I have no objection to the Supreme Court’s judicial review. A person should have a right to ensure that they were given a meaningful chance to present their position, in a court of law, and the findings are grounded in well established evidence (that is, due process), which properly applies the text of the Amendment, before they are deemed disqualified for violating the 14th amendment.
But this remains a politically charged issue. And I think that our fragile democracy risks being completely destroyed if 9 justices gather, and 5 or 6 of them either sanction or disqualify a candidate. That is assuredly not a democratic process, and it would do great harm to the legitimacy of our courts.
Which isn’t to say that the law can be ignored. But for reasons I’ve already explained, the ballots (and the challenges to those ballots) should derive from a state level.
Federal judicial review? Yes, I support that, because the state has to fairly apply the federal constitution to the findings of fact made at that state level.
Federal uniform fiat? No, I don’t support that, because our elections depend on a general consensus that they are legitimate, which I think is undermined when you allow the federal government to pick and choose candidates.
As I hope I just explained, I don’t think this. If a state didn’t offer due process, or their decision is
not a proper application of the written text, then I don’t think their findings should be upheld.
However, I don’t think this should be the Supreme Court’s goal. I believe it would create extreme anger and resentment if they were so definitive.
While that’s assuredly true, there will be extreme anger and resentment on somebody’s part no matter what. If they allow each state to make its’ own determination, if they say he is qualified for “reasons”, if they say he is disqualified due to the 14th Amendment, no matter what. There’s no happy compromise. There’s no way this doesn’t end in gnashing of teeth and possible bloodshed on one faction’s part or another. Better a clean, clear, final answer than a patchwork of infighting.
That’s why they need to make a definitive determination that cannot be challenged and let the chips fall where they may. I’d prefer they find him disqualified, no question. And that will be ugly, but there’s a solid lawful backing to make such a determination and anger can only go on for so long. If they find him qualified it will be ugly for a longer time, i believe. Either he’ll lose and maybe try to start another insurrection or he’ll win and start trying to remake the country into his own MAGA paradise. If they let each state make their own determination without ruling on the pertinence of the 14th I predict it will be chaos and anarchy for years to come while everyone fights and sues everyone else to get a ballot more to their liking, knowing the Supreme Court won’t step in and interfere.
Then they are wrong. If it is in the Constitution then they (the Feds) can absolutely tell them they applied it wrongly. For example
The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves;
If a state decides that because of a blizzard the electors then should meet in St Lucia to vote are you saying the Feds cannot hold them to staying in the state to vote?
That is why they are appointed for life, to make the tough yet correct legal decision. If it were to make decisions that were popular we would never have Brown v Board of Education.
Your example is a state not following the US Constitution properly, but the suggestion was that SCOTUS can’t tell a state that they aren’t following their own laws correctly. That’s where their jurisdiction ends.
If the state is violating their own laws in a way that doesn’t violate federal law then I don’t think the Supremes can do anything about it.
But if their laws violate the Constitution or federal law then sure they followed THEIR laws correctly but what’s the point? The outcome is still overruled. Let’s say a state creates a law that says that all 7 representatives are elected by plurality. The state then certifies the top 7 vote getters as Representatives. SCOTUS will say, “Awesome, you followed your laws perfectly. However they run afoul of the Supremacy Clause as federal law requires representative elections to be run by district. Your election was invalid.”
And I have to disagree with your premise that “If the state is violating their own laws in a way that doesn’t violate federal law then I don’t think the Supremes can do anything about it.”. Wasn’t one of the issues in Bush v Gore that Secretary Harris certified the Florida results according to the timeline set forth by Florida Law and SCOTUS said, “Nope, under state law it has to go to SCoFla.”?
That’s what i was saying, yes. In Colorado the state election laws allow people to contest that candidates are ineligible to appear on the ballot and request a legal hearing to decide whether or not the candidate should be barred from the ballot. In Maine state election law says that the secretary of state makes that determination. The Supreme Court cannot tell the states that they cannot follow their own election laws unless the matter before them is whether or not such a law is constitutional.
They can, however, rule that the candidate is in fact not subject to the 14th Amendment disqualification and overturn the appeals court ruling in Colorado that upheld the disqualification. That’s not a indictment against Colorado following its’ own election laws, just overturning a court verdict on constitutional grounds.
Not sure what they could do about Maine unless someone files a lawsuit contesting the decision of the secretary of state, there’s a trial, a verdict, and an appeal…
The 18th Amendment (Prohibition) was ratified in January 1919, but the Volstead Act, which actually codified the regulations for Prohibition, wasn’t passed until October 1919.
Suppose the Taiwan Supreme Court rules that Lai Ching-te, the slight front-runner for next Saturday’s presidential election, can be kept off the ballot in Kaohsiung, but should remain on in Taipei.
Such a ruling would properly cause results to be questioned by international election observers, with late night American comics joking about it.
The argument that the U.S. Supreme Court might possibly allow Trump to be kept off the Colorado primary ballot, but allowed on elsewhere, seems to me similarly ludicrous. As for precedents, this SCOTUS doesn’t respect precedent, and, if the precedent here is that each state can decide for itself, shouldn’t. I think they should rule against Trump, but whatever they do, they should set a national standard.
As I posted before, a New York Times article suggested that I am right in expecting them to make a broad ruling giving a national standard for both primaries and the general.
I’m not sure what you mean. In that case it’s an issue of federal law so SCOTUS would have jurisdiction. Nobody is saying they wouldn’t.
Nope, the SCOTUS ruling was based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and they also determined that Florida’s ruling violated Article II. They weren’t determining if Florida violated their own laws because it’s not in the purview of SCOTUS to do so.
