The US Supreme Court has just become the grand arbiter of this year's US presidential election, a role it has not taken on since 2001, when it decided to end vote counting in Florida and award the White House to Republican George W. Bush handed over. This Friday, the case surrounding the exclusion of former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary of the Republican Party in Colorado for his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was admitted for processing. The case will be heard on February 8.
The Supreme Court's passage paves the way for a ruling that will set a historic precedent and mark the upcoming election campaign in the United States, culminating in the presidential election in November. The highest court in the country will decide whether Trump can participate in the Colorado primary or, as the Colorado Supreme Court argued, his role in that attack makes him a participant in an insurrection and therefore disqualifies him as a candidate for the White House pursuant to Amendment No. 14 to the U.S. Constitution.
On February 8, the nine justices of the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments from the parties. This view will be completely at odds with the development of the Republican primaries, the cycle of which begins on the 15th with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire caucuses on the 23rd. The electoral calendar includes primaries in Nevada in February.
Trump is by far the favorite among the Republican candidates for the White House. His most immediate rivals, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, are trailing in the polls by more than thirty percentage points.
Given the importance of the case and its relevance to the development of the electoral process, the Supreme Court seems to want to proceed with full speed: the primaries in Colorado and Maine, the other state that rejected Trump as a candidate, will be held on March 5. The announcement that the court will take on the case comes just two days after the former president's legal team appealed the Colorado court's decision.
That court had ruled on December 19 that the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those who participated in a rebellion or insurrection from holding public office, applied to the former president for his participation in the events of January 6, 2021 A mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to prevent the US Congress from officially ratifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the November 2020 elections. Trump continues to claim to this day that these elections were fraudulent.
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The third section of the amendment, ratified after the Civil War, states that those who have sworn allegiance to the Constitution cannot hold official office if, according to their pledge, they have “committed an insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution or the enemies.” have provided help or relief”. theirs.” The US Congress can repeal the ban, but only if two-thirds of lawmakers vote for it.
At the time, lawmakers approved the measure to prevent Confederates who had sworn allegiance to the Constitution and then taken up arms from holding positions of responsibility in government. However, scientists believe that the change will also apply to later cases. But it has been applied selectively: only twice since 1919.
“We did not reach these conclusions lightly,” the Colorado Supreme Court argued. “We recognize the size and gravity of the issues that now lie before us. Also that it is our solemn duty to apply the law without fear or favor and without allowing ourselves to be carried away by the public's reaction to the decisions the law requires of us.”
Following the Colorado Supreme Court's decision on December 28, the state of Maine became the second state to disqualify Trump as a candidate. In this case, it was the territory's secretary of state, Democrat Shenna Bellows – whose duties include organizing elections in the constituency – who ruled that the former president was disqualified as a candidate. The real estate tycoon's lawyers have also challenged this provision.
Another fifteen states, from Oregon to Virginia to New York, are also considering whether the former president's name can appear on the ballot.
In the American system, each state organizes and has its own rules for holding elections, even if they are national elections. This means that Colorado and Maine's decisions only affect their respective areas.
But a decision by the Supreme Court, which is a federal body, would have implications for the entire United States: hence its importance.
How the nine judges will decide is a mystery. Six are of conservative ideology and three of them were appointed by Trump during his four-year term. But some of them belong to the “originalist” school, which maintains that the Constitution must be interpreted literally as it was written by its founders (an argument used in defense of the Second Amendment and the right of individuals to bear arms , is used).
It is a factor that can turn against the former president. Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace noted in an earlier decision that was overturned by the state Supreme Court that the amendment only mentioned senators and congressmen, not the specific position of the president, so that position was not included included in the prohibitions.
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