My thoughts about the Supreme Court’s decision today, with CNN’s Jake Tapper just now.
The ruling is astonishing and unprecedented, not for its decision of the exceedingly narrow — and only — question presented
The ruling is astonishing and unprecedented, not for its decision of the exceedingly narrow — and only — question presented
(though, significantly, four of the Justices agreed only with the “result” of that decision, and not with its reasoning)
but rather, for the five-Justice majority’s decision to reach out gratuitously and decide essentially all of the equally, if not more momentous, constitutional questions that would need to be decided
in order for the former president or any other person in the future to be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment.
And in the course of unnecessarily deciding all of these questions when they were not even presented by the case, the five-Justice majority effectively decided not only that the former president will never be subject to disqualification, but
that no person who ever engages in an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States in the future will be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Disqualification Clause — as the concurrence of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson witheringly explain.
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