Keck Weighs In on SCOTUS’s Trump Primary Ruling in Al Jazeera Article

March 7, 2024

Al Jazeera

Thomas M. Keck

Political Science Department

Campbell Public Affairs Institute

Federal

Political Parties

SCOTUS

U.S. Elections

United States

Al Jazeera

Thomas M. Keck

Colorado’s state Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump had run afoul of the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment by inciting the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But in a unanimous ruling earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the state could not remove Trump from its primary ballot.

Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, says the Colorado case had long faced an uphill battle.

“It was definitely always a long shot and the ruling is not surprising,” Keck says. But, he adds, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling opened up larger questions about what guardrails exist to protect U.S. democracy.

“It has been three years [since Jan. 6], and Trump has faced almost zero consequences. That is a bad sign for the health of the country’s democratic institutions,” Keck says.

Read more in the Al Jazeera article, “‘Bad sign’: Legal scholars question US Supreme Court’s Trump primary ruling.”