The case turns on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
5 days in and this year already exhausting
Obligatory “I’m tired, boss.”
Estoy cansado, jefe
I want off Mr Bones Wild Ride
For fucking real. Where is the fast forward button.
Oh and just for everyone to remember. The 39th Congress was the one that wrote the 14th Amendment. We weren’t some weeks old nation by that point and we literally have the minutes from that Congress discussing the 14th Amendment.
It’s not some open question as to “does 14A S3 apply to the President”?
Why did you omit to exclude them [The office of the President and Vice President]?
— Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD)
Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States’
— Sen. Lot Morrill (R-MA)
Or does this apply to this instance or just the Civil War.
This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood.
— Sen. Peter G. Van Winkle (R-WV)
It’s not some “well what did they mean by such-and-such? Oh we have no record of that.” No, no. We literally have the transcript for this one.
The only open question is “does Colorado get to determine if Trump committed an act to disqualify him or not”. We literally have the answer for all the other stuff straight from the mouths of those who framed the 14th Amendment.
“Yes, but who cares what a bunch of old dead politicians from the past think”
- Supreme justices that claim to be consitutionalists.
“Originalists”, not “constitutionalists”.
What’s the distinction? Originalist meaning the original, unamended constitution?
That seems outside their authority. Their purpose, as I understand it, is rule on the letter of the law for the current constitution. The lawmakers, I.E. congress/senate, are who can amend the constitution.
There are different, competing philosophies of judicial interpretation.
The current SCOTUS majority champions “originalism”, which means that judges must apply the meaning intended by whoever wrote a law. This often turns judges into part-time historians, trying to delve into the minds and attitudes of people who are long dead. But in this case, it’s pretty easy to determine that the Reconstructionists who wrote the 14th Amendment had no intention of letting an insurrectionist become president. So “officer” clearly includes the president.
Originalism is in contrast to “textualism”, which means interpreting the actual text(s) of the law without worrying about what the authors intended. So “officer” must be defined according to how it’s used elsewhere in the Constitution, which (surprisingly) may result in something that the authors of the 14th Amendment never intended.
There are also other competing philosophies, but right now these two are in conflict. The interesting thing is that the SCOTUS has to side against Trump if it actually believes in originalism (as opposed to using it as a pretext for their antiquated ideas).
Excellent explanation! Thank you!
They can try to argue that Colorado doesn’t have that right/ability, but:
The Constitution also specifies age, residency, and citizenship requirements to run for the House or Senate. Individuals who satisfy those requirements cannot be prohibited from running for office for failing to satisfy other qualifications. States can, however, impose reasonable ballot access restrictions that a candidate must fulfill in order to appear on the ballot, such as submitting a petition signed by a certain number of registered voters. The Supreme Court has aggressively enforced this restriction by invalidating various attempts to impose term limits on Members of Congress. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the Court held that the Elections Clause did not permit a state to refuse to print on the ballot the names of candidates for the U.S. House who already had served three terms there, or the names of candidates for the U.S. Senate who had already served two terms. -Source
And in Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, they argued:
the Constitution prohibits States from imposing congressional qualifications additional to those specifically enumerated in its text. Petitioners’ argument that States possess control over qualifications as part of the original powers reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment is rejected for two reasons. First, the power to add qualifications is not within the States’ pre-Tenth Amendment “original powers,” but is a new right arising from the Constitution itself, and thus is not reserved. Second, even if the States possessed some original power in this area, it must be concluded that the Framers intended the Constitution to be the exclusive source of qualifications for Members of Congress, and that the Framers thereby “divested” States of any power to add qualifications.
Well guess what. The disqualification comes straight from the Constitution itself, and has not been restricted or amended by Congress. Ergo it is the only qualification limitation which matters, and a state is well within its authority to enforce it.
Yeah, but you’re forgetting that the SCOTUS is corrupt and cannot be trusted to fairly evaluate the facts.
Imagine you can be kept off the ballot for being five signatures short of a full page, but doing an insurrection isn’t a good reason. And the individual states can decide on the first thing but not the second. Wild.
This is challenging to search through, mind providing page numbers so I know where to look?
Who’s joining me in the betting pool for an (unfortunate) ruling of “only Congress can decide insurrections”?
I hate how uselessly vague the Constitution is. That “insurrection” needs to be defined and how there’s no defined process to properly categorize these crimes is baffling.
At times it feels like the Constitution has as much care and thought put into it as a rushed English essay cranked out in the bathroom stall 15 mins before class.
You can’t be clear enough when it comes to language when dealing with somebody interested in willful misinterpretation. That’s the problem here.
That’s very concerning to me because at what point does one stop pretending to be governed by rules if one refuses to acknowledge the meaning of words?
At some point you’re just making things up.
