It is only going to be a little bit galling when the Supreme Court, in a unanimous or near-unanimous vote, determines in a few weeks that states may not disqualify insurrectionist presidents from the ballot, because doing so would unleash mayhem—or, as Donald Trump’s lawyer promises, “chaos and bedlam”—that the nation cannot afford. During oral arguments Thursday in Trump v. Anderson, the long-awaited ballot disqualification case, almost all the justices centered their worries less on text and history than on the chilling prospect of, as Chief Justice John Roberts put it, the “plain consequences” of greenlighting a regime in which “a goodly number of states will say, whoever the democratic candidate is, ‘you’re off the ballot.’” Roberts fretted that “it’ll come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election,” as if rogue states were not currently dictating outcomes for the rest of the country already. “That,” he added “is a pretty daunting consequence.”

Call it judicial cowardice or call it long-lost judicial humility, but the consensus view among the justices was that a lack of uniformity, coherence, and certainty—as well the fear of vexatious acts and petty mischief— precluded the court from allowing the words of the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 to mean what they say. Historians have fallen over themselves to show that, yes, Section 3 bars insurrectionists from the White House, up to and including Trump. Yet the justices seemed terrified that disqualifying him from the ballot could unleash chaos in future elections.

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Really? That’s the off-ramp? This Supreme Court has evinced not a scintilla of concern for the real impacts of its gun decisions, voting rights decisions, or abortion decisions on real people. The fact that the justices are suddenly profoundly worried........

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