The Supreme Court, in the space of one week, had the chance to be remembered as the most courageous court in history, but instead handed a craven victory to would-be dictator Donald Trump.
It had the chance to be a court of law, and dispel any suspicion that it had become a court of MAGA. It certainly blew that one.
It had a chance to expound Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as it was written and as it was understood by the framing generation. It squandered that chance with a profligacy that shocks the conscience.
The court also had a chance to uphold the finding after trial in Denver that Trump was an “oathbreaking insurrectionist” (the liberal minority used those precise words four times to refer to Trump), and that he is disqualified from holding office again, but ducked that issue as well by simply ignoring it.
Were they afraid that allowing Colorado to take Trump off the ballot would bring about “chaos and bedlam,” as Trump threatened in his brief? They are not supposed to. In his infamous opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “we cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.” The influence of extraneous influences on this MAGA court is inescapable.
The court might have found that Trump didn’t engage in an insurrection or that Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection at all. They ducked the issue of insurrection entirely. They didn’t say yes; they didn’t say no. When you are the Supreme Court, you can do that.
The justices might have held that Section 3........