Judge Luttig in The Atlantic: “Supreme Betrayal”
Writing in The Atlantic, Board Member J. Michael Luttig co-authored the following piece with Laurence H. Tribe: “Supreme Betrayal: A requiem for Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
They write:
“The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson. In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. […]
For a century and a half before the Court’s decision, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy, promising to automatically disqualify from public office all oath-breaking insurrectionists against the Constitution, deeming them too dangerous to entrust with power unless supermajorities of both houses of Congress formally remove their disability. […]
What ought to have been, as a matter of the Constitution’s design and purpose, the climax of the struggle for the survival of America’s democracy and the rule of law instead turned out to be its nadir, delivered by a Court unwilling to perform its duty to interpret the Constitution as written.”