The right Supreme Court decision can steal the government
About the Supreme Court decision allowing former President Donald Trump to remain on the Colorado ballot: As a retired lawyer who is not a Constitutional law expert but definitely familiar with the U.S. Constitution, my professional opinion is that the decision is legally outrageous.
Basically, this Supreme Court has manufactured a loophole out of whole cloth, essentially to write out or ignore a portion of the Constitution justices don’t want to enforce. The decision makes the present Supreme Court the most corrupt in our history. The Supreme Court decision maintains only Congress can decide whether to exclude from the ballot a person factually found to have committed and/or have participated in acts of insurrection. Nothing in the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause requires congressional action, just as nothing in the Constitution requires congressional action to prevent a 34-year-old or a two-time president from being on the presidential ballot.
Requiring congressional action for the insurrection clause is like saying that states can’t prosecute someone for murder without congressional action. We have something called separation of powers in the United States. In a nutshell, this means that the courts and Congress don’t run things; the courts and the president don’t legislate; and the president and Congress don’t make legal rulings. The courts make legal rulings, and the courts in Colorado held a hearing that factually found Trump had participated in an insurrection. The Supreme Court did not overrule that factual finding, and therefore, it is binding. The courts adjudicate, not Congress.
The Supreme Court decision on the Colorado ballot is unlawful, just as the overturning of Roe v. Wade was unlawful. Legal precedent, known in law as stare decisis, is supposed to be followed except when heinous in nature. That’s what happened in Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 ruling that held segregation to be legal. The Supreme Court has the power to reverse Roe and to ignore the 14th Amendment, but justices don’t have the legal right to do so. This is an unlawful court, ignoring legal procedure to enact law rather than interpreting it. As such, the justices have become a super-legislature rather than a reviewing court.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who should recuse himself from any case involving Trump’s insurrection, has even indicated that he would overrule other legal precedents, such as Obergefell (same-sex marriage) and Griswold (right to birth control). There are more ways to pull off a coup than presenting fake electors, manufacturing votes as was attempted in Georgia and the armed insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. All that’s necessary is a Supreme Court that picks and chooses what laws to enforce.