Absolutely, it’s insane that congress passed an ammendment that said a thing and now the Supreme Court is saying “no, it doesn’t say that thing, if you wanted that to apply you’d need to pass a congressional act on a case by case basis.”
Imagine if everytime someone committed tax fraud congress had to officially vote to investigate that specific person. Imagine if a country like America was unable to delegate any powers.
It’s because they don’t actually care what the constitution or the bill of rights or any of the amendments says. The Tribunal of Six only cares about ensuring their political compatriots - that is, the GOP - can cement their power for good. And if that means that we sink into fascism… they don’t care. Because they’ll be calling the shots.
That’s exactly what they want. That’s the goal. The goal is to stop the government from being able to function in any way whatsoever unless specifically delegated by Congress. That’s been the Supreme Court and the Republicans legal modus operandi. That’s why they’re trying to dismantle the entire regulatory system. They want to dismantle every Federal agency. Because when in Congress has to individually do everything and they’ve turned Congress into a corrupt do nothing body, then none of it gets done. They get to do whatever they want with no repercussions and no one to stop them.
I agree, but that is vastly different from States just unilaterally disregarding legal precedent. If we get to that point we are way beyond mere protest.
Do you see this mess stabilizing without one? I want Republicans to have access to medical care, an equitable economy, and education, god knows they need it.
They openly prefer people like me were dead. There’s no negotiating with that.
Let’s be honest. Either way here could easily end in a civil war. The temperature in the pot has been raising for 40 years. The earlier we lance this boil, the better off we’ll be though. Kicking the can down the road allows extremist ideologies to spread more and more. Which does nothing but guarantee more suffering.
I look at it like this:Two sides. One side is completely full of shit and they know it. They also know the other side knows. However, both sides have agreed to keep up the pretense of everything being okay, for whatever reason. I like to call it the “Slow Break-up”.
It’s like when your romantic partner stops showing up for date nights, then they get home late, then they start sleeping on the couch. And eventually you get around to asking, “Is something wrong?” And they’re all like, “No, everything is fine, work’s just been riding me so hard lately, and now I get home so late that I don’t want to wake you up.” Then one day they’re packing their shit to leave, and they look at you and go, “Look, we both saw this coming.”
It’s always “not happening” until it’s already happened. The moment is skipped over where they could acknowledge they misled you, try to make amends, maybe do something about the problem.
But, my overall point is this. A civil war would be like a fight between spouses. Like, a big serious fight. Where there is the possibility that someone’s going to yell “I want a divorce!”. So the divorce happens, but both parties move on, and try to heal. I am on the side that wants to have the fight, move on, and heal.
It was a unanimous decision and the precedent they set was that states don’t have the right to declare who is and who is not a traitor, only the federal government can decide that. I don’t like Trump, but the precedent needed to be set and I agree with the supreme court on this one. You can still try to prove he is a traitor in federal court, and then he would be knocked off the ballot in all states.
Honestly, that part of the amendment is just horribly written. It reads like a rush job, which is probably was given it was written to remove/keep out former Confederates. There’s no mechanism in there to determine guilt or any definition of what constitutes insurrection or rebellion. Seceding, forming a new government, and declaring war on the US is obvious, but it doesn’t say what the minimum threshold actually is. The entire thing is just two sentences. This very comment has a similar word count.
It wasn’t. 5 said the text means the opposite of what it says. Four said enforcing it is up to the federal courts, not state courts. Two wildly different opinions with the only thing in common being overturning the state ruling.
This was...a bad decision. Quite frankly, they are abdicating responsibility with a sophomoric "not it!" when it comes to finally doing what the 14th requires. I wouldn't say it rises to the level of the Bush v. Gore decision at the turn of the millennium, but it is quite close.
No mention of the Court’s reasoning that it should not be enforced at the State level, but instead at the Federal level?
See paragraphs 7, 10, and 12 of the article, which discuss factors already decided at the state level and how this ruling impacts the status quo.
I was speaking of the summary. A balanced summary is an intellectually honest summary.
Also, only paragraph 12 (kind of) covers what I asked about (Court’s reasoning of Fed vs State enforcement; see above) …
It would be clearly preferable if Congress were to pass enforcement legislation that established explicit procedures for resolving disputes under Section 3, including setting the burden of proof and creating timetables and deadlines for filing challenges and hearing appeals. Establishing a uniform process is better than living with a patchwork of state proceedings.
