[belorn]

"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.