I hope they refuse to be cowed by his pathetic attempts at stochastic terrorism. How many people has Trump killed? He’s no Pablo Escobar. When Escobar said you could have plato (silver, as in money) or plomo (lead, as in bullets) he did not file a lawsuit if your answer displeased him. He did not send an angry tweet. He did not rant about “deranged” prosecutors. He ordered people killed. Murdered to death, unambiguously and not “in two weeks”.
Send your mob, Trump. They failed the first time, they will fail the second (and every successive) time as well.
Elise Stefanik won’t agree to certify the 2024 election results, using the Colorado and Maine ballot legal fights as an explanation. She also didn’t certify the 2020 election, so at least she’s consistent.
Well sure, absolutely. There were various people who died on January 6th. I am sure we could also count that lady who died in Charlottesville who got killed by the “nice” Nazis. I’d even be happy to say that Trump is responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Americans due to his incompetent handling of COVID.
But I am talking about the people who have opposed Trump directly and yet are somehow walking around drawing breath. Shae Moss and Ruby Freeman are still alive and well. Gen. Milley was publicly denounced by Trump as being worthy of the death penalty and he’s still drawing a pension. Judge Engoron hasn’t had to replace his court clerk yet, nor has the judge himself come to any harm.
And let’s not forget Mike Pence, coming in with the biggest betrayal since Judas. There was a crowd loudly yelling “hang Mike Pence!” and a gallows (although with the disclaimer that it may not have been sturdy enough to be functional but that’s a different thread). On Jan 6th, Pence doesn’t want to get into his limo because he was worried the Secret Service would drive him out to the woods and dispose of him. And yet here we are today and Pence is still giving interviews on CNN, talking shit about Trump. Between Jan 6th and Jan 20th, Trump just kept this traitor on the payroll. Said he deserved to die but didn’t feel like putting any effort into actually making it happen.
Pablo Escobar brutalized his enemies in ways I don’t even want to describe. Saddam Hussein reportedly killed three generations of a traitor’s family. Kim Jong-Un has his enemies shredded by anti-aircraft guns. Trump doesn’t have the guts to fart in a crowded elevator.
This is irrelevant to my point, which was that Section 3 does not explicitly require a criminal conviction and there is nothing in the law to support the SC from imposing such a requirement now, nearly 150 years later. The Volstead Act was law enacted by Congress within months of the 18th being ratified, mainly to define exemptions to the 18th Amendment, and is neither tangential nor opposite of what we have here. Furthermore, the Criminal Code that made insurrection a Federal crime did not exist when the Amendment was passed, so it would be hard to argue a criminal finding was intended by the framers of the Amendment. Such a criminal act did not exist.
As far as the blatherings of the Missouri SoS (as well as other Republican politicians in red states) are concerned, those are also irrelevant. If the Republicans thought they could keep Biden off the ballot, they obviously would, regardless of what Section 3 says. Remember Obama’s birth certificate? If they thought they had any reason (legitimate or not) to keep Biden off they ballot, they will try to use it, regardless of how this case plays out.
I don’t think this is sound reasoning. There is great uncertainty right now about what Republicans could get away with in any attempt to take Biden off the ballot. How the SC handles the Colorado appeal obviously speaks to that. If the message from the SC is that ruling on 14A disqualification is not the business of the federal judiciary and that they will broadly speaking not be inclined to interfere with state determinations even if they are mutually contradictory, that certainly implies that Missouri et al are more likely to be successful in taking Biden off the ballot.
Obviously on the facts here Trump should be disqualified and Biden should not. But the same process of appeal and potential SC action will apply to both upholding justified 14A disqualification and overruling malicious 14A disqualification. The question of what the correct process should be must look beyond the outcome we think is just with Trump.
I don’t know where this thinking comes from. I don’t think anyone is saying the SC will concur that 14A disqualification is not the business of the federal judiciary. I do think they will agree that the states have the right to keep unqualified people from being on the ballot for elections in their state.
Either the Colorado district court was correct in its finding that Trump engaged in insurrection, or they were not. If the US SC doesn’t believe it was correct, I am pretty sure they will have to explain why it was incorrect. Either the trial itself was flawed, the evidence was flawed, or the law wasn’t followed. As a result, I would expect the SC to stay the decision until the Colorado courts correct the flaws, and then examine the result.
If Missouri, say, wants to also hold a trial to determine whether or not Trump engaged in insurrection should the SC uphold the Colorado courts’ decision, to give each state a chance to determine the question, they will have to address what was wrong with both the Colorado decision and the US SC decision. Otherwise, there would be chaos.
One thing is for sure, IMHO. If the US SC does agree with the Colorado finding (that Trump engaged in insurrection and is ineligible to hold the office of President), it will send a strong message to those who believe supporting Trump in his insurrection is a good idea and it will put a quick end to this nonsense. Allowing it to drag on, while it may or may not help Trump, it hurts the GOP and the country as a whole.
If the only downside is the 14A argument may be used in the future, a finding that Trump did not engage in insurrection will not prevent this, so the downside is nil.
It has certainly been raised as a possibility, both in this thread and in extensive commentary in the press. The issue that has been widely discussed is that since the Constitution does not formally specify any process for determining 14A disqualification, it contradicts originalist/textualist principles for the SC to do so. So they may decide they have very limited scope to interfere with the states unless some law has obviously been broken.
And you have certainly been arguing against them introducing criminal conviction as the standard. Okay, I tend to agree, but then what exactly do you think the process/standard be? What should the Supreme Court do exactly if (say) a Missouri court comes to a finding of fact that Biden committed insurrection, and then correctly applies the law to those facts and takes him off the ballot?