A Colorado judge has rejected an attempt to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 primary ballot based on the claim that he is constitutionally barred from office because of the January 6 insurrection.
Were they supposed to go and list every single position in the executive department within the text of the amendment?
That’s not what I’m saying.
The question I would be asking is, “Why were Senators and Representatives mentioned explicitly?”, to which my answer would probably be that the drafters didn’t consider the Senate or House to be ‘civil or military offices’. Otherwise, why bother? This is an Amendment to the Constitution ffs, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous word in it. My next question would then be, “If the drafters didn’t consider the Senate or House to be ‘civil or military offices’, would they have considered the Presidency to be one?”, to which my answer would probably be ‘no’ despite very much wanting it to be ‘yes’.
My third question would be, “Did they just forget or something?”, and my answer would be, “Gee I sure hope so. Better assume they did.”, which is why I’m not a judge.
If the presidency isn’t a civil or military office, nothing is. It’s literally the highest one of both categories. Civil officers are any positions within the executive or judicial branches. The legislative branch positions that are singled out exclusively are to highlight that these are also included, as if they only said civil or military offices, it could be implied that the amendment would only apply to the executive branch and judicial branch. The electors from the electoral college to select the president are even singled out too, as again they are totally seperate from the executive branch, it was just making clear that these would be included in addition. I can’t see how anyone would read this and think, wow, whoever wrote this wanted an insurrectionist to be able to hold no position in government except for the most powerful position in all of government, that one we intend to hold wide open for them. If the amendment said the presidency is excluded from this, then I think you and the judge would have a case. It’s clearly just making it’s wording as comprehensive as possible to imply that it’s excluding insurrectionists from every level and position in government across all branches and even weird things like the electoral college.
That’s not what I’m saying.
The question I would be asking is, “Why were Senators and Representatives mentioned explicitly?”, to which my answer would probably be that the drafters didn’t consider the Senate or House to be ‘civil or military offices’. Otherwise, why bother? This is an Amendment to the Constitution ffs, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous word in it. My next question would then be, “If the drafters didn’t consider the Senate or House to be ‘civil or military offices’, would they have considered the Presidency to be one?”, to which my answer would probably be ‘no’ despite very much wanting it to be ‘yes’.
My third question would be, “Did they just forget or something?”, and my answer would be, “Gee I sure hope so. Better assume they did.”, which is why I’m not a judge.
If the presidency isn’t a civil or military office, nothing is. It’s literally the highest one of both categories. Civil officers are any positions within the executive or judicial branches. The legislative branch positions that are singled out exclusively are to highlight that these are also included, as if they only said civil or military offices, it could be implied that the amendment would only apply to the executive branch and judicial branch. The electors from the electoral college to select the president are even singled out too, as again they are totally seperate from the executive branch, it was just making clear that these would be included in addition. I can’t see how anyone would read this and think, wow, whoever wrote this wanted an insurrectionist to be able to hold no position in government except for the most powerful position in all of government, that one we intend to hold wide open for them. If the amendment said the presidency is excluded from this, then I think you and the judge would have a case. It’s clearly just making it’s wording as comprehensive as possible to imply that it’s excluding insurrectionists from every level and position in government across all branches and even weird things like the electoral college.