137

US supreme court justices have strange views on whether Trump is disqualified (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The justices, wanting to restore Trump to the ballot, didn’t address the underlying question of if he incited an insurrection

Elena Kagan once referred to Jonathan Mitchell sarcastically as “some genius”. That was in oral arguments surrounding SB8, the bounty-hunter abortion ban that Texas succeeded in passing before the overturn of Roe v Wade, which Mitchell wrote, pioneering a cockamamie scheme for evading judicial review.

Mitchell, a far-right lawyer currently vying for a spot in the second Trump administration, is a fan of this kind of bald, legal bad faith: you can’t quite call him duplicitous, because he never quite pretends that the law really leads him to the conclusions he’d like to reach. He’s more about coming up with novel legal schemes to get to his desired outcome and trusting that the federal judiciary, captured as it is by Federalist Society acolytes and wingnut cranks, will go along with him because they share his political proclivities.

That’s what worked for him with SB8: the supreme court allowed Texas’s abortion ban to go into effect long before Dobbs: not because Mitchell made a convincing argument, but because he offered them an opportunity to do what they wanted to do anyway.

Something similar happened in Thursday’s oral arguments in Trump v Anderson, a question about whether Donald Trump is disqualified from holding federal office under section three of the 14th amendment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

A state could repeal its popular vote law tomorrow and have the legislators appoint Electors themselves

Republicans have already tried once. Thankfully, SCOTUS shot them down.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/independent-state-legislature-theory-explained

[-] grue@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

No, that blatantly-corrupt wishful thinking bullshit isn't what I'm talking about at all.

For reference, here's what your article says "independent state legislature theory" is:

The dispute hinges on how to understand the word “legislature.” The long-running understanding is that it refers to each state’s general lawmaking processes, including all the normal procedures and limitations. So if a state constitution subjects legislation to being blocked by a governor’s veto or citizen referendum, election laws can be blocked via the same means. And state courts must ensure that laws for federal elections, like all laws, comply with their state constitutions.

Proponents of the independent state legislature theory reject this traditional reading, insisting that these clauses give state legislatures exclusive and near-absolute power to regulate federal elections. The result? When it comes to federal elections, legislators would be free to violate the state constitution and state courts couldn’t stop them.

What I'm saying is not that state legislatures could ignore the results of the state's popular vote and send fraudulent electors or whatever (i.e. the second-paragraph case), but that a state could decide to repeal its popular vote in the legitimate way (i.e. the first-paragraph case) if it wanted.

TL;DR: all I'm saying is that the way a state chooses Electors is a matter of its own state law, not Federal law. I'm not saying a state legislature doesn't have to follow its own state laws!

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

That's a different matter and thankfully they made the right decision there. The question was whether or not a state legislature has the sole power to decide election rules AND they supercede the governor and state constitution.

this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024

137 points (97.2% liked)

politics

19088 readers

3528 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News