Supreme Court faces a 'desperate race against time' to avoid a 'Constitutional crisis'

13 November 2023

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Some of former President Donald Trump's critics, including conservative former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, have been arguing that he is disqualified from running for president under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. Trump, according to Luttig and others, lost the ability to run for president again because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Various state supreme courts have been grappling with this issue, including those in Minnesota and Colorado. The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that state law doesn't prevent an unqualified candidate from running in a primary, but the Colorado Supreme Court hasn't made a decision yet.

Legal experts are hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a ruling on the matter. In an article published by Slate on November 13, Bruce Ackerman — a law and political science professor at Yale University in Connecticut — stresses that the High Court needs to examine Trump's eligibility and rule sooner rather than later in order to avoid a "constitutional crisis."

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"The Minnesota decision and the looming Colorado case will rapidly move to the Supreme Court in Washington for a decisive resolution of the meaning of the disqualification clause," Ackerman explains. "Normally, the justices would take months to consider the merits of such an important issue and reach a decision only in June 2024, at the end of their present term. Nevertheless, it would be a tragic mistake for the Court to delay its decision when the two cases arrive on its docket."

The Yale professor adds, "After all, the first Republican primary is scheduled for February 24. Colorado and Minnesota will be among 15 states holding a Republican primary on Super Tuesday, March 7."

Ackerman warns that "without a clear ruling from Washington, different states will reach different decisions on whether Trump is qualified for a second term as president."

"In short, when the Colorado and Minnesota cases arrive in Washington, the Supreme Court will confront a desperate race against time," Ackerman warns. "If it fails to decide the cases rapidly, it will provoke a constitutional crisis once the polls close and each state decides who won the election. Under current law, state legislatures must report their Electoral College winners in time for Vice President Kamala Harris to report the results to a joint session of Congress meeting on January 6, 2025."

Ackerman adds, "Once she inspects the ballots, she is likely to find that none of the three candidates — neither Biden, nor Trump, nor Trump's proxy — has won a majority of the electoral votes. At this point, Harris will confront a dilemma that will make Vice President Mike Pence's predicament in 2021 seem modest by comparison…. The point of this essay is to sound the alarm before it is too late."

Read Slate's full report at this link.

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