What do you mean by "becomes a popularity thing"? Let's be honest,
Politicians doing the impeachment process are not bound to anything tangible. They are supposed to look for "high crimes and misdameanors" but they don't have to. They simply take a vote, based on whatever they want. As long as they have the numbers in the vote then voila you have an impeachment.
They are not tied to the constitution or to law, they don't need evidence and they don't need witnesses. All they need are the vote numbers.
So, a president could pick up a gun and shoot the VP as he is counting the electoral votes. He could then declare himself the winner. If an attempt is made to impeach him, all you need is to have his own party vote not to impeach him, and if they have the numbers, then he doesn't get impeached.
The situation for a congressmen is very different for a judge. A congressman is concerned about his next election and maintaining his position in office. If he has a movement of people who will do whatever that president tells them to do. e.g. not vote for that congressman, then that congressman knows he must kowtow to that president's whims otherwise he will lose his job and career as he will be voted out in the next election.
The judge however, isn't up for election and is entirely focussed on setting precedent which will hold for decades to come. Setting a rule that abides by the law, and the constitution and will not be reversed on appeal.
it was already a popularity thing before it made it to SCOTUS.
No it's not. A judge and a Supreme Court made a judgement based on law and constitution.
If you survey a bunch of legal analysts and low-level judges, and 90% on one side say yes, and 90% on the other side say no...it's already in that partisan popularity realm.
No, the judge doesn't go to the polls in order to make a determination.
And it seems like the SCOTUS ruling did establish a precedent.
Per CNN:
In a repudiation of the notion that Trump’s actions left him ineligible under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban,” a unanimous court ruled that an individual state could not dump the former president from the ballot.
States do not have the power to remove a federal candidate from the ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.” It is Congress, the court wrote, that can enforce the provision, not states.
Yes, that's what they said.
They didn't say the mechanism that Congress are to go through to make the determination though.
So the Supreme Court didn't pass the buck...
Yes they did. They didn't make a determination as to whether D Trump engaged or provided comfort to an insurrection
with regards to the creation of new laws and/or creation of enforcement mechanisms and requirements, that's not their job.
Noone is asking for a new law, just upholding a current law, a current clause in the constitution.
That would fall to congress for the former, and and combination of congress and the executive branch for the latter.
That is not what the Supreme Court ruling has said. They aren't asking congress to create any new laws.
Saying "passed the buck" would imply that that SCOTUS neglected some sort of task that should be in their wheelhouse.
SC pointed to Congress and said they are the ones responsible for determining if D Trump engaged in an insurrection.
But previously some members of the Senate said
it was upto the courts to determine if D Trump engaged in an insurrection.
So we have two of the executive branches pointing away from themselves and towards each other, neither one willing to make a determination. WEAK!
It wasn't their job to determine whether or not Trump committed insurrection
This is what courts do. It is their job to make rulings on whether people committed crimes.
If you want them to decide whether or not his actions constituted insurrection, there is a mechanism for that. Officially charge him with that in a federal court, convict him, and then when it gets ran up the appellate chain and makes it to SCOTUS, we'd have our answer.
Nope this is not what the Supreme Court said.
It seems, even if D Trump was found guilty of seditious conspiracy in court, the individual states would still not be able to remove D Trump from the ballot. Even though the Constitution says they must.
What the Supreme Court have said is that Congress must be the ones to decide, not the courts. So this means is just comes up in a vote, and Trump's party can simply vote without evidence, without witnesses on whether they want D Trump to be on the ballot or not.
www.columbian.com
en.m.wikipedia.org
