Biden would be challenged in court and the Supreme Court would find his definition on insurrection unlawful. But let's say in this hypothetical that he's packed the Court, that he has support in Congress to avoid impeachment, and that he still goes ahead with it. Civil wars happen for a reason.

This is a more reasonable answer. Obviously congress has the power to define it through law and the courts can double check the presidents interpretation.

The president doesn't have the authority to pass laws or allocate resources, and his veto can be overridden by congress, his executive orders subject to judicial review.
There's a whole laundry list of checks and balances and none of them involve an unaccountable state bureaucrat in Maine arbitrarily deciding that the president is illegitimate and unilaterally overturning the federal government.

The colorado supreme court sure doesn't have jurisdiction over D.C. nor power to declare who is a valid president, nor does some rando SoS in Maine. They have precisely the same jurisdiction Goomshill on PARD has to declare who is president: they can go cast their vote in an election

I can't read so many pages filled with Goom's essays so I may be asking a question already hashed out: why is Trump being convicted of another statute called "insurrection" or "rebellion" necessary to meet the standards of section 3 of the 14th amendment? The Constitution is law, we don't necessarily need another law to reaffirm the judgement of a court. Like, we don't have a statute in American law for every single definition of a word. If judges determine Trump is guilty of this part of the Constitution, why does he have to be guilty of another statute passed(or imagined) by Congress?

Those are issues being directly refuted in the appeals to SCOTUS- that the 14th amendment isn't self-executing and requires statutes to enforce it, which don't exist. You can google up "self-executing" and see a bunch of legal analysis on just that. That because separate statutes exist for "insurrection/rebellion" vs "obstruction of a legal proceeding", they can't be the same thing, and Trump was never charged with the former. That Trump has never been convicted of any of them so it doesn't matter, he can't have his constitutionally guaranteed rights stripped without due process. That section 3 of the 14th specifically lists offices and officers below the president, which in all precedent has been taken to not apply to the president himself (he appoints officers, he's not one himself). That a judge in Colorado has no jurisdiction over events in DC, that they certainly have no federal jurisdiction to declare a president illegitimate, and a secretary of state is not even a judge and has no more power to declare Trump illegitimate than I do.

That's why I listed those bullet points in the last page, this whole debacle is so fruity on a legal level that its not one legal issues, they're shredding the whole constitution and separation of powers and every precedent along the way. SCOTUS is being asked which of like 20 different reasons they want to cite for striking this down.

I appreciate the response... the lack of hyperbole looks good on you. I listened to the Advisory Opinions podcast with Will Baude but I haven't delved that deep into the issue.

I've maintained for decades that any time I'm in agreement with David Brooks then someone must be doing something very wrong
He's supposed to be cackling as the plebes are fed to the machine and I'm supposed to be mistaken as the jewish aclu lawyer from new york city

I bought his recent audiobook(cause he was on Jonah Goldberg's podcast) but he's one of those guys that comes out with really dumb opinions every third week. "Heterodox" thinkers from different perspectives often align in stupidity.

You guys may be right about this particular issue, but I'd like to make that broader point.

Having folks like Brooks around for their opinions is good, he just gets misused as a token "conservative" when he's got about as much in common with the 2023 Republican mainstream as Kathy Griffin does
Colmes on Fox at least was both a fair representation of the democratic mainstream and a far cleverer and reasonable voice on his own even if his job was just to be a footstool for Hannity
Doesn't help when the only real way to get a fair idea of what one side of the aisle thinks is to turn on AM radio, god help you if you do

Long story short, he doesn't necessarily. He'd just need to be convicted of something close enough to it that you could meet whatever definition is reasonable to match the constitutional intention, and then you would need to petition a court to say he met those intentions. It would be a very vague and messy process, which is why Colorado thinks it has the right to do so at this point. There is no explicit framework to say they don't.

However, at basically any time congress could pass a law saying "the elements for insurrection are these that must be proved" and that would change the game.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Dec 29 2023 07:41pm