Arnold Schwarzenegger might have been a very good candidate for President of the United States. Yet he was not and is not eligible. Is that anti-democratic? I don’t think so. It might be undemocratic in a sense, but no one seemed to be bothered by it.
Sir, as a public servant you should limit your pronouncement to what you know and can be empirically verified. You are not a lawyer. I hope when the SCOTUS rules you would be humble and honest enough to admit your gross error both in facts and logics.
As to the claim that the CO decision isn't somehow unacceptably undemocratic or isn't deeply illegitimate, I agree that in principle there is nothing unacceptable about clear eligibility conditions. However, what does pose a serious threat to our democratic system is vague or ambiguous eligibility conditions which allow judges to choose the result they want based on ideological biases.
Had the CO supreme court articulated both a plausible set of elements that must be proved to constitute insurrection and the standard they need to be proved to I'd be much more sympathetic. Unfortunately the CO test seems to basically boil down to "isn't it obvious".
They basically adopt, with minimal analysis, the standard from the district court that "an insurrection as used in Section Three is (1) a public use of force or threat of force (2) by a group of people (3) to hinder or prevent execution of the Constitution of the United States” which the CO supreme court later interprets/modifies with the single extra demand that the action be intended to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But that's a pretty absurd rule. On its face that includes Trump asking the police or secret service to **legally** use force to protect him from protestors blocking his path to the capital where he intends to ask Pence to refuse to count the votes. More broadly, nothing in their standard requires any significant nexus between the force and the transfer of power. Suppose Trump asked his mob to mug people and give him the money so he could bribe Pence. That's an insurrection??
And WTF does block the peaceful transfer of power even mean? Trump wasn't trying to make the transfer of power violent, he was trying to prevent it from happening at all and he no doubt preferred that occur peacefully. Are they understanding this to mean that any protests (say as in Bush v Gore) claiming an outcome is illegitimate become an insurrection the moment one person is violent?
I suspect they really mean any attempt to illegitimately wrest control of the presidency. But again what does that mean? Technically speaking, Trump's theory that Pence could throw the election to the house is ridiculous but there are plenty of ridiculous constitutional theories that get taken seriously such as the trillion dollar coin or even accepted as precedent by the court. Besides, it's arguably not actually the constitution Trump was trying to violate but the electoral count act. So does violating any law to retain power count? What if 2024 does get thrown to the house and the train that a bunch of democratic reps are on gets delayed and Biden tells Harris to ignore the statutory deadline and wait until everyone shows up. Is that enough? What if delivering a note to that effect requires pushing past republican protestors by 2 staffers (so public concerted violence)?
I'm not saying any of these situations are at all similar but at a minimum the court should specify the elements of insurrection so as to clearly exclude all these obvious cases where the word doesn't apply. And this is on top of the lack of clarity about whether the president is an officer at all, when did Trump form what intentions on Jan 6th, is this part of the amendment self-executing.
The problem is that, taken together in the heat of a political campaign, all this ambiguity makes it seem like judges aren't applying some settled rule in this case but rather making up a rule that accords with their desiered outcome. I'd give the court the benefit of the doubt had it at least articulated a clear rule to apply in future situations rather than effectively saying: c'mon it's clearly an insurrection.
I'd argue that all those rules are in some sense anti-democratic. They may be good and fair anti-democratic rules but they impose limitations on the ability of the people to choose the leader they want.
I get the point you are trying to make but I think we need a more careful definition of anti-democratic to distinguish it from simply unacceptable or wrong. The arguments you give seem to all be of the form that certain rules are reasonable for states to apply to elections -- which seems to me to be an argument that the deciscion isn't somehow unacceptably anti-democratic not that it isn't anti-democratic.
In our system, a person has to be charged with a crime and then given due process in a court. Mr. Trump was never charged and there was not trial by a jury of his peers. On the other hand you may argue that he was accused of something by his impeachment but for that he was acquitted by the Senate. Therefore, he cannot be tried again by any court because of the Constitutional guarantees against double jeopardy. As a philosopher it is your duty to lay out the whole case and not just make one sided pontifications.
"The fact is, that for the same reason a naturalized citizen, a non-citizen, and a 30 year old cannot be president, someone who has been found guilty of participating in an insurrection against the United States government cannot be president." Hmmm, seems like there are a couple of problems here. First, the found guilty claim is at issue. Trump would have to be convicted of insurrection or interfering in an official proceeding--that is, found guilty--after due process and in the appropriate jurisdiction. A CO court's unilateral decision is ... dubious. Maine's Secretary of State's unilateral decision is, as well. In neither case was Trump afforded due process, so the bans might be both undemocratic and unconstitutional. I could be missing something, but it doesn't strike me as sane or just for the question of insurrection to be determined by the individual states--which would mean 50 cases. I'm no fan of Trump. I'm also no fan of democracy. But I am a fan of rule of law and due process. This strikes me as neither. Instead it is just another exercise in 'exitus acta probat' that may stoke civil war.
