On Thursday Habig, now president of the non-profit Public Rights Project (PRP), hopes her arguments will persuade the supreme court that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who should be disqualified from the 2024 presidential election.
Habig has filed an amicus brief on behalf of historians contending that section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office, applies to Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
The brief gives the supreme court’s originalists, who believe the constitution should be interpreted as it would have been in the era it was written, a taste of their own medicine. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are self-declared originalists while Samuel Alito has described himself as a “practical originalist”.
Edit: The Supreme Court hearing will be streamed live on Feb 8 @ 10am ET (h/t @jordanlund)
And by the way, the Colorado judge who first heard the case also interpreted the 14th “as it would have been in the era it was written” and found that Trump, based on that and the evidence presented, had indeed participated in insurrection.
The constitution doesn’t matter to Republicans. Laws don’t matter to Republicans. They don’t think that they should be held accountable for anything - ever. You don’t have to go far to find an example either.
Excuse me, they do mater to Republicans so long as they benefit them.
You leave Mater out of this. He probably would vote Republican, but that’s just cause he’s a bit stupid, and clearly from the deeper part of the south. Mater doesn’t have a hateful bolt in his body.
The Supreme Court hearings will be live streamed on Thursday, no word if we’ll actually have a ruling then or not.
I thought that cameras aren’t allowed in the SC chambers, as in against the law? Are they just streaming audio? Are they allowed to stream audio?
Audio streaming is still streaming. ;)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Habig has filed an amicus brief on behalf of historians contending that section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office, applies to Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
“Our goal was to bring an originalist historical perspective to the supreme court as it considered the meaning of section 3 of the 14th amendment,” Habig, a former special counsel to then California attorney general Harris, says by phone from Oakland.
The amicus brief, led by historians Jill Lepore of Harvard and David Blight of Yale, cites debates from the time in which senators made clear that their view that the provision that would not only apply for former Confederates but to the leaders of rebellions yet to come.
Still, there are plenty of Republicans, Democrats and neutrals who warn that the 14th amendment drive is politically counterproductive, fueling a Trumpian narrative that state institutions are out to stop him and that Joe Biden is the true threat to democracy.
Habig reflects: “The gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the supreme court left states to themselves to rewrite the rules of the game in a variety of ways that disenfranchised voters and continued to rig maps against their systems and fair representation.
There was no greater measure of America’s ailing democracy than the 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the ruling that in effect made abortion legal nationwide, by supreme court justices appointed by presidents who lost the national popular vote.
The original article contains 1,684 words, the summary contains 259 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I feel sorry for the lawyers arguing this case. They’ve got to know it doesn’t matter what they say. They’re just putting on a show before the supremacist court announces whether or not they’re going to pretend to care about the Constitution this time.
The better the show the lawyers put on the harder it is for the Supreme Court to ignore it, and the louder the cries of the court being illegitimate if they do.
The sad thing is that this legitimizes the originalist nonsense. When it’s clearly just a tactic used to promote corporatism and fascism. They don’t give a fuuuuuuck
