress the power to determine eligibility. For the SCOTUS to do so would require citing the MSU* Law book.
This is what confuses me, that in the aftermath of the civil war they would have intended individual states to determine their own candidates eligibility.
A question (genuine, not meant rhetorically) for those who argue that his disqualification under 14A should be decided at a state level, with individual states potentially coming to different determinations - what exactly happens if half the states decide he’s disqualified, but he wins anyway? The implications of accepting the absence of any consistent federal process to determine disqualification are now fully manifest. Must the states who deemed him disqualified under 14A now just shrug and accept that a Constitutionally disqualified candidate is their president? If so, how was it ever meaningful to say that the states were separately empowered to make this determination in the first place?
Not that the principle is any different, but it could be many states, not just one.
It seems to me that this undermines the idea that no process at the federal level is empowered to “tell the states what to do” with respect to 14A. Either some kind of federal determination binds all states at the outset, or a federal determination (the election result) binds all states at the outcome. You cannot avoid one or the other. And it certainly feels inconsistent with the principle that it’s up to a state to determine 14A disqualification if that state might eventually be forced to accept a president that they have disqualified.