Supreme Court Puts Trump Back on the Ballot

[Res Ipsa]

What are you talking about? Trump was not denied due process. The case was filed in a Colorado trial court by Republican and Independent voters. A trial was held, with both the plaintiffs and Trump calling witnesses. At the trial, Trump was able to call his own witnesses and cross examine plaintiff's witnesses. He was also a party to the appeals. That's due process.

So it doesn't matter that Trump was never charged with insurrection. As long as a state court judge believes it was insurrection he can disqualify candidates from the ballot. Why can't we say that we believe Biden has engaged in insurrection and take him off the ballot in our state? The lawfare that the left has engaged in to beat Trump when they can't beat him at the ballot box seems much more antidemocratic to me. So we'll just take him off the ballot in Texas, Florida, UT, etc. because he's a threat to democracy as we choose to define it.

You're confusing being criminally charged and convicted of a law against insurrection with "having engaged" in insurrection. The language of the 14th amendment doesn't require that someone be criminally charged with and convicted of the crime of insurrection. It just refers to people who engaged in insurrection. When the amendment was originally enacted, no criminal conviction was required to disqualify them from office under the amendment.

You, personally, can and do say all sorts of absurd things that are detached from reality. Insurrection was a defined word in the 1800s and is a defined term today. In neither case is insurrection defined as a "threat to democracy."

[Moksha]

Ajax could point to Trump not having served in the Civil War (bone spurs). Besides, Trump would view those soldiers as being dopes. He would ask what was in it for them, although he would admit to the economic benefit of slavery.

[yellowstone123]

I could be wrong but I don't see that Colorado so much as removed Trump as they had a case that established that to the State of Colorado Trump participated in insurrection and was thus subject to the 14th.

It was according to appointed (not elected justices in Colorado). Where is the due process in concluding that Trump engaged in an insurrection when he has never been charged with insurrection? Biden should be pulled off the ballot in every red state for refusing to enforce democratically established border law on the southern border. You shouldn't be able to just bring in cheap votes for yourself and cheap labor for your donors without the consent of congress whether the American working class who suffers for it in both increased taxes and depressed wages like it or not.

Ajax18, I agree that there could be issues in labor being cheap which is great for the rich, letting long term union voters go, and if they vote then block vote, voting for those giving them subsidies for rent and a card worth a thousand dollars a month and that would likely help those who wins and who takes over the government. Maybe Kennedy from West Virginia and the Governor of Illinois, he seems sharp and sharp people is what we need. A sort of ying and yang type thing. And add to that we are funding foreign wars to keep a civilized society going, but we are out of money, the government who rested on the shoulders of the boomer generation are in a pickle: the boomers are retiring and take their money with them, including their share of social security which they paid into for 40 years and cashing in their company stocks.

Maybe those who did it right - filed papers to join the USA, went back to work their jobs in their native countries and wait. Then there are those who listened to lying criminals and gave their life savings at age 50 to walk thousands of miles to the USA to get their green card they were promised by the criminals as they passed into the US. What we need is a solution that helps significantly in one fell swoop. There are millions of those entering the USA craving jobs which when obtained properly would create tax revenue and would help the withdrawals made by the boomers.

We need to stop kicking the can down the road. One thing is to start phasing out the Federal Reserve in the next 25 years.

[yellowstone123]

It’s interesting that I’m reading a book, The Great Dissenter about Justice John Marshall Harland and his fight to enforce the fourteenth amendment and others for reconstruction of the USA. Enslaved Men and women who were now free found it difficult to pay for a night in a hotel, go to the opera and get a haircut. And this was New York City. People said the fourteenth amendment only applied to states, not small businesses. But as Harland argued in Plessy vs. Ferguson, that the constitution was color blind. He made mistakes in Kentucky as a “slave owner” but fought for the Union in the civil war and left in the middle to become the State's Attorney General. He had a brother who was half black and whom he loved greatly. The thought of two separate train compartments; one for him and one for his half brother, Robert, did not sit well with him but the book now is only on the fourteenth amendment post civil war and the services denied freed men and women from private businesses in New York City.

As a side note, his half brother was very smart and became very wealthy through land speculation in the USA and bringing Kentucky horse racing to France.

[ajax18]

Insurrection was a defined word in the 1800s and is a defined term today. In neither case is insurrection defined as a "threat to democracy."

