We at the moment are 100 days into the Trump Administration. As greatest as I can inform, there was zero litigation over whether or not Part 3 of the Fourteenth Modification disqualifies Trump from the presidency. Throughout the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2025, there have been zero objections raised primarily based on Part 3. But, it’s onerous to imagine that about fifteen months in the past, the Supreme Court docket was being requested to disqualify Trump from the poll.
As common readers of this weblog will recall, Seth Barrett Tillman and I had been actively engaged within the course of to disqualify Trump between 2021 and 2024. I focus on lots of the issues we did throughout this time in a brand new article for the Mississippi Legislation Journal’s symposium problem on the Fourteenth Modification.
Right here is the summary of Forcibly Sweeping Section 3 Up To The Supreme Court:
Within the wake of January 6, 2021 a two-year lawfare marketing campaign was waged to forestall Donald Trump from being re-elected president. That motion reached its pinnacle on December 19, 2023, when the Colorado Supreme Court docket dominated that Part 3 of the Fourteenth Modification disqualified Donald Trump from the presidency. However lower than three months later, on March 3, 2024, the USA Supreme Court docket unanimously reversed the state courtroom. President Trump was re-elected, and licensed on January 6, 2025.
This Article will not be supposed to elucidate the nuances of Part 3, summarize the entire litigation, and even analyze how the Supreme Court docket determined the case. Fairly, this Article is considerably private in nature. It tells my very own expertise within the Part 3 litigation, from January 6, 2021, by means of January 6, 2025. This Article, I hope, will encapsulate the function that I performed on this course of with my good friend and colleague Seth Barrett Tillman.
Seth additionally contributed to this symposium problem. His article is titled, Some Personal Reflections on the Recent Litigation Involving Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. Here’s a snippet from the introduction:
What follows will not be particularly an try to reargue the deserves of disputes between my interlocutors and myself [which were debated during the recent Section 3 ballot-access Trump-related cases], however an try to elucidate my private expertise in making an attempt to debate a set of mental factors—factors which I had developed since circa 2007 and refined in cooperation with Professor Blackman since 2017. Though I make no declare to objectivity amongst competing views, I hope to point out that conventional tutorial {and professional} norms stay worthy aspirational targets, even the place unmet.
Trying again, this paper will not be a lot about Part 3 of Modification XIV and up to date ballot-access Trump-related litigation. Fairly, it’s extra concerning the decline in civility and aspirational requirements throughout the polity, the courts, and authorized academia.
And one other snippet from the conclusion:
It’s stated that on the negotiations at Appomattox Courthouse—Lee and Grant had been each frank and civil through the course of discussing the give up of Lee’s Military of Northern Virginia. Afterwards, Grant despatched meals to Lee to feed his (and, then, their) nation’s former enemy troopers. Celebrations for Grant’s troopers got here solely later—not whereas Lee’s troopers remained current. Once more, in ending lively hostilities, step one in the direction of nationwide reconciliation was frank and civil discourse.
I don’t suppose our current and future is or can be as tough as was Grant and Lee’s. However we too have to consider nationwide reconciliation. It appears to me that the primary steps in that route contain frank and civil dialogue, absent hyperbole, and absent title calling. If federal judges, state judges, and authorized teachers are lower than that activity, then that’s simply one other institutional and cultural drawback crying out for reform and renewal.
Likewise, our home legislation colleges are supported by taxes, tuition, and donations. If universities and teachers solely additional burden American society by casting apart our free speech traditions and actively have interaction in simply one other entrance in our tradition wars, then wider society would possibly very effectively select to withhold help. Maybe this course of has already begun?
Usually Seth and I publish collectively, however for this symposium, it was helpful to publish individually. The Part 3 litigation will not be one thing we are going to quickly neglect, even when others would quite not recall what they tried to do.