Well this guy really misses the mark, not good reasoning for a philosopher. He completely ignores the process of determining guilt or innocence before the law in a democratic society. That is why his prediction about SCOTUS will most likely not
9-0
Sir, as a public servant you should limit your pronouncement to what you know and can be empirically verified. You are not a lawyer. I hope when the SCOTUS rules you would be humble and honest enough to admit your gross error both in facts and logics.
As to the claim that the CO decision isn't somehow unacceptably undemocratic or isn't deeply illegitimate, I agree that in principle there is nothing unacceptable about clear eligibility conditions. However, what does pose a serious threat to our democratic system is vague or ambiguous eligibility conditions which allow judges to choose the result they want based on ideological biases.
Had the CO supreme court articulated both a plausible set of elements that must be proved to constitute insurrection and the standard they need to be proved to I'd be much more sympathetic. Unfortunately the CO test seems to basically boil down to "isn't it obvious".
They basically adopt, with minimal analysis, the standard from the district court that "an insurrection as used in Section Three is (1) a public use of force or threat of force (2) by a group of people (3) to hinder or prevent execution of the Constitution of the United States” which the CO supreme court later interprets/modifies with the single extra demand that the action be intended to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But that's a pretty absurd rule. On its face that includes Trump asking the police or secret service to **legally** use force to protect him from protestors blocking his path to the capital where he intends to ask Pence to refuse to count the votes. More broadly, nothing in their standard requires any significant nexus between the force and the transfer of power. Suppose Trump asked his mob to mug people and give him the money so he could bribe Pence. That's an insurrection??
And WTF does block the peaceful transfer of power even mean? Trump wasn't trying to make the transfer of power violent, he was trying to prevent it from happening at all and he no doubt preferred that occur peacefully. Are they understanding this to mean that any protests (say as in Bush v Gore) claiming an outcome is illegitimate become an insurrection the moment one person is violent?
I suspect they really mean any attempt to illegitimately wrest control of the presidency. But again what does that mean? Technically speaking, Trump's theory that Pence could throw the election to the house is ridiculous but there are plenty of ridiculous constitutional theories that get taken seriously such as the trillion dollar coin or even accepted as precedent by the court. Besides, it's arguably not actually the constitution Trump was trying to violate but the electoral count act. So does violating any law to retain power count? What if 2024 does get thrown to the house and the train that a bunch of democratic reps are on gets delayed and Biden tells Harris to ignore the statutory deadline and wait until everyone shows up. Is that enough? What if delivering a note to that effect requires pushing past republican protestors by 2 staffers (so public concerted violence)?
I'm not saying any of these situations are at all similar but at a minimum the court should specify the elements of insurrection so as to clearly exclude all these obvious cases where the word doesn't apply. And this is on top of the lack of clarity about whether the president is an officer at all, when did Trump form what intentions on Jan 6th, is this part of the amendment self-executing.
The problem is that, taken together in the heat of a political campaign, all this ambiguity makes it seem like judges aren't applying some settled rule in this case but rather making up a rule that accords with their desiered outcome. I'd give the court the benefit of the doubt had it at least articulated a clear rule to apply in future situations rather than effectively saying: c'mon it's clearly an insurrection.
I'd argue that all those rules are in some sense anti-democratic. They may be good and fair anti-democratic rules but they impose limitations on the ability of the people to choose the leader they want.
I get the point you are trying to make but I think we need a more careful definition of anti-democratic to distinguish it from simply unacceptable or wrong. The arguments you give seem to all be of the form that certain rules are reasonable for states to apply to elections -- which seems to me to be an argument that the deciscion isn't somehow unacceptably anti-democratic not that it isn't anti-democratic.
In our system, a person has to be charged with a crime and then given due process in a court. Mr. Trump was never charged and there was not trial by a jury of his peers. On the other hand you may argue that he was accused of something by his impeachment but for that he was acquitted by the Senate. Therefore, he cannot be tried again by any court because of the Constitutional guarantees against double jeopardy. As a philosopher it is your duty to lay out the whole case and not just make one sided pontifications.
"The fact is, that for the same reason a naturalized citizen, a non-citizen, and a 30 year old cannot be president, someone who has been found guilty of participating in an insurrection against the United States government cannot be president." Hmmm, seems like there are a couple of problems here. First, the found guilty claim is at issue. Trump would have to be convicted of insurrection or interfering in an official proceeding--that is, found guilty--after due process and in the appropriate jurisdiction. A CO court's unilateral decision is ... dubious. Maine's Secretary of State's unilateral decision is, as well. In neither case was Trump afforded due process, so the bans might be both undemocratic and unconstitutional. I could be missing something, but it doesn't strike me as sane or just for the question of insurrection to be determined by the individual states--which would mean 50 cases. I'm no fan of Trump. I'm also no fan of democracy. But I am a fan of rule of law and due process. This strikes me as neither. Instead it is just another exercise in 'exitus acta probat' that may stoke civil war.
Love the logic, Andrew. Enjoyable read!
Well this guy really misses the mark, not good reasoning for a philosopher. He completely ignores the process of determining guilt or innocence before the law in a democratic society. That is why his prediction about SCOTUS will most likely not
Come true.