03/14/24
Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig issued a searing rebuke of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that Colorado could not disqualify former President Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban, which preserved his ability to seek a second term.
In a piece published Thursday in The Atlantic, Luttig, a longtime conservative jurist on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said all nine justices “dangerously betrayed” democracy in making their decision.
Voters and advocacy groups had filed dozens of challenges to Trump’s ballot eligibility in states across the country, claiming his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack triggered his disqualification.
The high court sided with Trump by ruling Congress has exclusive authority to enforce the 14th Amendment to disqualify federal candidates.
Luttig, who had been vocal in support of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from the ballot, described Section 3 of the 14th Amendment as the Constitution’s “safety net for America’s democracy, promising to automatically disqualify from public office all oath-breaking insurrectionists against the Constitution, deeming them too dangerous to entrust with power unless supermajorities of both houses of Congress formally remove their disability.”
“Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy. The Supreme Court has now rendered that safety net a dead letter, effectively rescinding it as if it had never been enacted,” Luttig wrote.
Luttig pushed back on the argument that barring Trump from the ballot would be undemocratic, writing: “Disqualification is not what is antidemocratic; rather, it is the insurrection that is antidemocratic, as the Constitution emphatically tells us.”
He continued, “That the disqualification clause has not previously been invoked to keep traitors against the Constitution from having a second opportunity to fracture the framework of our republic reflects not its declining relevance but its success at deterring the most dangerous assaults on our government until now.”
Luttig, who previously submitted an amicus brief in the case, reiterated his core arguments in favor of upholding the Colorado decision.
“What ought to have been, as a matter of the Constitution’s design and purpose, the climax of the struggle for the survival of America’s democracy and the rule of law instead turned out to be its nadir, delivered by a Court unwilling to perform its duty to interpret the Constitution as written,” Luttig wrote.
“Desperate to assuage the growing sense that it is but a political instrument, the Court instead cemented that image into history. It did so at what could be the most perilous constitutional and political moment in our country’s history, when the nation and the Constitution needed the Court most—to adjudicate not the politics of law, but the law of the politics that is poisoning the lifeblood of America.”
“Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy. The Supreme Court has now rendered that safety net a dead letter, effectively rescinding it as if it had never been enacted,”
Spot on! Couldn’t have said it better.
Trump reminds too much of vlad. He also has his tentacles everywhere. The Supreme Court had been turned into the same type of circus show by him as our Congress.
Paranoid doped jews hate Trump. But truth is THEY CREATED TRUMP AND BIBI! Fuck them!
“… a longtime conservative jurist….”
The conservative label is a lie. Like it or not, Trump has never been charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it. The SCOTUS decision was in line with the law. Luttig is the sort of corrupt judge that needs to be removed from the bench.
I took note of your comment and reject it for mine, which is the opposite of yours.
“which is the opposite of yours”
That’s because you’re “facts” and he’s delusional. 🙂
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states:
“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.”
Note that it says nothing about being charged with insurrection or convicted of insurrection.
Your comment is all the more clear and precise since the Supreme Court is seen as an organ that works in obedience to the letter of the law. Section 3 is unequivocal in not specifying that a judgment must be entered. This makes sense because insurrection, unless I’m mistaken, is not specifically defined by the Constitution.
The rest of my comment is just speculation (I don’t know the history of USA and its laws well) but from what I understand – please correct me if necessary – even if the Court had observed the spirit of the law, it could have completely disqualified Trump because this article was specifically promulgated after the civil war awaiting amnesty. It was therefore a judicial tool usable during periods of transition in order to muzzle citizens who would like to prevent the State from exercising its functions. The events of January 6 fit perfectly with the historical events that allowed such a law to be promulgated. Finally, a “presidential invocation of the Insurrection Act would probably be sufficient to establish the existence of an insurrection for purposes of Fourteenth Amendment disqualification.” So wouldn’t Biden have the power to establish it retroactively?
Obviously the Court is very picky when it comes to evaluating constitutional rights like abortion, much less when it comes to sending thugs to prison.
It paid off for the orange one that he chose several of those so-called judges. And everyone blathers about corruption in Ukraine, et al.