The Colorado Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision to disqualify former President Trump from the state primary ballot has come under fire from Republicans who have claimed it is a political move against…
Yeah, because the presidency was already covered by the phrase “any office, civil or military.” This very concern is brought up during the congressional debates over ratifying the amendment, and is addressed:
But this amendment does not go far enough. I suppose the framers of the amendment thought it was necessary
to provide for such an exigency. I do not see but that any one of these gentlemen may be elected President or Vice
President of the United States, and why did you omit to exclude them? I do not understand them to be excluded
from the privilege of holding the two highest offices in the gift of the nation. No man is to be a Senator or
Representative or an elector for President or Vice President.
Mr. MORRILL. Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office, civil or military, under
the United States.”
Mr. JOHNSON. Perhaps I am wrong as to the exclusion from the Presidency; no doubt I am; but I was misled
by noticing the specific exclusion in the case of Senators and Representatives.
Yeah, literally the only pathway to ruling Trump is not barred is by throwing out the entire finding of fact by the Colorado supreme court that Trump engaged in an insurrection. It’s not impossible since appellate courts do technically have this power, but appellate courts are usually supposed to give extreme deference to lower courts when it comes to their findings of fact–the standard from my brief bit of research is that the lower court’s findings must be “clearly erroneous.”
So given how batshit our current court is I expect at least two surefire no votes from Thomas and Alito. Gorsuch is probably a yes vote given how much of a strict textualist he’s turned out to be, as are the entire liberal bloc. Ironically, Roberts is yet again the most likely swing vote, and I honestly don’t know if he’d sign off on disqualifying him. I could see anything from 7-2 in favor of upholding to 5-4 or 6-3 overturning. Considering their recent signal in the form of denying Smith’s request for expedited review, I’m… honestly not optimistic.
We don’t know, all we know iirc is that at least four justices said “nah bro go through the regular appeals process.” So reading the tea leaves, at least Thomas and Alito, plus any two of Gorsuch, Roberts, ACB, and Kavanaugh said no, at minimum.
It’s hard to say with certainty what this signals about how they’ll rule on the various Trump cases, but at minimum it indicates that they either don’t realize that he’s trying to delay the trials in the hopes he can win the election and have them all dropped, or they don’t care that’s what he’s doing. If they really_don’t_ care, it could be because they approve of his actions–and will likely rule in his favor–or simply because they value strict adherence to the regular process even at the potential risk of allowing an unqualified candidate (in the actual constitutional sense) obtaining office and doing whatever damage he can. None of those reasons bode very well for this particular case, IMO.
Go read the opinion. Evidently in drafts of the amendment “president” was included and then later removed.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/supreme-court-trump-ballot-removal-colorado-wrong.html
Yeah, because the presidency was already covered by the phrase “any office, civil or military.” This very concern is brought up during the congressional debates over ratifying the amendment, and is addressed:
Source: https://stafnelaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Congressional-Debates-of-the-14th-Amendment.pdf page 60
So the original people drafting the Amendment understood it to cover the presidency.
That’s as clear-cut as it gets right there.
If you know that, then every SCotUS justice knows it.
If SCotUS destroys the 14th Amendment for Trump, they are truly illegitimate.
Yeah, literally the only pathway to ruling Trump is not barred is by throwing out the entire finding of fact by the Colorado supreme court that Trump engaged in an insurrection. It’s not impossible since appellate courts do technically have this power, but appellate courts are usually supposed to give extreme deference to lower courts when it comes to their findings of fact–the standard from my brief bit of research is that the lower court’s findings must be “clearly erroneous.”
So given how batshit our current court is I expect at least two surefire no votes from Thomas and Alito. Gorsuch is probably a yes vote given how much of a strict textualist he’s turned out to be, as are the entire liberal bloc. Ironically, Roberts is yet again the most likely swing vote, and I honestly don’t know if he’d sign off on disqualifying him. I could see anything from 7-2 in favor of upholding to 5-4 or 6-3 overturning. Considering their recent signal in the form of denying Smith’s request for expedited review, I’m… honestly not optimistic.
Wasn’t this 9-0 unanimous?
We don’t know, all we know iirc is that at least four justices said “nah bro go through the regular appeals process.” So reading the tea leaves, at least Thomas and Alito, plus any two of Gorsuch, Roberts, ACB, and Kavanaugh said no, at minimum.
It’s hard to say with certainty what this signals about how they’ll rule on the various Trump cases, but at minimum it indicates that they either don’t realize that he’s trying to delay the trials in the hopes he can win the election and have them all dropped, or they don’t care that’s what he’s doing. If they really_don’t_ care, it could be because they approve of his actions–and will likely rule in his favor–or simply because they value strict adherence to the regular process even at the potential risk of allowing an unqualified candidate (in the actual constitutional sense) obtaining office and doing whatever damage he can. None of those reasons bode very well for this particular case, IMO.
I fail to see how drafts are relevant except to judges who pretend they can know the minds of the authors by reading tea leaves.