Opinion | How a Civil War chief justice is influencing a 2024 Trump case - The Washington Post

Salmon P. Chase 

The Ohioan was Governor, Senator, Chief

Justice and Presidential hopeful

Opinion | How a Civil War chief justice is influencing a 2024 Trump case - The Washington Post

by Jason Willick

When the Supreme Court hears arguments Thursday on Colorado’s removal of Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot for “insurrection” under the 14th Amendment, all eyes will be on the 17th chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr. But the case, Trump v. Anderson, also puts the country’s sixth chief justice, Salmon P. Chase, in the judicial spotlight. Whatever happens, Chase’s unlikely moment of prominence contains a historical lesson about the link between law and politics.

Those following the Trump disqualification case closely know that Chase, appointed to the Supreme Court by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, wrote the main judicial opinion on the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause. Ratified in 1868, the amendment barred officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from future office. Chase — as a lone justice “riding circuit” — ruled in an 1869 opinion known as “Griffin’s Case” that it would be infeasible to determine “what particular individuals are embraced” by the disqualification clause without a legal process prescribed by Congress. The next year, Congress passed legislation creating such a process.

Fast forward to 2024. There is a campaign to disqualify Trump from the presidency on the grounds that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was an insurrection. Congress has said that those convicted of insurrection are disqualified from office under the 14th Amendment. But the Justice Department hasn’t even charged Trump with that crime. Trump’s opponents argue that states can or must remove him from ballots anyway, as Colorado has done.***