The Supreme Court is due to hear arguments regarding the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to ban Trump from the presidential election ballot in that state based upon the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment stating, in short, that anyone engaged in insurrection cannot hold office. An expedited ruling is expected after this and could come within days.
The fact is, this will be a true test of the oft stated philosophy of several of the justices that they are textualists and originalists in their approach to interpreting the Constitution. If they are, and based upon previous writings by none other than Justice Scalia, it is hard to understand how they could come to any other conclusion but to uphold the Colorado decision.
We will see how much integrity, courage, and impartiality the justices have. If they are cowards, they could just decide they don’t really want to get their hands dirty and take the ‘states rights’ path and kick the decisions back to each individual state. That, of course, will open a flood of lawsuits in virtually every state in the Union and end up with a mishmash of decisions that will do the country more harm than good. It will do nothing to finally settle the issue.
If they go against their stated judicial philosophies about how they interpret the Constitution and rule against the Colorado decision, we can expect the logic behind this decision to look something like the convoluted diagram below.
The reputation of the Supreme Court has already been damaged by the ethics scandals that have plagued it for the last year. They have a chance to show the world the American system of jurisprudence works and that no one is above the law. If they fail, their credibility will be shredded and irreparably damaged for the foreseeable future.
Many of the current Republicans in Congress have shown they lack courage as they constantly lick the boots of Trump and do his bidding. We will soon see if that Trump virus has infected the U.S. Supreme Court and caused a deterioration in their spines as well.
Will the U. S. Supreme Court decision on the Colorado decision banning Trump from the ballot look like this?