Now we're getting into the legal universe. As my property law professor used to say, "Words have no meaning when it comes to law." What is the definition of insurrection and who gets to decide if someone is guilty of insurrection? Why couldn't Ron DeSantis say that Kamala Harris was guilty of aiding and abetting insurrection by bailing violent BLM vandals out of jail and therefore subject to removal from the ballot according to this precedent? That's certainly inciting and encouraging an insurrection. The BLM riots based on the George Floyd lie destroyed way more federal property and killed way more people than the January 6 protests.

[Kishkumen]

I think the truth of the matter is that the radicals traveling under the spurious name of conservative have us all by the neck. They keep pushing further and further beyond the realm of tradition and law to the point that our system will ultimately break. A state should be able to refuse to allow an insurrectionist (and, come on, we know that seeking to overthrow an election that is transpiring in the electoral ballot count is insurrection) to be on the ballot. Contrary to what Confederate ajax says, ludicrous claims of insurrection could be batted down as they were appealed. The reality is that the Republicans are purposely paving the road to chaos by removing any option that would keep Insurrection Don from his second shot at dictator.

To say that it is now Congress' job (i.e., the Republican majority's job) to keep an unworthy candidate off the ballot is an absolute gobsmacker, since it is the GOP that is seeking to place an authoritarian menace who incited insurrection into what might end up becoming a perpetual presidency.

Simply put, it was a bad decision. The peril people worried about did not exist. There is no way that a bunch of frivolous insurrection claims would withstand scrutiny. The liberals blinked. They should not have agreed to this.

[ajax18]

(and, come on, we know that seeking to overthrow an election that is transpiring in the electoral ballot count is insurrection)

If this legal theory was so specious, then why did Congress make a law saying the Vice President didn't have the right to do this? Do you not see a big difference between pursuing a specious legal theory and firing on Fort Sumpter? Are those pretty much the same thing in your mind? Come on.

Simply put, it was a bad decision. The peril people worried about did not exist. There is no way that a bunch of frivolous insurrection claims would withstand scrutiny. The liberals blinked. They should not have agreed to this.

You're assuming that two-tiered partisan political justice system will always be in place. Did Mitch McConnel not show to Democrats that the precedents they set will cut both ways?

[Res Ipsa]

Insurrection was a defined word in the 1800s and is a defined term today. In neither case is insurrection defined as a "threat to democracy."

Now we're getting into the legal universe. As my property law professor used to say, "Words have no meaning when it comes to law." What is the definition of insurrection and who gets to decide if someone is guilty of insurrection? Why couldn't Ron DeSantis say that Kamala Harris was guilty of aiding and abetting insurrection by bailing violent BLM vandals out of jail and therefore subject to removal from the ballot according to this precedent? That's certainly inciting and encouraging an insurrection. The BLM riots based on the George Floyd lie destroyed way more federal property and killed way more people than the January 6 protests.

LOL, silly. Of course we're in the legal universe. The Constitution is the bedrock of our legal universe, and the issue is how an amendment to the Constitution applies to a specific person running for our constitutionally established office of the President. What universe did you think we were in? Steven Universe?

I sincerely doubt that you understand that snippet you recall from your property law class, unless you have decided to join the Frankfurt School and those radical critical race theory professors. It is trivially true that the series of marks on paper (or a screen) or the sounds we string together have no meaning -- at least until we give it to them. The common meaning given to words is recorded in dictionaries, which are updated to reflect changes in how people use words.

In law, words are generally given their common meanings unless specifically defined in a law or contract. In our legal system, ultimate decisions about the meaning of words is made by judges.

In the case of the 14th amendment, a constitutional originalist would look at the common understanding of the word at the time the amendment was ratified, discussion of what constituted an insurrection by the Congress that enacted the amendment, and any cases applying the amendment to disqualify folks from holding office. Others would take into consideration how the word is used today, how it has been defined in different contexts over time, and subsequent cases that defined or applied the term.

Ron DeSantis is a state governor. He is certainly able to make any silly argument he wants, just like you are able to do so. But, in our legal system, he doesn't get to define the words in the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court just held that states have no role in deciding whether the 14th Amendment bars a candidate from federal office, so Ron DeSantis doesn't get to decide.

Here's what the 14th Amendment says:

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.