For reference sake, here are the three paragraphs you mentioned …
From the article, paragraph 7 …
But now Section 3 is different from other sections of the amendment. It requires federal legislation to enforce its terms, at least as applied to candidates for federal office. Through inaction alone, Congress can effectively erase part of the 14th Amendment.
From the article, paragraph 10 …
As Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson point out, this approach is also inconsistent with the constitutional approach to other qualifications for the presidency. We can bar individuals from holding office who are under the age limit or who don’t meet the relevant citizenship requirement without congressional enforcement legislation. We can enforce the two-term presidential term limit without congressional enforcement legislation. Section 3 now stands apart not only from the rest of the 14th Amendment, but also from the other constitutional requirements for the presidency.
From the article, paragraph 12 …
It would be clearly preferable if Congress were to pass enforcement legislation that established explicit procedures for resolving disputes under Section 3, including setting the burden of proof and creating timetables and deadlines for filing challenges and hearing appeals. Establishing a uniform process is better than living with a patchwork of state proceedings. But the fact that Congress has not acted should not effectively erase the words from the constitutional page. Chaotic enforcement of the Constitution may be suboptimal. But it’s far better than not enforcing the Constitution at all.
It’s not inconsistent with the court’s inconsistency though.
Scalia was a legal juggernaut on the bench and off it, as unfortunate his politics may be, he had a very large influence on the legal arena surrounding Constitutional law. He argued (correctly) for separated powers and the legislature doing the legislation on big and controversial topics instead of the court(s) - openly pointing out SCotUS’s composition as an unelected, politically appointed technocracy.
What changed and grew was the inconsistency of the conservative members at respecting that separation of powers whilst also not shying from their role as final legal arbiter. Trump v Anderson was correctly decided that states cannot deny candidates federal ballot access without due process, but they completely neglected to affirm or deny the lower courts ruling of what counts as attempted insurrection, kicking that to Congress.
This is political cowardice, not good and proper separated powers keeping each other in check. A legal case is the correct route to determine facts surrounding a candidates eligibility - not a political disqualification process without precedent nor established rules regarding evidentiary eligibility, rights of the accused, composition of the adjudicators, etc. any attempt to disqualify via US Congress will spurn a host of new legal challenges based on procedural questions
This is political cowardice, not good and proper separated powers keeping each other in check.
That is democracy, they have to rule based on the law, and they err on the side of innocence. I think a court that prefers for the elected people to make policy decisions instead of them is better than a court that sets its own policy.
There is no side of innocence in determining eligibility for office. The requirements laid out in the main body of the Constitution already make it clear that holding the office of President is not an inalienable right.
I have to disagree. Under the Marbury v. Madison precedent and the centuries of case law supporting it, the legislature writes the laws while the courts interpret any ambiguity (because lawyers and judges abhor ambiguity) and apply the law as interpreted.
A Federal circuit court had to decide if a newly threatened species of toad does, or does not get the protections given “endangered” as specified in the primary legislation… the highest court in the land is capable of answering what insurrection is, and if it was committed.
Too many people in here making lawful good arguments. you’ll always lose to lawful evil. try being neutral good instead. i think the current times even call for being chaotic good.
You know, in a sane universe, the President could legitimately actually declare a national emergency over the ongoing efforts to overturn representative democracy in the open, but we live in this one.
If we lived in a sane universe, the foreign-funded propaganda that Trump and his grift relies upon for energy, cash, and followers would have been turned off fifteen years ago back when Fox “News” openly misrepresented material facts regarding the Obama administration, or when they got sued the first time for not being actual news.
It’s like the Supreme Court thinks it can supersede the constitution because it thinks the ammendment was poorly worded/thought out. cough cough second ammendment cough cough
It’s been a shit show since day one with this court. If there’s ever been a time to pack the court it is now. Hell, do it in response to this ruling. Allowing an insurrectionist on the ballot is plain unacceptable. We’re already heading toward discourse we cannot solve. Make a stand, would someone?
Edit: Just clarifying it’s the Supreme Court who doesn’t think it has to adhere to the language in the amendment. Not myself.
I thought I read that the decision was unanimous. If the liberals and conservatives on the court agree, it seems unlikely that packing the court would change the decision.
