Opinion | The Supreme Court Just Erased Part of the Constitution
www.nytimes.com
Its ruling on Trump’s eligibility for the presidency contradicts the clear language of the 14th Amendment.

Excerpt:

It’s extremely difficult to square this ruling with the text of Section 3 [of the Fourteenth Amendment]. The language is clearly mandatory. The first words are “No person shall be” a member of Congress or a state or federal officer if that person has engaged in insurrection or rebellion or provided aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution. The Section then says, “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.”

In other words, the Constitution imposes the disability, and only a supermajority of Congress can remove it. But under the Supreme Court’s reasoning, the meaning is inverted: The Constitution merely allows Congress to impose the disability, and if Congress chooses not to enact legislation enforcing the section, then the disability does not exist. The Supreme Court has effectively replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office — a supermajority vote by Congress — with the lowest bar imaginable: congressional inaction.

This is a fairly easy read for the legal layperson, and the best general overview I’ve seen yet that sets forth the various legal and constitutional factors involved in today’s decision, including the concurring dissent by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson.

  • aidan@lemmy.worldM
    1·
    9 months ago

    That is a pretty clearly different form of ambiguity, the ambiguity here is that the 14th amendment does not state how to enforce the law, and does not delegate that enforcement to the states.

    Such power over governance, however, does not extend to federal officeholders and candidates. Because federal officers “ ‘owe their existence and functions to the united voice of the whole, not of a portion, of the people,’ ” powers over their election and qualifications must be specifically “dele- gated to, rather than reserved by, the States.” U. S. Term 7Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024) Per Curiam Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U. S. 779, 803–804 (1995) (quoting 1 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §627, p. 435 (3d ed. 1858)). But nothing in the Constitution delegates to the States any power to en- force Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates. As an initial matter, not even the respondents contend that the Constitution authorizes States to somehow remove sitting federal officeholders who may be violating Section 3. Such a power would flout the principle that “the Constitu- tion guarantees ‘the entire independence of the General Government from any control by the respective States.’ ” Trump v. Vance, 591 U. S. 786, 800 (2020) (quoting Farmers and Mechanics Sav. Bank of Minneapolis v. Minnesota, 232 U. S. 516, 521 (1914)). Indeed, consistent with that princi- ple, States lack even the lesser powers to issue writs of mandamus against federal officials or to grant habeas cor- pus relief to persons in federal custody.

    • quoting the majority ruling

    But they do agree, that Section 3 provides no other method for enforcement, that is the ambiguity. But the ambiguity is easily resolved by section 5 of the 14th amendment:

    The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

    • section 5 of the 14th Amendment

    Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amend- ment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other po- tential means of federal enforcement.

    This is the minority then saying that’s not clear enough, because while section 3 prescribes no means of enforcement and then section 5 explicitly says congress has the power to enforce it- they say it is ambiguous because it doesn’t say only congress has the power to enforce it explicitly. I personally prefer to agree with the majority and say since it doesn’t give random people the right to depose the president- then they probably don’t have the right unless new legislation by Congress who does explicitly have the power says they do.

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
      1·
      8 months ago

      But that’s my point exactly about the law as written leaving open ambiguity. The courts have generally either affirmed the law as written/upheld in case law, struck down parts or entire portions of the law, or bounced lesser issues back to the lower courts.

      There already is a political process for individual, case by case disqualification - impeachment. Congress has already adopted a law regarding disqualification for insurrection, and the courts did not strike down that law in part or whole, despite gutting the enforcement mechanism.

      It’s also not a small group of people deciding to capriciously allow or disqualify people the chance at office. Congress determined that insurrection is a disqualifying offense, as is being too young, or not a citizen. We don’t kick disqualifications for those categories back to Congress for a ‘trial’ but this is being treated differently, because the court is shirking from its traditionally assumed role

      • aidan@lemmy.worldM
        1·
        8 months ago

        Congress wrote laws specifying the process specifically of getting on the ballot, those laws preclude age and require citizenship, but I don’t think specify the process for removing an insurrectionist. And I think that because if they did someone would have opened a federal suit of the election commission by now.