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zataomm  4mo ago (text post)   5341 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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Reuters reports:

Maine on Thursday disqualified Donald Trump from the state ballot in next year’s U.S. presidential primary election, becoming the second state to bar the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, incited an insurrection when he spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote. "The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government," Bellows wrote in a 34-page ruling.

The decision can be appealed to a state Superior Court, and Bellows suspended her ruling until the court rules on the matter.

Brave decision from Bellows. Her decision is of course subject to judicial review whichever way it went, but as an elected official she faces potential blowback. Maine is blue, but not very blue. Never mind. Turns out the Maine SoS is chosen by the legislature.

Her fellow Maine Democrat Jared Golden has come out against her decision, saying that Trump should not be disqualified without a criminal conviction. However I think that Golden is clearly wrong here. As Ilya Somin points out, none of the confederates disqualified under section 3 had been convicted of crimes relating to their actions in the civil war.

How do you square with Griffin?

By saying that Salmon Chase sucked. Griffin's case was not only wrongly decided, I don't even think it was a sincere attempt to apply the law correctly.

In Griffin's case, Chase said that section 3 was not self-executing. But the year before, in Jefferson Davis' treason trial, he said that section 3 prohibited further punishment of confederates beyond disqualification. I think both of these positions are wrong, but more importantly, they flatly contradict each other.

It's also very clear why Chase would have been motivated to make logically inconsistent rulings that both happened to decide issues in favour of former confederates. He was a politician, he wanted to be President, and he wanted the Democratic nomination. Admittedly he had already missed out on the 1868 nomination by the time Griffin's case rolled around, but I don't see any reason to think he had given up on his ambitions.

That seems about the same tack that Bellows took, if a bit better thought out. The analysis in the decision is just:

On this point, I find Griffin's Case 11 F. Cas. 7 (CCCD Va 1869) to be unpersuasive. It is not binding in Maine, does not assess whether states can enforce Section Three without Congressional authorization, and has been discredited. See, eg Anderson, 2023 CO 63, 103; Amicus Br. of Constituional Law Professor Mark A Graber 7-8 (Dec 14, 2023).

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