NYT gift article expires in 30 days.
The tldr here is this:
These constitutional scholars dug into the original meaning of the 14th amendment and concluded that Trump easily meets the bar for having “engaged in” the Jan 6th insurrection, thereby disqualifying him from holding office.
I believe it all comes down to the term “engaged in”. Some say he didn’t because he was not literally storming the capital with the rioters. These two law professors are arguing (in a peer reviewed law journal) that the original intent of that term includes all the stuff Trump did.
What does the 14th amendment say about how it should be applied if half of the supreme court judges are co-conspirators?
Section 3. 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. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
(Emphasis naturally not in the original.)
It depends on if you can claim they gave aid or comfort to the people storming the capitol. Many of the justices might be questionable for other reasons, but unless they were actively there or publicly supportive of it, I don’t think they’d qualify. Plus, who’s going to rule on it, the other justices?
That being said, in 2022, there was a case of a politician in New Mexico being barred from public office for life for being supportive of Jan 6th. Apparently it’s the first time this has happened since 1869 (and remained upheld).
Okay this snippet is absolutely brilliant:
(Professor Calabresi has occasionally strayed from conservative orthodoxy, leading to an unusual request from the group he helped found. “I have been asked not to talk to any journalist who identifies me as a co-founder of the Federalist Society, even though it is a historical fact,” he said. I noted the request and ignored it.)
Identity politics 😀
I loathe Chris Christie with every fiber of my being but I will buy him a pair of Springsteen tickets if he files this suit.
originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning
In no way I’d like to help Trump, but you US guys really should NOT re-re-interpret laws suddenly as they were intended 200 years ago.
When you’ve got an outdated document as the backbone of your whole legal system, you kinda have to re-re-interpret everything, no matter what. Originalists tend to be pretty conservative, it’s just a method of thinking that allows conservative lawyers/judges/legal people to slap some legitimacy onto their interpretations. It’s an alternative to the modern (centrist) interpretation of law in the US, which has in recent years allowed for things like gay marriage. However the flavor of conservatism is very “traditional” compared to the modern alt-right, meaning they are also often anti-trump.
Imagine if we made new laws that evolved with the time and retired old laws that are clearly anachronistic?
If instead of interpreting and discussing unclear text the legislators just said “we believe this is wrong, and thus - now we change it”.
That’s the job of Congress.
But the Supreme Court can also down those laws too. That was what conservatives attempted with the Affordable Care Act .
Sorry if I was unclear; I was trying to say “imagine if you had a system that worked” 🫣
And I don’t mean that in any negative way, other than to say that the current system is visibly broken.
Especially since the “originalists” are being quite disingenuous. They’ve wanted for quite a while to start a new Constitutional Convention to rewrite the thing from scratch. They don’t really respect the founders as much as we think they do. They want to become the new founders, and force their great-great-grandchidren into boxes they make.