Also, as much as I’d love to see Trump excluded from ballots, we all know that states like Texas would turn around and do the same to Biden, just out of spite. It would change the nature of democracy, in a bad way, if individual states could just randomly decide to exclude candidates they don’t like. Heck, what would stop them from excluding ALL candidates of a particular party, except perhaps some token losers or quislings no one ever heard of?
The liberals dessented by essentially saying the law should be “self executing” (a fucking joke) in that if he was part of an insurrection then he’s just as ineligible as a 30 year old running for president. You simply can’t run if you’re under 35, so in some fantasy reality those judges live in Trump just wouldn’t be able to be on the ballots automatically, as if no one has to actually ENFORCE that law (see: judges actions in removing him)
It’s astounding how utterly deranged our laws are.
Trump has well earned the name “Teflon Don.”
The ONLY thing that man has not lied about is “I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any supporters (and he’d walk away into the sunset with 0 repercussions whatsoever)”
This is a strange situation, for sure. The age requirement you bring up is a good comparison. Age is something you are, not something you’ve done, possibly done, or definitey not done, so there isn’t as much to argue about.
However, what if some 33 year-old decided to run and had the support of one of the two big parties, and just lied about her age? Presumably, that would require a finding of fact and would be adjudicated by the federal courts, not Congress or each state legislature or Attorney General.
Your example makes it pretty clear that even something supposedly “self-executing” still needs a back-up plan. Another interesting example is the 2000 election, where it was the Supreme Court that arbitrated the final vote, which decided the winner of the presidential election (incorrectly, it seems, based on later statistical analysis). Nasedon these two examples, I don’t entirely understand their reasoning for pushing the decision about eligibility to Congress. While an election is for a political office, the process of running an election is supposed to be apolitical.
What the US really needs is a non-partisan, apolitical, independent federal electoral commission.
If the Supreme Court became a race to the bottom I seriously do not care. 150 justices represents 500 million better than 9 ever could. Cripple the courts, they’re only famous for dealing out racism for the past 300 years.
I see that the decision is unanimous and that goes back to my original point. The court is showing they can supersede the constitution in this case so why not others where the constitution is failing? I don’t pretend to know high level con law, I really don’t. I do know stories about how some of the first justices struggled to pass down rulings that would effect so many with only their limited view. Not our current justices, though. If I remember correctly the constitution says very little about the scope of the Supreme Court other than its the highest court. It wasn’t even till years after the founders had came and went that it started getting into this interpretating the constitution shit.
Yeah, the Supreme Court’s record on key issues is not great. Citizens United, for example, is at the root of a lot of the current troubles.
But a big part of the problem is actually the structure of US democracy itself. US democracy was set up primarily to prevent tyranny, and it does that through separation of powers. And it has been successful in that regard. However, the structure the founders created also causes gridlock on key issues.
In the US, it is relatively rare for one party to be fully in charge for any length of time. In a Westminster-style parliamentary system, on the other hand, a majority government usually gets a chance to implement their program and then they deal with the consequences in the next election. The role of the opposition is to point out all the stupid things the government does. When something goes poorly, it is clear who is to blame.
One of the problems with the US system is that the parties can legitimately blame each other when nothing gets done, which means they can avoid accountability.
In parliamentary systems, the government of the day bears the blame for fuck ups, whereas in the US system there is a tendency to blame the institutions. Perhaps that’s why you see surveys in the US where people strongly approve of their local representative, but have very low approval of Congress overall. This lack of power and accountability for the government is also why the Supreme Court is such a huge force in the US. Gridlock doesn’t change the fact that decisions need to be made, so more and more key decisions are being made either by the Supreme Court or by presidential decree.
Also, having a President is just a bad idea. I believe the US only has a President because Washington was so revered at the time. Having such a singular, king-like office with actual power inevitably creates a cult of personality. In contrast, parliamentary systems turn the king or his representative into a powerless ceremonial position that stays silent on political issues.
There is a remedy for that actually. If a state gets too far out of line with it’s elections Congress can refuse to certify results from that state. This is what Trump supporters were hoping Congress would do in 2020 and why they rioted when it didn’t happen.
And if we can’t bar proven bad faith actors from office then our democracy is already dead. It just doesn’t know it yet, like a person who overdosed on Tylenol. Furthermore the longer we push this confrontation with anti-democracy forces back the bloodier the resolution gets. We’ve seen this handled well and handled poorly in history. Handled well are cases like Bismarck and handled poorly are cases like the French Revolution. (Which if you think was just rich people dying, you really need to actually read about it.)
