Quote:Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday arguing that former President Trump is disqualified to run for public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Luttig, a longtime conservative jurist on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, argued the Supreme Court justices, when they hear arguments next month in the case involving the Colorado Supreme Court decision to bar Trump from the ballot, should take a “textualist” approach to interpreting the constitution.
“The ‘textualist’s touchstone’ is to give every constitutional provision its ‘fair meaning,’” Luttig wrote. “A narrow construction to promote judicial restraint is just as bad as an ‘unreasonably … enlarged’ construction. Scalia and Garner approvingly quote Justice Story that it is forbidden to narrowly construe a constitutional provision ‘as if it were subversive of the great interests of society, or derogated from the inherent sovereignty of the people.’”
“Every provision of the Constitution is part of ‘the supreme Law of the Land,’” he continued, “not the inferior law of the land.”
The friend-of-the-court brief, which included other prominent names such as conservative lawyer George Conway, sought to refute several key arguments from Trump and his allies. Luttig has been among the most high-profile promoters of the case to bar Trump under the 14th amendment, as Colorado and Maine have moved to do.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-bat...lf-ballot/