Disqualify Trump in 2024? It’s clear what the NC Supreme Court would say | Opinion
As an old constitutional lawyer, it has been interesting to read of the new joint efforts by Judge Michael Luttig and Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe. As many know, Luttig is likely the last couple of generations’ most highly regarded scholar/jurist of the constitutional right and Tribe occupies roughly the same territory for the constitutional left.
They agree on almost nothing except, we now learn, that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution disqualifies Donald Trump from ever being president again. Happy common ground that.
As Judge Luttig explained recently in The Atlantic, with Tribe in tow:
“Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment means exactly what it plainly and clearly says, specifically, ‘any person who previously has taken the oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the U.S. and who then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the U.S. cannot thereafter hold’, in this instance, the office of the presidency. The language could simply not be any clearer. It is unmistakable in its application to President Trump.”
Tribe added: “Trump is simply not eligible to be president of the U.S. Trump won’t agree, but it’s not up to him.”
Oddly, though, it is not my purpose here to debate Trump’s disqualification. I mean to make, instead, a point about the new North Carolina Supreme Court.
When our Republican Supreme Court made its bold debut early last summer, dramatically reversing several crucial voting rights rulings of its Democratic predecessor, it announced a broad, virtue-driven “course correction” in judicial review. Democratic judges had “strayed from historic understandings” of judicial power. From now on, our justices will apply only the “clear, explicit and plain” meaning of the constitutional text “at the time of its adoption.” Our charter is meant “to be understood by the people who adopted it, without hidden meanings or opaque” interpretations. Only by following “clear,” “explicit” commands will judges “refrain from becoming policymakers” and “follow the law, not the political winds of the day.” Impressively put.
My point is a simple one. It is certainly feasible that a challenge to Trump’s ballot status could be presented to the North Carolina Supreme Court for review. And if that occurred, no case I’m aware of would appear to be more precisely within the new justices’ sweet spot than such a Sec. 3 challenge.
Judge Luttig even addressed our justices’ longing for originalism. He explained that the language is precise and unmistakable, “the only thing that was not known until (two professors’ recent) masterful scholarly work was whether this was the original understanding of the constitution and (the academics) proved that indeed it was.” Case closed.
Why do I trot all this out? Because despite its boastful and self-congratulatory language, there is no court in the United States less likely to rule against Donald Trump than the new Republican-pledged N.C. Supreme Court. None.
That’s my opinion, to be sure. But I’m absolutely certain it’s correct. And here’s what’s not opinion. No North Carolina court watcher, lawyer or politician honestly believes our Republican jurists would even contemplate doing what they just claimed they would do and enforce the plain meaning of the Constitution against GOP command. Because we all know they’re politicians first and judges, at best, an exceedingly distant second. We know it. They know it. They just swear otherwise. And they swear from a very high, very hypocritical, horse. You would think the words would turn to ashes in their mouths.
They wear cool black robes, no doubt. But as the patriarch of TV’s “Succession” puts it, they “are not serious people.”