So, as we all know, President Trump was barred from appearing on the Colorado Republican Party Primary Ballot by the Colorado Supreme Court. They had deemed in a 4-3 decision (all 7 Justices are Democrat appointees, fyi) that Trump was ineligible to serve based upon the 14th Amendment.
Now, I’m no legal scholar, but I do have access to dictionaries, and so when the “experts” started throwing around terms like self-executing I wasn’t thrown for long because the obvious and pressing question about this decision was simply this: can President Trump—or anyone—be prevented from serving in the Federal Government by a lesser magistrate because he committed a crime for which he has not been found guilty.
An example of a self-executing statute that defenders of this decision have reached for is that a lesser court could preclude someone from running for President if he weren’t 35 years old. And that does seem convincing as long as you don’t think about it for too long. The problem with that is that you can’t be found guilty of being born—not yet at least—and the standards of proof for age seem rather straightforward. Birth certificates for one will prove simply and easily that a person meets the age and natural-born citizen qualifications…unless you’re Barack Hussein Obama, that is…then you can fight to not release your long-form birth certificate for years. And a birth certificate as well as quite a few corroborating documents could quickly and easily prove whether someone meets the age requirement. And that is the evidence a court would examine.
But to just declare that President Trump committed a crime without a trial seems to me to be an obvious violation of his due-process rights.
But don’t worry you guys, this isn’t political. There’s a conservative, indeed, several conservatives who think that the Colorado SC is right on the money. Allow me to read some excerpts from various news articles:
From Spectrum NY 1:
J. Michael Luttig, a retired U.S. Appeals Court judge appointed by George H.W. Bush, said on MSNBC Tuesday night that the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was an insurrection, which the former president “engaged in,” but reversed the previous decision that the presidency was exempt from the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.
“This is not a political decision,” Luttig, who testified before the House Jan. 6 panel last year and advised then-Vice President Mike Pence about his role in the electoral count certification, told MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle.
“This is an opinion of constitutional law,” he said Tuesday. “It has nothing to do with politics … I’ve heard some commentators tonight jump to the conclusion that this is a political decision by a liberal state supreme court. It couldn’t be anything further from the truth than that.
"The opinion by the Colorado Supreme Court is a masterful judicial opinion of constitutional law on the applicability of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Luttig continued. “It will stand the test of time … I think that the Supreme Court of the United States ought to affirm this decision, and based on the objective law in this instance … I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will affirm this decision.”
Wow, I mean, he’s a Republican Appointee with a long history of conservative jurisprudence. Let’s see if this guy shows up in any other articles.
From USA TODAY:
Luttig criticized politicians and media outlets for taking up the argument, explaining “It is the Constitution itself that tells us that disqualification is not anti-democratic.”
“Indeed, the Constitution tells us that it is the conduct that can give rise to disqualification. Namely, an insurrection or rebellion that is anti-democratic. To me, that’s about as clear as any document or Constitution could make that point,” Luttig said.
“I think it’s crystal clear, and it will be crystal clear to the American public, that it’s the Constitution of the United States that’s disqualifying the former president from higher office, if he is to be disqualified. To speak to the political warriors, it’s not President Joe Biden. It’s not the Democrats. It’s not the anti-Trumpers. It’s the Constitution of the United States,” he added.
From Politico:
All we can do is assess ourselves the objective law — in this instance, the meaning and application of Section 3 of the 14th amendment. Now, I was a judge for many, many years, and I did exactly that on constitutional questions for 15 years — and as we discussed earlier, I’ve been studying this specific question in great detail for the past three years. So, you know, I consider myself — personally — an expert on the question.
The Colorado Supreme Court decision was over 120 pages, and I read every word of every page, and I understood every single word because I’ve studied the issue. The Colorado Supreme Court addressed every single state law question and every single federal constitutional question as to the meaning and interpretation of the 14th Amendment. I know for a fact that it resolved each and every one of those questions as required not just under state law, but, more importantly, under federal constitutional law. That’s why I said that the opinion is unassailable in every respect. It is a masterful judicial opinion, and based on the objective law of the 14th, I believe that the Supreme Court should — and I believe it will — affirm the Colorado Supreme Court if given the opportunity.
So here we have a conservative judge with real conservative bona fides. So if he supports this decision, and he’s an expert who says it isn’t political, then what right do we peasants have to disagree with such an eminent scholar and mind. This man is a jurist—he consistently decries the political affirming that all he cares about is the law. This is a man above reproach—how dare you, question him. Get back in your pod and eat your bugs, peasant!
Now, hey, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe it comes across as though I despise the wisdom of lawyers and judges. Absolutely not. Law is an ancient and grave and crucial field of study. The office of judge should be respected and honored. And those who dedicate their lives to the law seek a noble and high calling.
Of course, law, like any discipline, involves complex and careful study that a lay-person cannot just speak into with expertise. Expertise is real. And expertise counts for something. But expertise in law—as in all the humanities—is about matters of technique. Questions of right and wrong and interpretation may be aided by expertise, but not guaranteed. You can be an expert in the law and still make bad decisions. And your expertise may shield you from making the worst kind of bad decisions, but not necessarily. Because in the end the law is about how humans choose to interact with eachother in society—the rules that exist to ensure that living with others will tend to flourishing and not the creation of a nightmarish hellscape of murder and rapine.
Questions of law are, ultimately, questions about what sort of society we do and want to live in. And many people don’t want to live in a society when they can face the consequences of criminal law without ever being found guilty of a crime by a jury of one’s peers.
