The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently delivered a unanimous decision striking down the Colorado Supreme Court’s verdict to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot.
The move prompted outrage from two prominent legal experts who argue that SCOTUS has made a monumental mistake.
Is the Supreme Court abandoning duty?
In a compelling essay penned for The Atlantic on Thursday, Harvard law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe and former US Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative appointee under George H.W. Bush, expressed deep concern over what they perceive as the erosion of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, commonly referred to as the insurrection clause.
They lamented the Court’s failure to uphold what they see as a crucial safeguard for American democracy, accusing SCOTUS of abandoning its duty to protect the constitutional framework.
‘No one is above the law’
Luttig and Tribe meticulously dismantled SCOTUS’ rationale for its decision, particularly taking issue with the Court’s assertion that disqualifying Trump would have led to confusion and discord among states regarding the definition of “insurrection” and whether Trump had engaged in one. They argued vehemently that SCOTUS had disregarded the fundamental principle that no individual, not even a former president, is above the law.
Luttig and Tribe also aimed the conservative justices on the Court, accusing them of abandoning their professed principles of “originalism” and “textualism” in favor of a ruling that contradicted the plain text and original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In their poignant conclusion, Luttig and Tribe underscored the importance of preserving the constitutional mechanisms put in place to safeguard against future threats to democracy, drawing parallels to the lessons learned from the Civil War era.
As the debate unfolds, the voices of legal experts like Luttig and Tribe serve as a stark reminder of the enduring significance of constitutional principles in shaping the future of the American republic.
Cover Photo: Depositphotos
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