Common sense can get you through a lot of this stuff. Seriously.
If electors can be appointed because the state party simply decides to send them, and if certification is unnecessary in the face of the whims of the VP playing master of ceremonies, what does that mean?
Common sense can get you through a lot of the psycho litigation, too.
If thousands of votes can be dumped and states can be switched on briefs with no credible evidence, and grammar, spelling, and argumentation so bad an 8th grader would be ashamed, what would that mean?
Our system relies a lot on norms and decency, it's true. We overestimated the durability of some of those norms, and some problems have arisen. Less than the "he keeps getting away with it!" crowd thinks, but still, some.
But this isn't DnD after some Four Loko and a bad day.
If our system can be gamed and rules lawyered and broken by Lin fucking Wood and Mike fucking Pence?
Common sense again. Play that out.
1. It would have *happened* already. Neither of these guys is in the same intellectual ballpark as Roy Cohn or Harry Daugherty.
2. It would mean the designers of our systems were outwitted down the line by grifters. Again, these are clowns, the average judge or Framer is not.
3. We wouldn't live in a democracy, or a Republic if you're an insufferable pedant. Our rule of law would be rule of lawyer. I get that y'all like following me, but if I were that powerful, I'd know and you would too.
4. We haven't had a civil war in 160 years. A revolution in 240. That's not a coincidence. You think the Great Depression generation would've taken the obvious and unabashed disenfranchisement of 60% of them lying down? The Lost Generation?
Game this stuff out.
Foreseeability.
So much of being a legal thinker is common sense.
If you've studied enough to know your shit, common sense can get you through some of the bar exam!
This stuff makes a certain sense because it was written by man, it was written to work, and outcomes must be...
Foreseeable.
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If you wish it were, check yourself for your authoritarian instincts.
"I want the government to punish attorneys who challenge it via its own courts and procedures" is a take so gross, in fact, that the understandable indignation at the bullshit some lawyers get up to doesn't really excuse it.
Our profession is regulated civilly by people who know our profession, how it works, and how it needs to work.
Is it regulated fairly or aggressively enough? Certainly not. I'd rather err towards laissez-faire than criminalize advocacy based on obsequious devotion to the state.