Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
If only conservatives listened to scholars. Then they might consider a) the intent of the constitution and b) the practical implications of nominating someone so unfit. Alas.
I said it after the weak jan 6 fallout and I'll say it again: if Trump is allowed to run for president it doesn't mean our democracy is in danger.
The very idea of his candidacy is farcical, proof that the rule of law is no longer breaking but broken; proof that our government and the tenets of democracy are in fact dead in the us.
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.
In practice, it goes eventually to the Supreme Court which, like the Republican Party, has been Trumpified and therefore will see no problem, case closed.
I think the trick is going to be, based on the other guy who got disqualified for 1/6, is that someone actually has to challenge the nomination. It's not something that happens automatically.
"The decision came in a lawsuit brought by a group of New Mexico residents represented by the government accountability group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other lawyers."
It's a good thing that it is very difficult to stop somebody from running for office.
The act of running for office, or more accurately the act of the people to chose whom represents them, should not be easy to take away.
In banana republics the new guy or the guy with the most power at the moment regularly uses tactics to stop their opponents in the courts. Sometimes the charges are legitimate, but sometimes they are totally fabricated.
Take for example the case of Pita, 42 years old, the leader of the move forward party in Thailand. His party swept the recent election and by many accounts average Thai people see his ideas as the most welcome path forward. Yet the old guys and their friends, who were part of the coup 6-7 years ago, are still in power. They have been able to completely shut Pita's party down in the courts, and despite the people having made a choice by voting, they, will not get the government they wanted.
If there was another political party in the USA that was more successful than Trump's at breaking the laws, and the American courts were to set a precedent that some opponents can't run for office given legal charges, I'm afraid the risk of politicians looking to defeat their opponents in court would become much more common than trying to defeat them in the polls.
Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and a prominent conservative who’s become a strong critic of Trump’s actions after the election.
They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion … or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the government.
The law professors argued current and former officeholders who took part in supporting or planning the efforts to overturn the election for Trump should also be “stringently scrutinized” under the Constitution should they seek bids for future public office.
The pair also looked at the historical intentions of this section of the 14th Amendment, which barred Confederates after the Civil War from holding office again, because if they were to be allowed, the US would never be able to engage in “effective ‘reconstruction’ of the political order” and newly freed formerly enslaved people wouldn’t be properly protected.
Previously, advocacy groups contested the ability of Republican members of Congress Marjorie Taylor Green and Madison Cawthorn to be ballot candidates in 2022 because of the 14th Amendment and their vocal support of the Capitol rioters.
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Ok, I get the sentiment but let's bear in mind that whatever rules apply to Trump will be applied to others. It should be very hard to bar someone from running. Trump doesn't have the support to win the general. It's not happening. He lost the Republican party multiple elections now, and they know it (well, enough of them know it). Let's not forget that Eugene Debs ran for office in 1920 from prison. He was put there under the Sedition Act for speaking out against WW1 and the draft, if I recall correctly. This type of thing is a sword that cuts both ways.
I don't think the people that voted for a demented husk should be speaking on a matter as hot as this. We are in the worst state we've been in in decades and everyone chooses to ignore that fact and continue to target what I see as a scapegoat. To pull the attention off the matters currently being conducted right in front of us. But no one bats an eye. It's always "orange man bad" when it's most convenient for the people in charge of everything, especially with the primarys coming up. Extremely convenient to be doing all of this right before.