In Cawthorn v. Amalfi the crux is about excluding insurrectionists from participating in Congress. The Fourth Circuit’s decision will certainly be of great interest both politically and legally. This article by Derek Muller is published by Election World Blog. Here is an excerpt:
The Fourth Circuit heard oral argument in Cawthorn v. Amalfi today, a challenge to Representative Madison Cawthorn’s eligibility under the Fourteenth Amendment and whether North Carolina has the power to exclude him from the ballot. The News & Observer has a story about it, and I won’t rehash the details here (Disclosure: I filed an amicus brief in support of no party in the case.)
But one point I wanted to write about. The challengers opened with a citation to an 1868 Act (multiple times, before being interrupted to get to some other issues that the presiding judge wanted to hear about), and returned to it in rebuttal, an issue that had been hardly mentioned in some briefing before but apparently became a framing point at oral argument. The argument goes, Congress empowered the states in this act to disqualify insurrectionists from election to Congress.
This argument makes several mistakes.
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