As a non legal person, what good is the 14th amendment then? It seems like it could be abused to no end where the ruling party could ban their opposition or a non supreme majority could fail to ban an arguably dangerous candidate?
In the 2nd case, I feel like its even worse because of the electoral college where said candidate can win without actually having the popular vote.
Not that I have any solution, just seems like you have an amendement ratified in 1868 that does effectively nothing because congress never set a precedent on how to use it?
"Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article" - 14th amendment
The 14th amendment requires states to give congress the power to enforce the 14th amendment. Many states contested this after the civil war, but was forced to ratify it in order to gain representation in Congress. From a historical perspective it seems that the 14th amendment was both a carrot and a stick to get equal rules of representation in the union, and any state wanting to have representation in congress had to give up power to congress to do so.
This ruling can be somewhat summarized that if congress can't make up their mind to define in legislation what defines an insurrection, then courts can't do it for them. It must be done by congress. In theory the supreme court might have been able to do it because they get to interpret the constitution, but in this case it seems they explicitly read section 5 as congress having that responsibility.
From a non-legal perspective, the 14th amendment gave people rights, citizenship and was part of the reason states remained in the union rather than being independent nations. If that is good or bad is up to how people feel about the union and the system of having representatives in congress writing legislation rather than having each state writing their own legislation on those subjects.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
> a non supreme majority could fail to ban an arguably dangerous candidate?
yep. working as designed. i love this quote:
"So ultimately, it will be up to the American voters to save our democracy in November." -- Jena "Captain Obvious" Griswold
In the 2nd case, I feel like its even worse because of the electoral college where said candidate can win without actually having the popular vote.
Not that I have any solution, just seems like you have an amendement ratified in 1868 that does effectively nothing because congress never set a precedent on how to use it?