The Supreme Court Could Redeem Itself

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I am not a big fan of Politico, the on-line political news and opinion source, but I do scan it daily just to get a sense of what Democrats who lean to the political right are thinking.  It's rare when I come across anything there that stays with me more than a few minutes.  Today, however, there was an opinion piece on Politico which I found quite provocative.   It was entitled "Trump's Supreme Court Justices Must Kick Him Off the Ballot,"  and it was written by Bruce Ackerman, a Sterling Professor of law and political science at Yale University.

Professor Ackerman argues in his opinion posting that the three Trump appointed justices - Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett - used "originalist" arguments when they voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip women of a constitutional "right" to an abortion, and based their decision in that case on what they saw as the original intent of the men who drafted the Constitution.  He then noted that the justices in the Colorado Supreme Court who voted to remove Trump from that state's ballot had also carefully researched the original intent of the men who penned the insurrectionist clause into the Fourteenth Amendment into the US Constitution, and that their careful work has been praised by other originalist scholars.  

And finally, Professor Ackerman argued that if the current justices on the US Supreme Court wish to remain true to their own established principle of adhering to originalist intent, then they necessarily should remove Trump from the current presidential race.

Trump is, of course, counting on Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the three justices that he appointed to carry the day in his favor over the three liberal female justices and possibly Chief Justice Roberts as well.

But if Chief Justice John Roberts is concerned about the reputation and legacy of "his" Court, Ackerman feels that he could move to strengthen its legitimacy by voting to uphold the Colorado decision that removed Trump from its state ballot, and if he could bring at least one Trump-appointed justice along as well, they would carry the day.  With regard to the three Trump justices - Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett - the professor said:

"By affirming the Colorado decision, the Trump-appointed justices would make it clear that they are not merely rubber-stamps for the president who propelled them through the Senate - and that, despite prevailing public skepticism about the court, they are reaching out to their fellow justices in an on-going effort to decide hard cases on the basis of fundamental principles."

It is at that point where Professor Ackerman's political speculation gets really interesting.  He argues that if Trump is removed from the race and replaced with a younger Republican candidate, perhaps a "much" younger one, that would put pressure on 81-year-old Joe Biden, who at one point had seemed to argue that the was only running to stop Trump, to step aside and let the Democrats also nominate a younger individual.

The law professor from Yale argues that if the Supreme Court should actually uphold the Colorado decision and remove Trump from the race, the court should also issue an injunction moving Super Tuesday from March to early May in order to give new candidates time to campaign.

That, of course, is all speculation, and it is based on the premise of the Supreme Court behaving in an honorable and consistent manner, so those who are wise should probably not hold their collective breath.  Still, even just an outside possibility that the US Supreme Court could actually do the right thing and remove the insurrectionist Trump from the ballot is a spark of hope in an otherwise long dark night.

And it could even roll into a twofer.