Now that the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Donald Trump on the 14th Amendment disqualification is sinking in, we are able to begin putting it in perspective. Yes, Trump remains on the ballot. But something else remains as well: the multiple judicial determinations that Trump engaged in insurrection. For that and other reasons, history will take a balanced view of this landmark decision, and it is far from the home run for Trump that he proclaimed.
The court ultimately resolved the thorny issue of Trump’s place on the ballot by finding that an individual state simply did not have the authority to implement disqualification for federal office. Maintaining that it is the federal government’s prerogative to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, in this instance, always appeared to be the high court’s most likely off-ramp. The justices thought that the discordant “patchwork” that would result from all 50 states applying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would create too much potential dissonance.
Even for those who disagree with that ruling, and we do, it was among the more reasonable off-ramps that the court could take. Thankfully the justices did not embrace some of the more outré options that had been put forth—such as saying that the president is not an “officer” of the United States and thus disqualification for insurrectionists doesn’t apply to the nation’s highest office. That absurdity would have been anathema to the Framers of the 14th Amendment. The court avoided twisting itself in that and other nonsensical readings of the Constitution’s text.
AdvertisementMoreover, all nine of the justices agreed on one additional crucial point. They refused to do what Trump begged of them—they did not exonerate him of the Colorado courts’ insurrection finding. That is significant: To this date, every fact-finder to reach the question has found that Trump was an........