Stephen I. Vladeck, expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice, gives us a great insight with implications about the lawsuit against Rep Cawthorn.
One way or the other, the legal challenge to Cawthorn’s 2022 candidacy could therefore have enormous implications.
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if the challenge succeeds, it could become a model for similar attempts by voters in other states to seek to disqualify other members of Congress who publicly encouraged and incited — and may have privately facilitated — the violence on Jan. 6. In that respect, the Cawthorn challenge is a fascinating test case for state disqualification procedures — and for the idea that the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause could be enforced against those involved in Jan. 6 through state elections suits.
But the Cawthorn case illustrates how the argument would go: If an individual is disqualified from serving in Congress because of an express constitutional provision, does it not follow that, in the Supreme Court’s words, they therefore fail to meet “the qualifications expressly set forth in the Constitution”? Put another way, is compliance with the disqualification clause itself one of the express qualifications for office imposed by the Constitution?
One way or the other, the challenge to Cawthorn’s candidacy could therefore have enormous implications not just for the 26-year-old first-term congressman, but for any members who played some part in the tragic and tumultuous events of last January — and for how the long-moribund disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment is enforced going forward.