• ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Yet the Court continues on to resolve questions not before us. In a case involving no federal action whatsoever, the Court opines on how federal enforcement of Section 3 must proceed. Congress, the majority says, must enact legislation under Section 5 prescribing the procedures to “ ‘ “ascertain[ ] what particular individuals” ’ ” should be disqualified. Ante, at 5 (quoting Griffin’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 7, 26 (No. 5,815) (CC Va. 1869) (Chase, Circuit Justice)). These musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.

    To start, nothing in Section 3’s text supports the majority’s view of how federal disqualification efforts must operate. Section 3 states simply that “[n]o person shall” holdcertain positions and offices if they are oathbreaking insurectionists. Amdt. 14. Nothing in that unequivocal bar suggests that implementing legislation enacted under Section 5 is “critical” (or, for that matter, what that word means in this context). Ante, at 5. In fact, the text cuts the opposite way. Section 3 provides that when an oathbreaking insurrectionist is disqualified, “Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation. Even petitioner’s lawyer acknowledged the “tension” in Section 3 that the majority’s view creates. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. Similarly, nothing else in the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the majority’s view. Section 5 gives Congress the “power to enforce [the Amendment] by appropriate legislation.” Remedial legislation of any kind, however, is not required. All the Reconstruction Amendments (including the due process and equal protection guaranteesand prohibition of slavery) “are self-executing,” meaning that they do not depend on legislation. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 524 (1997); see Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20 (1883). Similarly, other constitutional rules of disqualification, like the two-term limit on the Presidency, do not require implementing legislation. See, e.g., Art. II, §1, cl. 5 (Presidential Qualifications); Amdt. 22 (Presidential Term Limits). Nor does the majority suggest otherwise.

    • Funderpants @lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      The majority position doesn’t have to make sense, they just needed to be the majority. This is the legal phase of fascism, they won’t be held accountable. In the majority, 3 of them were appointed by Trump, 1 has an insurrectionist wife, this outcome was really never in doubt.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        They couldn’t get Barret to sign on with the majority on this one, but they still managed to squeeze it through. Guess it left too much of a bad taste in her mouth.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          10 months ago

          Barrett’s concurring opinion is just “I agree with everything they said, and also I’m so glad we could all agree on this”. The concurring opinion from Sotomayor/Kagen/Jackson has actual substance to it.

          • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Oh I read it. It was more like “I don’t agree with their reasoning, but can’t we all just get along.” As in, she wouldn’t even touch what she didn’t agree with even though it’s obvious. She writes incredibly shitty opinions.