Chris

I think the ultra-conservative members of the Supreme Court my come to realise that their continuing life-long membership of a nine-member panel is preferable to ruling Trump isn’t disqualified by the 14th. All of them are likely to live a lot longer than him and have nothing to gain by indirectly making the case for (at best) diluting their majority by increasing the panel to 12 justices, or (at worst, for them) imposing term limits.

IANAL and I am especially not a US constitutional lawyer but on a plain reading of the relevant bit of the constitution I can’t see how Trump can stand, and in fact for months now I’ve been seeing people who do have relevant qualifications opining that for all the noise of criminal and civil trials it was always likely to be a challenge under the 14th amendment that would get him in the end. The only thing that might tempt the justices to interpret it creatively and in Trump’s favour would be some sense of loyalty to him, but they don’t need his favour to stay in post, whereas they do need the present composition of the Supreme Court to remain as is for them to be certain they retain their jobs and their influence for as long as they want it.

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Can you name anywhere in the world where that’s actually the case? AFAIK the nearest you get to it is Switzerland and even the Swiss suspect they’re basically ungovernable as a result.

There’s a very good reason why successful democracies are representative rather than direct. The US constitution can be altered with substantial bipartisan support at state and federal level in the US, amongst representatives who are democratically elected. The constitution is interpreted and enforced by the Supreme Court but its powers are not absolute.