This won’t be easy

In a ruling last week, the Michigan Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump to remain on the Republican primary ballot, rejecting the argument that the 14th Amendment’s ban on holding public office for government officials who’d previously engaged in insurrection against the United States disqualified the former president.

Those who’ve pretended this is an uncomplicated or cut-and-dry issue are kidding themselves. The law isn’t a pure expression of moral preference, whether you think Trump is a clear and present danger to the country whose name shouldn’t so much as grace the ballot for dog catcher or a legitimate candidate whose exclusion is an anti-democratic hazard.

There are strong arguments to be made in either case (though not so for the loony perspective that he was cheated out of his rightful second term by some shadowy cabal). Keeping an otherwise eligible candidate off the ballot through a somewhat subjective decision that he engaged in loosely-defined insurrection is dead serious no matter how you slice it, and there are serious implications if that’s something that can be done easily, particularly by individual states.

Nothing about the Constitution’s language suggests that the ballot ban isn’t self-executing or requires a criminal conviction, nor that “insurrection” is to be construed narrowly as a formal armed rebellion. Whatever anyone’s definition of the term, it’s hard to imagine that Trump’s conduct plainly doesn’t qualify, nor that the amendment’s framers did not intend it to apply to the highest office in the land. However the U.S. Supreme Court approaches things, they should know this isn’t an easy call.