The Colorado Supreme Court ruled last month that the former president could not appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot because he had engaged in insurrection.

The case turns on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
    93·
    6 months ago

    Oh and just for everyone to remember. The 39th Congress was the one that wrote the 14th Amendment. We weren’t some weeks old nation by that point and we literally have the minutes from that Congress discussing the 14th Amendment.

    It’s not some open question as to “does 14A S3 apply to the President”?

    Why did you omit to exclude them [The office of the President and Vice President]?

    — Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD)

    Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States’

    — Sen. Lot Morrill (R-MA)

    Or does this apply to this instance or just the Civil War.

    This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood.

    — Sen. Peter G. Van Winkle (R-WV)

    It’s not some “well what did they mean by such-and-such? Oh we have no record of that.” No, no. We literally have the transcript for this one.

    The only open question is “does Colorado get to determine if Trump committed an act to disqualify him or not”. We literally have the answer for all the other stuff straight from the mouths of those who framed the 14th Amendment.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
      251·
      6 months ago

      “Yes, but who cares what a bunch of old dead politicians from the past think”

      - Supreme justices that claim to be consitutionalists.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
          3·
          6 months ago

          What’s the distinction? Originalist meaning the original, unamended constitution?

          That seems outside their authority. Their purpose, as I understand it, is rule on the letter of the law for the current constitution. The lawmakers, I.E. congress/senate, are who can amend the constitution.

          • FlowVoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
            71·
            6 months ago

            There are different, competing philosophies of judicial interpretation.

            The current SCOTUS majority champions “originalism”, which means that judges must apply the meaning intended by whoever wrote a law. This often turns judges into part-time historians, trying to delve into the minds and attitudes of people who are long dead. But in this case, it’s pretty easy to determine that the Reconstructionists who wrote the 14th Amendment had no intention of letting an insurrectionist become president. So “officer” clearly includes the president.

            Originalism is in contrast to “textualism”, which means interpreting the actual text(s) of the law without worrying about what the authors intended. So “officer” must be defined according to how it’s used elsewhere in the Constitution, which (surprisingly) may result in something that the authors of the 14th Amendment never intended.

            There are also other competing philosophies, but right now these two are in conflict. The interesting thing is that the SCOTUS has to side against Trump if it actually believes in originalism (as opposed to using it as a pretext for their antiquated ideas).

    • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      221·
      6 months ago

      They can try to argue that Colorado doesn’t have that right/ability, but:

      The Constitution also specifies age, residency, and citizenship requirements to run for the House or Senate. Individuals who satisfy those requirements cannot be prohibited from running for office for failing to satisfy other qualifications. States can, however, impose reasonable ballot access restrictions that a candidate must fulfill in order to appear on the ballot, such as submitting a petition signed by a certain number of registered voters. The Supreme Court has aggressively enforced this restriction by invalidating various attempts to impose term limits on Members of Congress. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the Court held that the Elections Clause did not permit a state to refuse to print on the ballot the names of candidates for the U.S. House who already had served three terms there, or the names of candidates for the U.S. Senate who had already served two terms. -Source

      And in Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, they argued:

      the Constitution prohibits States from imposing congressional qualifications additional to those specifically enumerated in its text. Petitioners’ argument that States possess control over qualifications as part of the original powers reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment is rejected for two reasons. First, the power to add qualifications is not within the States’ pre-Tenth Amendment “original powers,” but is a new right arising from the Constitution itself, and thus is not reserved. Second, even if the States possessed some original power in this area, it must be concluded that the Framers intended the Constitution to be the exclusive source of qualifications for Members of Congress, and that the Framers thereby “divested” States of any power to add qualifications.

      Well guess what. The disqualification comes straight from the Constitution itself, and has not been restricted or amended by Congress. Ergo it is the only qualification limitation which matters, and a state is well within its authority to enforce it.

      • Funderpants @lemmy.ca
        41·
        6 months ago

        Imagine you can be kept off the ballot for being five signatures short of a full page, but doing an insurrection isn’t a good reason. And the individual states can decide on the first thing but not the second. Wild.

    • quindraco@lemm.ee
      1·
      6 months ago

      This is challenging to search through, mind providing page numbers so I know where to look?