Published February 5, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week on whether states can keep Donald Trump from appearing on primary election ballots for president based on the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause. More seriously, it could decide that Trump is ineligible to be president again even if he wins the November election.
We should hope for two outcomes: First, that the court does not use technicalities and procedural issues to evade a clear decision; and second, that it allows common sense and the fate of democracy to loom large in its decision.
The case before the court is an appeal of a December ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court. It found, “President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President (and) because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”
The basis of its decision is Section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, the so-called Disqualification Clause. It says public officials cannot hold office in government if they take oaths of loyalty to the Constitution and later participate in an insurrection. The Colorado Court affirmed that the riots on January 6, 2021, were an insurrection, and that Trump acted “overtly and voluntarily with the intent of aiding or furthering” it.
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SOURCE: www.thehill.com
RELATED: Will Trump Be Disqualified
Published February 5, 2024
Since the Colorado Supreme Court ruled, late last year, that Donald Trump can be disqualified from the 2024 presidential ballot, nearly everyone on the left and right has already decided that the ruling is obviously right or obviously wrong, respectively. In fact, both the law and the facts are unclear.
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SOURCE: www.project-syndicate.org
RELATED: Should Donald Trump be disqualified from state ballots in presidential election? Here’s how the US Supreme Court might rule
Published February 4, 2024
The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week in former President Donald Trump’s appeal against the decision to exclude him from the ballot in the Colorado Republican primary for this year’s presidential election.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump was disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution because he engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Because the Republican primaries have already begun (Coloradoans vote on March 5) and the US Supreme Court’s current term ends on June 30, the nine justices have very little time to consider such a momentous dispute with so many constitutional issues to be clarified.
So, what will happen this week and how might the court rule?
CHICAGO – This week, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision disqualifying him from the ballot for the 2024 presidential election. The Colorado court based its decision on Section 3 of the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, which bars from federal and state office anyone who, having sworn to uphold the Constitution, engages in insurrection. Nearly everyone on the left and right has already decided that the ruling is obviously right or obviously wrong, respectively. But the truth is that both the law and the facts are unclear, which means the Supreme Court justices’ political acumen will be tested like never before.
Start with the question of whether Trump engaged in “insurrection,” the resonant but undefined core of Section 3. One view is that he did so by orchestrating a mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, while Congress was trying to certify the election results. Another is that Trump gave aid and comfort to the insurrection by failing to call in the troops to quell it, and by waiting hours before telling his supporters to go home.