Kamala Harris certainly has not engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution. The rioters you refer to may have been rebelling against the police, but the local police are not the U.S. Constitution. The 14th amendment says nothing about the amount of property damage. The definitions of rebellion and insurrection say nothing about the amount of property damage. I've seen zero evidence that the rioters were rebelling against the U.S. Constitution.

If we just apply the holding of yesterday's Supreme Court decision, and not the clear obiter dictum in the majority opinion, DeSantis would have to sue Harris and whoever in Florida is the legal authority for deciding which candidates qualify for ballots in federal court. The federal court would hold a trial on the issue of whether the rioters had engaged insurrection or rebellion against the U.S. Constitution and whether whatever you say Harris did qualifies as aid and comfort to the rioters. Because the definition of terms is a legal issue under our legal system, the judge would decide the meanings of the relevant terms. The finder of fact would decide whether whatever Harris did factually falls within the amendment, based on definitions stated in the jury instructions approved by the judge. Any decision would be reviewable by the U.S. Court of Appeals and, ultimately, the Supreme Court (if it so chose). At every level of the system, the meanings of words would be decided by judges. That's how our system works. I'm surprised that you didn't retain this basic fact about our legal system from your property law class.

If we apply the obiter dictum in yesterday's majority opinion, DeSantis would have to find an existing federal law that provides a basis for determining whether someone engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution. There is a statute that defines insurrection as a federal crime, so that might work. But, that would require a federal prosecutor to persuade a grand jury to indict Harris under the statute. DeSantis is not a federal prosecutor and has no control over federal prosecutors. The prosecutor would be subject to the criminal law burden of proof -- beyond reasonable doubt. The jurors would decide whether Harris was guilty beyond reasonable doubt, based on the jury instructions given by the judge (including definitions of terms). And, again, a conviction would be subject to an appeal to the Court of Appeals and review by the Supreme Court.

So, the answer to your question "who gets to decide" is simple. Ultimately, it's judges. Practically speaking, it's legislatures in laws, parties in contracts, and all of us in terms of ordinary meaning.

When it comes to Trump, what's interesting is that the trial court in Colorado found by "clear and convincing" evidence that Trump "engaged in insurrection." The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed that part of the trial court's holding. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, did not overrule on that basis. So, the Supreme Court let stand the factual finding that Trump engaged in insurrection. Apparently, there weren't five Justices willing to state that Trump had not engaged in insurrection.

[Res Ipsa]

(and, come on, we know that seeking to overthrow an election that is transpiring in the electoral ballot count is insurrection)

If this legal theory was so specious, then why did Congress make a law saying the Vice President didn't have the right to do this? Do you not see a big difference between pursuing a specious legal theory and firing on Fort Sumpter? Are those pretty much the same thing in your mind? Come on.

Oh, come on yourself. Even the lawyers that created the scheme to overturn the results of the election admitted that they had to break existing law to do it. The fact that Congress took remedial action to enact laws after the insurrection does not mean that what happened was not an insurrection. Enacting laws that make it harder for bad actors to do bad things is not some kind of admission that the bad things were good things.

Whether you like it or not, the definitions of insurrection and rebellion are not limited to military action. Here is the Colorado Supreme Court's definition which, again, the Supreme Court did not reverse:

Although we acknowledge that these definitions vary and some are arguably broader than others, for purposes of deciding this case, we need not adopt a single, all-encompassing definition of the word “insurrection.” Rather, it suffices for us to conclude that any definition of “insurrection” for purposes of Section Three would encompass a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power in this country.

https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfile ... 3SA300.pdf, p. 99.

[ajax18]

Kamala Harris certainly has not engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution. The rioters you refer to may have been rebelling against the police, but the local police are not the U.S. Constitution.

Did they burn down federal buildings? How can you argue that January 6 was an insurrection when nothing was stopped? Congress certified the election later that afternoon. And there is no evidence that Donald Trump ordered the rioters to attack the capital. Take a step back and ask yourself how bad the results of Democrat policy has been to see Donald Trump polling higher with blacks and Hispanics than any Republican ever before. If you want to beat Donald Trump and MAGA, why not rethink your hard left policies and try to earn citizens' votes rather than using banana republic tactics to disqualify and persecute your political opponents?

I'm surprised that you didn't retain this basic fact about our legal system from your property law class.

That is a good explanation. Thanks. I wasn't very impressed with the level of teaching these overpaid law professors put out, either. But under our current system, only the student pays the cost of failure. The professor gets paid regardless of how poor his performance is.