Judge Luttig: Independent State Legislature Theory is Nonsense
SOURCE: The Atlantic
10/3/2022
tags: Supreme Court, election law, Big Lie, J. Michael Luttig, Independent State Legislature, Moore v. Harper
by J. Michael Luttig
J. Michael Luttig is a former federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
The Supreme Court will decide before next summer the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.
In Moore v. Harper, the Court will finally resolve whether there is a doctrine of constitutional interpretation known as the “independent state legislature.” If the Court concludes that there is such a doctrine, it would confer on state legislatures plenary, exclusive, and judicially unreviewable power both to redraw congressional districts for federal elections and to appoint state electors who quadrennially cast the votes for president and vice president on behalf of the voters of the states. It would mean that the partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts by state legislatures would not be reviewable by the state courts—including the states’ highest court—under their state constitutions.
Such a doctrine would be antithetical to the Framers’ intent, and to the text, fundamental design, and architecture of the Constitution.
The independent-state-legislature theory gained traction as the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the Supreme Court, allies of the former president argued that the theory, as applied to the electors clause, enabled the state legislatures to appoint electors who would cast their votes for the former president, even though the lawfully certified electors were bound by state law to cast their votes for Joe Biden because he won the popular vote in those states. The Supreme Court declined to decide the question in December 2020. The former president and his allies continued thereafter to urge the state legislatures, and even self-appointed Trump supporters, to transmit to Congress alternative, uncertified electoral slates to be counted by Congress on January 6.
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https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/184073
❤️pants
= new reply since forum marked as read
many brilliant intelligent judges who should be on the SC but aren't.
We're Stuck with too many narcissistic Fascist, Corrupt assholes for as long as they live.
This is Crazy! There's no way to get rid of them. But how could the Founding Fathers know over 200 years later there would a Foreign ASSet infiltrating Fascism into our Government and spread it acoss our Nation?