Lol. Just a few things. Some mass murder, partisan politics, and a system that failed so thoroughly they went back to having a monarch after trying to murder all of the monarchists.
Right, but Congress votes along party lines so that isn’t much of a remedy. The remedy is just as flawed as the process that leads to political bad acting in the first place. That’s why people look to a (supposedly) non-partisan body like SCOTUS to resolve the issue, and why SCOTUS becoming partisan is such a big deal.
But your larger point that the system has broken down is well-taken. Much of how government functions successfully is based on unspoken conventions and norms of behavior. When a large proportion of the population actually WANTS someone like Trump, you have a very serious problem. No democratic structure or form of government can save the people from themselves forever. Sure, gerrymandering and other dirty tricks make a difference, but at the end of the day Trump really will get almost half the vote. He’s not the representative of some small fringe party who managed to ride a crazy set of circumstances to power, like Hitler did. Trump represents one of only two major parties and will legitimately get support from right around half of those who vote, which is just crazy when you think about it.
What the actual fuck happened that we stand on the precipice of such madness?
We repealed the fairness doctrine; didn’t obliterate Fox News when it was obvious they were party propaganda fraudulently representing themselves; gave social media a license to be neither publisher nor public utility under regulations; and made bribery legal in Citizens United.
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
As far as section 230 goes, that is by far the least problematic, and take note how the vast majority of efforts to remove it come from conservatives who appear to me to be annoyed that their views are being called out as harmful or hateful.
The thing is it’s not poorly worded. It clearly establishes the ban and clearly allows Congress to create legislation. It does not revoke the state power to administer elections. It does not require Congress to create legislation.
It’s meant to be understood by anyone reading it and it was created with far more modern English than the original document. What you see is what you get, no semantics required.
Has Trump actually been found guilty of insurrection? It seems this could be where the issue lies. I know he’s an insurrectionist, you know he is an insurrectionist but unless convicted how do you apply the law?
Requiring congress to vote to not allow him to run is legally the same as requiring congress to vote to not let allow a 5 year old to run. Neither Trump nor the 5 year old should have to be proven ineligible They’re simply not, under the law as written.
SCOTUS are a bunch of political hacks and they should be charged with aiding and abetting an insurrectionist.
So… what’s to stop a Texas or a Mississippi or a Florida from deciding that Biden has participated in an insurrection, and requiring no conviction, uses this as grounds for removal from the ballot in November?
As much as I want Trump off ballots and believe he’s an insurrectionist, it’s important to remember that anything that can be done to hamper his chances that requires no (or a low bar) legal framework can also be done to help his chances.
If a court in Colorado can sit down and decide he’s off the ballot because of their opinions, and that decision is enforceable and unassailable, then we’re establishing that a state court can strike any name from any ballot because they say so.
With that precedent, I would fully expect states with GOP leadership to appoint judges who would then find reasons to call some aspect of Biden’s presidency an insurrection (in a similar vein as the Mayorkas impeachment), and remove him from their state’s ballot.
Literally nothing. If they were able to they would do it already, in several cases they are kind of half-assedly trying. Mutually assured destruction isn’t the principle of operation when one side is generally acting in good faith and the other side is actively pulling the copper out of the walls.
The thing keeping them from doing that is they need some form of proof.
Nothing is stopping anyone from just lying about everything, except other people who refuse to go along with the lie. All social systems are inherently backed by community intolerance of dishonesty.
Yes, that was the ruling of the Colorado state Supreme Court. This is the federal Supreme Court saying “the courts can’t do that, only congress can” which is a very very strange way to read that amendment.
And then when it gets to Congress they’ll throw their hands up and say “He’s not president we can’t impeach him!” as if that’s all they could do. Then when he is president (I fully expect him to win…) they’ll say “impeachment is just a political tool it’s not about crimes!” So they can continue to do absofuckinglutley nothing about it, again pretending that this is an impeachment thing.
I’m almost 40 and I’ve never lived in a time where Congress served any useful purpose. We already don’t have any representation yet we pretend like we do because like 6 people exist (AOC, Porter, Sanders etc…)
He was found by the Colorado court to have engaged in insurrection, yes. No court since has overruled that finding. Not even the scotus in this decision disagreed with the finding. They just said, basically, “He did it but Colorado doesn’t have the power to determine eligibility under the 14th; That’s for congress.”
The “trump was never convicted of insurrection” meme is dead.
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