this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Permanently Deleted (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also, i thought states were given the right to determine their own ballot rules.

Or is that mute because this is a federal election?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

deleted by creator

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I propose we go out in mass this weekend and let them know we are pissed.

What's next? No more basic human rights? Maybe make it ok to own slaves if the owner really really wants to?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Let's say, I'm at a bus stop and I see this other guy next to me.... really big guy who looks like a gym manager....and I tell him to be my slave? What then?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

It was a unanimous decision and the precedent they set was that states don't have the right to declare who is and who is not a traitor, only the federal government can decide that. I don't like Trump, but the precedent needed to be set and I agree with the supreme court on this one. You can still try to prove he is a traitor in federal court, and then he would be knocked off the ballot in all states.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't think that was the majority opinion, but the concurring opinion. The majority was party lines and stated that no, federal Court is also not enough, only action by congress will count.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, if you get a super majority from both houses of Congress then it supercedes the president and the supreme court, but that does not happen very often.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, that part of the amendment is just horribly written. It reads like a rush job, which is probably was given it was written to remove/keep out former Confederates. There's no mechanism in there to determine guilt or any definition of what constitutes insurrection or rebellion. Seceding, forming a new government, and declaring war on the US is obvious, but it doesn't say what the minimum threshold actually is. The entire thing is just two sentences. This very comment has a similar word count.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It was written that way to welcome back the confederates. This was a war where it was brother against brother, father against son, so it was written in a way to welcome back the south. Like "yeah, we kicked your ass, but we're still friends, we're only going to change things a little bit", and it has to be a super majority so anything less than 2/3's in both houses isn't enough. A super majority like that can impeach AND remove a sitting president. It could also recall a Continental Congress which has powers not used since the revolutionary war.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The much vaunted checks and balances mean nothing when the SC is corrupt

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This was a unanimous decision

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It wasn't. 5 said the text means the opposite of what it says. Four said enforcing it is up to the federal courts, not state courts. Two wildly different opinions with the only thing in common being overturning the state ruling.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

5 said the text means the opposite of what it says. Four said enforcing it is up to the federal courts, not state courts.

Both said that that one state couldn't decide it. The majority did take a more radical stance, but to say this is the SC court being corrupt when democrat appointees also wrote concurring opinions in regards to the actual ruling was the claim I was criticizing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I'm sorry, but is your uniting factor between the two stances "they both said one state couldn't decide" here? Isn't "one vote does note supersede a greater number of the opposite" a feature of democracy? Shouldn't this have been the motherfucking default stance of the United States supreme court regardless of their stance on any other part of the issue?

Quick edit to explain my point: I don't think saying "one state can't decide" was the actual issue here, and SCOTUS choosing not to address it the larger one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I don’t think saying “one state can’t decide” was the actual issue here, and SCOTUS choosing not to address it the larger one.

I mean, that was the issue in the supreme court case, from all of the SCOTUS opinions, a big part of what the SCOTUS has to do is set precedent for centuries.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So it's unanimous corruption, then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't know, look at who Clarence Thomas has been vacationing with for clues.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

What about the rest of the justices?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

This was...a bad decision. Quite frankly, they are abdicating responsibility with a sophomoric "not it!" when it comes to finally doing what the 14th requires. I wouldn't say it rises to the level of the Bush v. Gore decision at the turn of the millennium, but it is quite close.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Using their logic, Jefferson Davis could have run for president.

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