Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and a prominent conservative who’s become a strong critic of Trump’s actions after the election.
They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion … or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the government.
The law professors argued current and former officeholders who took part in supporting or planning the efforts to overturn the election for Trump should also be “stringently scrutinized” under the Constitution should they seek bids for future public office.
The pair also looked at the historical intentions of this section of the 14th Amendment, which barred Confederates after the Civil War from holding office again, because if they were to be allowed, the US would never be able to engage in “effective ‘reconstruction’ of the political order” and newly freed formerly enslaved people wouldn’t be properly protected.
Previously, advocacy groups contested the ability of Republican members of Congress Marjorie Taylor Green and Madison Cawthorn to be ballot candidates in 2022 because of the 14th Amendment and their vocal support of the Capitol rioters.
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If only conservatives listened to scholars. Then they might consider a) the intent of the constitution and b) the practical implications of nominating someone so unfit. Alas.
“If you’re ignoring the constitution, it also means others see the second amendment as null and void.”
Maybe that gets their attention.
If only conservatives listened to scholars
Then they wouldn’t be conservatives. Academia and reality are famous for having left wing bias.
Lol. They absolutely do listen to scholars, and just like any other political group, they act on what they say when it’s convenient.
Federalist society is covering its bets here - putting up sone legal footholds for old establishment conservatism to use if they become handy - while doing so in such a way they don’t put themselves on the outs too unforgivably if Trump and his ilk weasel this way through this mess like they have so many times before.
Sure, but we shouldn’t need a legal argument.
We only need a reasonable electorate.
We have a reasonable electorate, inasmuch as Trump has no chance of ever winning the popular vote and never did. What we don’t have is a rational electoral system where all votes are equal.
We have a reasonable electorate
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Trump got something like 74,000,000 votes.
In practice, it goes eventually to the Supreme Court which, like the Republican Party, has been Trumpified and therefore will see no problem, case closed.
Even that would be an improvement on the up-in-the-air situation we’re in right now. They would have to provide guidelines for what exactly constitutes insurrection in order to make a ruling.
No it wouldn’t. The Supreme Court is corrupted and therefore illegitimate, so all they’ll do is make matters worse. The abortion bans aren’t legitimate and neither would them doing something like that.
All that really fundamentally matters for the purposes of this discussion is stopping Trump from being elected again.
Systems exist to serve us and we can dispose of them and set up new ones as we please and as the need arises. This is one of those times. It has been for the entire 21st century.
It’s a good thing that it is very difficult to stop somebody from running for office.
The act of running for office, or more accurately the act of the people to chose whom represents them, should not be easy to take away.
In banana republics the new guy or the guy with the most power at the moment regularly uses tactics to stop their opponents in the courts. Sometimes the charges are legitimate, but sometimes they are totally fabricated.
Take for example the case of Pita, 42 years old, the leader of the move forward party in Thailand. His party swept the recent election and by many accounts average Thai people see his ideas as the most welcome path forward. Yet the old guys and their friends, who were part of the coup 6-7 years ago, are still in power. They have been able to completely shut Pita’s party down in the courts, and despite the people having made a choice by voting, they, will not get the government they wanted.
If there was another political party in the USA that was more successful than Trump’s at breaking the laws, and the American courts were to set a precedent that some opponents can’t run for office given legal charges, I’m afraid the risk of politicians looking to defeat their opponents in court would become much more common than trying to defeat them in the polls.
I agree with this, but can we stop referring to every rigged democratic system and autocratic government as a Banana Republic?
It just makes people posting look less knowledgeable about government and politics because it’s meaning is tied to something very specific that doesn’t apply to your overall well thought out comment.
Thailand is not an example of a Banana Republic and neither is the US, nor could it ever be, as it’s not a country tied to very limited export of natural resources.
Well, I mean. There was that one time we overthrew the incumbent monarchy of Hawaii and annexed it so we could grow sugar cane on it.
Is there another, more relevant term to describe governments that use sham strategies to subvert the people to obtain their goals? If so I’ll changw my vocabulary. I just didn’t know of another better term at the moment of writing my post.
Perhaps junta governments?
No that’s totally fair, but that term is just misused as it applies to something very specific which deserves to be remembered and recognized as it’s own unique threat. I think the closest thing to what you might be referring is aligned to a faux democracy of Russia, which is just a form of an autocracy.
Okay but repeatedly and blatantly trying to subvert democracy should mean that you don’t get to participate in democracy anymore for the same reason that you should be banned from a chess tournament if you kick the board over and pull out a gun the first time someone puts you into check.
What if that is legitimately what the people “want” and see voting that way to cast their belief in such a major change?
It’s a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The people get to make the rules at the chess tournament. The courts… work for the people.
I know that would be a particularly bad change, but if the majority of people truly want a pathway for it, what other way is available?
It doesn’t matter. The corrupt Thai government was going to do that whether it was legal or not just as fascists here will do what they want whether legal or not, so they have to be forcibly stopped at the gate. That’s why that constitutional provision is even there.
Yes, I agree. Unfortunately the old guys are pro at playing that game and Pita just wasn’t there yet.
I think the old guys do care if their domestic authority appears plausible on the international scene. Otherwise they run into problems .
But the Thai people have definitely spoken. How serious they feel about it will come out over time, I suppose.