We’ve been making things up this whole time. The only reason any of this works is because we all agree it does
The thing is, the 14th Amendment, Section 3 isn’t vague on this point:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Look at the wording - it’s clearly intended to be an automatic disqualification. The only way you could possibly arrive at the conclusion that the Office of the President is exempt from this section is by jumping through frankly absurd and facile semantic hoops.
But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Pointedly, the only way Congress should be involved (per the relevant section) is in rescinding the disqualification.
But I’m sure the Tribunal of Six will be more than happy to just say “fuck you, we don’t care”. At which point… well, they’re only appointed for life, and they did somewhat recently vastly broaden the scope of the 2nd Amendment, and political violence is on the rise, so I wouldn’t be shocked if one or more people decided enough is enough and conducted a “citizen’s kinetic impeachment”, as it were.
Regardless of how things ultimately turn out, things are definitely 10/10 fucky, and I absolutely hate it.
Alright, I’ll play devil’s advocate:
Yes, you are correct in your description of what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says, and what it should mean. However, there is no legal (as opposed to a dictionary or layman’s) definitions on what “insurrection” or “rebellion” are, whether the events of January 6th meet either of those definitions, what the definition of “engaged” is, whether the actions Trump took (or didn’t take) meet that definition, and (as you already pointed out) whether the President is considered “an officer under the United States.”
Failing any one of those conditions means Trump wins:
- SCOTUS could say that merely trying to stop Congress from counting votes instead of dismantling the entire system of government doesn’t rise to the definition of “insurrection” or “rebellion.”
- SCOTUS could say that inciting your cult to attack Congress or failing to take action to stop them doesn’t constitute “engaging.”
- SCOTUS could say that Colorado erred in its interpretation of the Presidency as an “Office.”
As you said, this is facile and semantic, but the unfortunate truth is that our legal system absolutely runs on semantics. We are heading for a Bush v. Gore Redux, especially when you consider how many of the current SCOTUS justices had a hand in that decision.
(And no, Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run because traitors usually aren’t able to do much of anything.) (edit: had to fix this sentence.)
This is what I was getting at.
- Insurrection or rebellion is not defined well
- Who actually makes the determination if someone is accused of insurrection or rebellion?
I don’t like the possibility of this being leveraged against a Dem in a swing state because something like abortion advocacy got distorted into “rebellion” against future generations or something.
And then there’s the historical folks squabbling about how you can’t change the constitution. The country changes but we’re all still working on late 1700s language, plus amendments.
They never meant the document to last this long. It’s literally written inside the Jefferson memorial.
Of course they’re gonna say yes. They don’t need any death threats from a bunch of lunatics, there are too many billionaire funded luxury vacations to be had. They don’t have time for such nonsense.
But wouldn’t that mean anyone with pending felony charges can run for office? Or can they already? I guess you are innocent until proven guilty. But is it a states right to decide who they put in the ballot? But didn’t we fight a war to say that the states have to follow federal laws? But so many states already have laws that contradict federal laws. Man the US government is whack.
They’re going to find some way to let him run. They’ll overturn the trial judge in it being insurrection, they’ll say the amendment needs legislation to back it up, they’ll say say the word “the” doesn’t really mean “the” like it did in 1492 or some such nonsense. It’ll be 5-4 or 6-3, because the fascist right has the judiciary captured.
America entered the legal phase of fascism during Trumps presidency, and Biden and the democrats weren’t able to correct it during this last best chance to do so. In my humble, ignorant, foreign opinion, this is it, this will be the next step in the long coming codification of fascist rule in America.
Good luck, hope I’m wrong.
They are going to force him on the ballot. It’s going to be a ghastly piece of tortured crap.
The question is how they leave the door open for swing states to kick Biden off.
In the (unlikely) case SCOTUS rules to exclude him from holding office, do you think there would be an insurrection at SCOTUS? Imagine the broken windows in protest of the court “stealing the election.”
A court stealing an election? That’s crazy.
2000 election year laughs.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is ineligible for Colorado’s Republican primary ballot because he had engaged in insurrection in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The case turns on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Where Things Stand: Judge Tanya S. Chutkan rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, and the Supreme Court declined a request from Jack Smith, the special counsel, to hear an immediate appeal of that ruling.
The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the first part of the ruling — that Mr. Trump had engaged in an insurrection, including by setting out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election; trying to alter vote counts; encouraging bogus slates of competing electors; pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution; and calling for the march on the Capitol.
“President Trump asks us to hold,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion, “that Section 3 disqualifies every oath-breaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land.
“Were we to adopt President Trump’s view,” the majority wrote, “Colorado could not exclude from the ballot even candidates who plainly do not satisfy the age, residency and citizenship requirements” of the Constitution.
The original article contains 987 words, the summary contains 280 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
good thing all the baddies still have their seats
Actul title on the article
Justices to Decide Whether Trump Is Eligible for Colorado Ballot
News outlets often change titles on breaking news articles after they’re first published. Here’s an archived copy showing that it had the title I used as of 5 Jan 2024 22:10:56 UTC
Ah, thank you
