Live audio of the US Supreme Court: oral arguments to decide if Trump is eligible to run for president
Live Oral Argument Audio
SCotUS is about to throw out the 14th Amendment as written & stick a thumb in the eye of the men that wrote it.
The US Supreme Court has some tough choices to make. On one hand you have a piece of the constitution that, at least to this layperson, would seem to clearly disqualify Trump - but absent any clarifying law from Congress it's really hard to figure out how to implement it. Do you let States do it? What if a Republican state official says Biden is an insurrectionist? How would Biden challenge that? What court would hear that challenge? If it's the state supreme courts, then what if one court disqualifies him and another doesn't? Do you allow for some states to disqualify candidates and others not, or does the Supreme Court have to take up these cases each election year? What's the threshold for insurrection? Should it require a criminal conviction? What if Trump were charged with insurrection and later acquitted - can he now run again?
Maybe they might punt it off to Congress and say that it's Congress' responsibility when counting electoral college votes to decide if a candidate is qualified or not, but now you've just given cover to Republicans to reject presidential election results they don't like if they happen to win enough seats in Congress.
Tl;dr - from my perspective they have to either ignore the constitution and invite the chaos of another possible Trump presidency, or acknowledge the constitution and invite (additional) chaos into the election system. If Congress functioned maybe a decent law could be written but fat chance of that.
Biden would go to court to challenge it. Just like Trump did. That's the answer. Not enforcing laws for fear of bad faith actors is appeasement and ends badly everytime.
Also states DQ people all the time. Not old enough, Not a citizen, etc...
but absent any clarifying law from Congress it's really hard to figure out how to implement it.
OK yeah but that's literally the supreme court's JOB.
But if they rule it as self executing (which it almost certainly is), we can expect a clusterfuck stateside for the foreseeable future from Republicans. Though, that may be a feature for them, not a bug.
Best case scenario, I guess, would be the SC deciding eligibility is a federal thing not a state thing, AND that trump is ineligible to run.
Though that'd make him a martyr... But allowing him to run after a coup attempt is a terrible precident as well...
I don't think we're winning no matter how this turns out, boys.
Allowing him to run after a failed coup attempt would invite others to attempt another coup. Good points.
It absolutely is self-executing. From the text of the 14th Amendment:
But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
So it follows that Trump would be disqualified absent any action from Congress, since they can only vote to lift such a restriction, not on whether or not to impose it.
The US Supreme Court has some tough choices to make.
😂
You actually really think they give a shit?
This person pays attention folks.
The conservative argument boiled down to trump didn't do it.
If he did do it then the president isn't accountable to the Constitution.
And if the President is accountable then a single state can't disqualify him. (Even though they routinely do so for other job requirements.)
If states can disqualify him then they can't do it until he wins the election because Congress could maybe, in an alternate universe, vote by 3/4 to remove his bar to office.
So according to conservatives we have to let a traitor win the election and then have the moral fortitude to DQ him and re-run the election. Because that's not nightmare fuel that will instantly cause a civil war at all.
They also ran a parallel argument saying nobody can do anything until Congress passes a law about an enforcement regime for the amendment. A requirement not in place for any other Constitutional bar to the office and with no text in the 14th requiring it.
Why the fuck are we bending over backwards for this humanoid?
I think Kagan summed up the concerns pretty well. I will also say that this probably suggests SCOTUS won't hear the immunity case though. If the 14A can only be enforced by the federal courts or congress then the president can't be immune to the federal courts as a matter of definition. I also won't be shocked if she writes the opinion, either.
For those who missed it (or didn't watch) the AP has a pretty concise page with what happened.
https://apnews.com/live/trump-supreme-court-arguments-updates
Good summary. Apparently even the Democratic judges are skeptical of upholding the Colorado Supreme Court decision.
When faced with murky or complex legal issues surrounding elections, I think the court pretty much always tries to come down on the side of letting voters decide. And I'm not sure that's a bad philosophy. This has been my expectation from day one, though I've tried to keep an optimistic view and challenge myself to look for reasons they might rule differently.
I'm not surprised in the least, but I'm glad we at least the challenge was made. I'm not sure if any country can withstand self-sabotage by a nearly 50% party. If we can't defeat Trump at the ballot it doesn't really matter whether we can keep him off on a legal issue because there are still all those folks he has won over. Authority in our nation comes from the people, and the people decide. I just wish so many of us weren't so fucking stupid and hateful.
But as much as I hate Trump and think he should not be put on the ballot and should definitely be in prison, I do see how removing someone from the ballot could be a bad thing. In my opinion all it would do is set a precedent for removing people from the ballot just because they don't like them. Is that why states are trying to remove Trump? Probably not. But if this is allowed I can clearly see other states trying to remove Biden from the ballot (If they haven't tried already). And eventually it would just be another way for politicians to exercise this dick measuring contest they love so much by just removing each other from the ballot any reason they can think of. They already do absolutely batshit crazy things like gerrymandering to get votes. This would just turn into another version of voter suppression.
But let's be honest here. Republicans are doing a speed run to impeach Biden so they can do the whole "SeE?! He WaS iMpEaChEd ToO!"
While it's simple for us normal people to understand that one crime doesn't pale in comparison to the other "crime", for the alt right, they aren't going for fair. They are going for power by any means necessary.
Yes and I agree with you. Trump does not belong on the ballot. But you and I know for a fact that this is just going to give people an excuse to try and remove people from the ballot out of revenge. Trump and his followers attempted an insurrection so we all know how far they would go. You really think they wouldn't just try and remove opponents from the ballot because they want to?
Is it over already? That Livestream just streamed for 10s before ending.
Hm. So I'm guessing they are going to say that disqualification can only happen at the federal level by a law defined by Congress. They don't seem too concerned about an insurrectionist becoming president, not surprisingly.
That's certainly a strange new precedent. I hope Congress gets to work quickly writing legislation for all the other amendments before a president realizes there aren't laws spelling out how freedom of speech is defined or how to enforce it, etc. etc.
No matter what we might wish were the case, some amendments can be further defined by law. So this isn't a new precedent by any stretch.
Amendment III comes right out and says law can define the details.
So does XIII, section 2
And XV, section 2
And, most apropos, XIV Section 5.
So there it is right there.
Of course constitutional law is complicated. I don't know what I don't know. There are other solid arguments for and against, no doubt. But "unprecedented" isn't one of them, it seems.
Mostly because it's not SCOTUS' job to make laws ... they're simply there to interpret what Congress has passed. Which is pretty much how high courts operate everywhere, including Canada, the UK, etc
Right, but as it is their job to interpret laws and the constitutionality of lawsuits and this lawsuit alleges that dumps is constitutionality prohibited from office, this is exactly their job.
Cool, then let's put Ariana Greenblatt on the ballot and make them make a law on how to disqualify children.