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Biden wants a constitutional crisis, apparently.
Well, that's editorializing, but like, seriously--WTF?
He's got chutzpah, I guess (or, realistically, one of his staffers does). Never have I seen such a nakedly partisan attempt to create mass confusion concerning American constitutional law, nor such an inducement for left wing justices to defect from the rule of law. It is perhaps the single least professional, most embarrassing thing a sitting President has done in, like, six or seven weeks.
Just to get this out up front: no. The Equal Rights Amendment has not been ratified, and is not the law of the land. When asked for comment by CNN, the U.S. archives referred the station to previous statements from the U.S. archivist that
The President has no particular role in the ratification process anyway, so his opinion is legally meaningless. Certainly his appeal to the "American Bar Association" (an especially left wing advocacy group) is meaningless. But it's a signal, and the message is clear: time to ignore the law, precedent, history, and any possible position of compromise and coexistence. Watching the outgoing administration slap the "defect" button as rapidly as possible does not bode well for the next four years. At best, it's an inducement for the Trump administration to play tit-for-tat. At worst, I don't know--civil war?
The fact that the CNN article is still pushing this wild "pre-emptive pardons" stuff is also concerning, but illegitimately announcing an Amendment to the Constitution has surely got to be the most brazen lame duck move in American history. This is banana republic levels of absurdity.
This is a meaningless statement- the president recognizing a constitutional amendment has nothing to do with anything. The Supreme Court has to recognize it to overrule the archivist. The whole statement is deeply silly. Not dangerous, not unconstitutional- silly.
You appear to be operating on the assumption that the rules enforce themselves. They do not, cannot, and never could. Rules can never constrain human Will; all they can do is coordinate the wills of the many to a coherent goal.
This would be silly if it had no chance of securing a significant political outcome, and if employment of the strategy were costly to those utilizing it. As things stand, there is no significant cost and the chance of securing a significant political outcome is non-zero. That outcome almost certainly will not be that the ERA becomes the law of the land; much more likely is some combination of eroded public trust in the courts that decide against the lawsuits, more talking points about right-wing lawlessness and judicial oppression, and perhaps local wins in blue-tribe areas that take years to overturn on appeal. Such outcomes would not be worth it if the attempt came freighted with a significant cost, but since they are effectively free within the decision-horizon of Blue Tribe, there is no reason not to employ them as often as possible.
[EDIT] - Let's try for some additional precision.
I think I'm exaggerating to say that lawsuits based on this are "inevitable." My assessment is that the person who set up and released this announcement percieves lawsuits as a likely-enough outcome to be worth the cost, which is very likely to be minimal to non-existent.
That's where we disagree. Forking the constitution doesn't seem likely to me; more likely than that is that activist judges will continue citing other random bullshit while being activists, and the ERA won't even come up.
Frankly I don't think this is a calculated strategy to fork the constitution. If it's an attempt to do anything coherent, it's an attempt to get another attempt to pass the ERA.
I'd point to the Climate Kids case as an example of how badly some judges do want to jump not just on random bullshit that helps their side, but specifically whatever framework needs legitimization at the time.
I think you're right that a lot of the Tribe-thinkers genuinely think they can just force it through by meme magic and lawschool paper bullshittery, and they're not even wrong in every case, but that looks a lot like forking the constitution in practice.
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The smart take is that the Constitution can't really be forked because under the current arrangement the Supreme Court gets to decide what the interpretation is.
The galaxy-brained take is that the Constitution is constantly being forked due to circuit splits!
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