And I could talk all day about this but there is a more pressing issue at hand.
The more pressing issue that seems pretty hard to find, except for a Colorado Public Radio article states:
While it will almost certainly draw scrutiny from the highest court in the land, one of the architects of the appeal that led to the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to keep former president Donald Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot, hailed Tuesday’s ruling as “a monumental decision of Constitutional law.”
“The opinion (of the court) was masterful and it is unassailable,” said J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who worked with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a group of six Republican and independent voters who filed a lawsuit asking that Trump be removed from next spring’s ballot because of his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C.
See, I would call that relevant information. I would consider it relevant that the Michael Luttig who is making the rounds talking about how this is a masterful piece of jurisprudence is the one who helped craft the decision. Luttig, as well as Lawerence Tribe came up with the 14th Amendment disqualification scheme in the first place. So what you have is a guy who came up with an idea praising other people who agree with the idea for being geniuses!
I mean, is it relevant that Lawerence Tribe has called Donald Trump words I can’t say on the radio multiple times?Does it matter that Tribe called Trump a Russian asset? Does it matter that Lawerence Tribe, the guy who worked hand-in-glove with Luttig on creating the 14th Amendment disqualification argument, the guy whom Luttig says is America’s preeminent constitutional scholar, does it matter that he so clearly and obviously has it in for Trump?
I mean, I think that that at least warrants a “full-disclosure” kinda thing in the news-articles. But very few of the articles I found made these connections and prejudices explicitly clear. Just remember what Luttig is doing with his 15 minutes of fame. He’s going around praising the Colorado Supreme Court for agreeing with arguments he’s put forwards in the past.
That’s like me weighing in as an expert in theology applauding a decision that a church or conference made that agreed entirely with my previous body of work. Of course Luttig likes the decision, it was his argument in the first place!
Take for instance a topic I’ve written extensively on—like the importance of integrating our neuroscientific understanding of impulse control disorders into our hamartiology—and some seminary sets up a department in the wake of great controversy about whether or not neuroscience speaks relevantly to the topic of why we sin, and I get interviewed as a “theological expert” and I praise the decision of the seminary, I’m not really an impartial or unbiased observer, am I. If the seminary uses my research and then people interview me for my opinion about how smart the seminary is for agreeing with me, I’m not being very impartial am I? I have a dog in this hunt. And that’s OK—here’s the dirty secret, we’ve all got dogs in the hunts. We’re all biased, there is no view from nowhere.
But what happens in the news cycle is what I like to call “expert laundering” which is similar to what Brett Weinstein called “idea laundering.” What the news media do is they find very biased “experts” and I’m using very heavy quotes on that word. And the whole basis of bringing in an “expert” is that their expertise offers a veneer of respectability and impartiality that we peasants lack. Nevermind that “experts” disagree among themselves—that’s not important. What is important is that the journalist finds someone who says what they want to hear, and if they have some credentials, then they can be called an expert and their title will be used—if they lack credentials, they’re still experts, but there simply aren’t titles associated with said experts.
Very few of these articles go into the details in any deep way. It’s just Luttig saying “Colorado’s SC was right.” Some articles actually ask decent questions of Luttig, but he brushes it off with comments like “read my previous works.” Now, admittedly, this may not be Luttig’s fault, this may come down to journalistic and editorial decisions. But when there is a monumentally important court case that might actually bring us close to civil war, I’d like something a little more robust than “trust me, I’m a lawyer.” I don’t care if you’re a lawyer or a limo-driver, I’m not just going to agree with you because you have a license.
Now, does my concern with “expert laundering” mean that we should despise expertise or experts. Of course not. All forms of excellence should be honored to the degree they are honorable. And sadly, FAR too many Christians have lost faith in all experts because so many of our erst-while experts have beclowned themselves.
And this is disastrous. Because we do need real expertise and experts. We need actual experts to help us navigate a complex and dangerous world. Sadly, there are a lot of Christians who think that because they’ve been lied to by experts that all experts are liars and that therefore the unlearned opinions of the Man on the Street are more reliable than those of the expert. To put it plainly, as a pastor, there are many pastors I know who are good and godly men, with decades of experience, tens of thousands of hours studying the Bible and theology and church practice and church history who have people who’ve never read the Bible or sat through a membership class arguing with them. Pastors with real knowledge are having to deal with arrogant malcontents who spout off on issues that would get them laughed out of the room among anyone who actually knows anything about the subject at hand. Pastors with actual expertise are told to take seriously the eminently unserious, and often the congregation sides with the fool!
Is the pastor guaranteed to be right? Of course not. But we cannot allow the crisis or respectability among the experts to lead us all down the primrose path of atomistic individualistic ignorant know-it-all-ism.
2024 is shaping up to be a year for the history books. Society is changing rapidly and radically. Christians with the capacity for clear and careful thinking are needed to speak to the events of the day. Godly men and women who have the humility to respect expertise the confidence to reject pseudo-expertise and the wisdom to know the difference.
Christians are commanded, by God, to give honor to those to whom honor is due. Paul used honorifics to refer to governors and political rulers, even if those men weren’t particularly honorable themselves. God will honor those who honor others. Honoring doesn’t mean agreeing with, or kowtowing to, or implicitly trusting. And fortunately, though decreasingly so, our exert class is more meritocratic than that of Imperial Rome.
In short, brothers and sisters, if I may use a biblical mode: Beloved, do not trust every expert but test the experts to see whether they tell the truth, because many false experts have gone out into the world.