Judge Luttig Speaks

'Astonishing and unprecedented': Conservative slams SCOTUS decision on Trump ballot https://t.co/iIH6kASROE

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 4, 2024

“Today's ruling, Jake, was both astonishing and unprecedented, not for its decision of the exceedingly narrow question presented by the case — though that issue was important — but rather for its decision to reach and decide a myriad of the other constitutional issues surrounding disqualification under the Fourteenth Amendment," said Luttig. "In reaching and deciding those questions unnecessarily, the court — the majority, as the concurrences said effectively — decided that the former president will never be disqualified from holding the presidency in 2024, or ever, for that matter. But even more importantly, as the concurrence said effectively, the court today decided that no person in the future will ever be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, regardless whether he or she has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution of the United States." 

Not only is the decision indefensible, argued Luttig, but it is — ironically — exactly the type of political interference from the bench that the conservative judicial movement he helped create, and that the sitting justices were raised in, was founded to stop. 

"It's a textbook example, Jake, of the kind of activist judicial opinion from the 1960s, and the Warren Court era, that began the conservative legal and judicial movement in the 1970s and 1980s," said Luttig. "But of course, it's different here because this is unmistakably a conservative court, most of whose members were leaders of that conservative movement."

That which you most oppose, you most come to resemble. 

It’s, like, a rule of the universe, or something.

And I have to ask why he’s surprised this Court would act this way. Has he not been paying attention? I suppose he thought Roe was the work of an activist court. But the VRA? Affirmative action? Prayers in schools? How does he feel about Griswold, I wonder?

Any movement/theory/ideology pursued diligently enough commits the errors it set out to remedy, because it gains complete authority. Or did I say that already?