As election law scholar Rick Hasen writes, “the arguments that Trump has advanced in his most recent brief are weaker and more hedged than I would have expected,” and “it’s hard to know exactly where the court goes from here,” given this meager performance by the former president’s attorneys.
Trump, in other words, is asking the Court to open a Pandora’s box that it slammed shut after hearing widespread alarm from across the legal profession — including some of the conservative movement’s most dedicated activists.
The plaintiffs challenging Trump’s eligibility point to myriad evidence indicating that, by the time the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, the term “officer of the United States” was understood to include the president.
It would be extraordinary if the Supreme Court ruled that this alleged, penny-ante citation error so “exceed[s] the bounds of ordinary judicial review” as to justify invoking the independent state legislature doctrine — a doctrine the Supreme Court has rejected many times over the course of a century and that it recently rejected after an array of retired generals and admirals warned the justices that it threatens national security.
If the justices rule that the Colorado decision must be tossed out because of a minor error in the court’s construction of state law, that would do nothing to resolve the broader question of whether Trump is disqualified under the 14th Amendment.
Brandenburg involved a speech at a Ku Klux Klan rally, attended by “12 hooded figures, some of whom carried firearms,” where a speaker said that “if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.” Yet, even though this speech advocated violence against the highest US officials, the Court tossed out the law used to prosecute this speaker, holding that a state cannot punish “mere advocacy” of violence, but only “imminent lawless action.”
The original article contains 3,137 words, the summary contains 319 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As election law scholar Rick Hasen writes, “the arguments that Trump has advanced in his most recent brief are weaker and more hedged than I would have expected,” and “it’s hard to know exactly where the court goes from here,” given this meager performance by the former president’s attorneys.
Trump, in other words, is asking the Court to open a Pandora’s box that it slammed shut after hearing widespread alarm from across the legal profession — including some of the conservative movement’s most dedicated activists.
The plaintiffs challenging Trump’s eligibility point to myriad evidence indicating that, by the time the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, the term “officer of the United States” was understood to include the president.
It would be extraordinary if the Supreme Court ruled that this alleged, penny-ante citation error so “exceed[s] the bounds of ordinary judicial review” as to justify invoking the independent state legislature doctrine — a doctrine the Supreme Court has rejected many times over the course of a century and that it recently rejected after an array of retired generals and admirals warned the justices that it threatens national security.
If the justices rule that the Colorado decision must be tossed out because of a minor error in the court’s construction of state law, that would do nothing to resolve the broader question of whether Trump is disqualified under the 14th Amendment.
Brandenburg involved a speech at a Ku Klux Klan rally, attended by “12 hooded figures, some of whom carried firearms,” where a speaker said that “if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.” Yet, even though this speech advocated violence against the highest US officials, the Court tossed out the law used to prosecute this speaker, holding that a state cannot punish “mere advocacy” of violence, but only “imminent lawless action.”
The original article contains 3,137 words, the summary contains 319 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!