Subjects!
Yes, I am here watching the oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara. What of it? Can’t a sitting president come watch an oral argument at the Supreme Court on a Wednesday without it being viewed as an attempt to coerce the justices? You know how much I love an oral argument. I am a big fan of the law. I like the faint, wheezing sound it makes as I trample on it, and the mountains of litigation that result.
I am not here to cause problems for the justices by listening in a menacing way. I would never! I come from the New York Real-Estate Business, one of the less threatening business traditions.
Besides, everyone knows how much I love listening while other people talk and not falling asleep. When do they start the praise, though? This seems like a long time for people to talk in front of me without mentioning that I am a great genius, physically prepossessing, and the one Messiah toward whom all history has been tending (I am paraphrasing a little).
Who are those people in the robes? I understand why the men are in robes: They are justices. But why are the women in robes? Really unflattering. Some kind of Handmaid’s Tale protest thing? Even Amy Coney Barrett? I thought she was with us. Strange!
This is very legal and very fun. Remember, there is technically no rule barring the president from attending oral arguments in the Supreme Court, just as there is no rule barring the president from standing behind the justices holding a club studded with spikes and waving it menacingly every time the argument takes a wrong turn. Which I, of course, have no plans to do! I know that the justices are all going to rule correctly. I also know where all the justices live and how to find them, unless Justice Thomas is on that yacht again. (Justice Alito’s house is the one with the upside-down flag!)
It probably will not come to this, but there is also technically no rule against bringing Justice Roberts’s pet cat, Mr. Marbury, in a specially designed cage where a single door separates him from a hungry python who respects neither law nor God.
This case is a simple one, anyhow: It’s about what the president wants versus what the Constitution explicitly says. Fortunately there is a branch of law called originalism, which, as I understand it, allows you to say that the people who put, say, an amendment into the Constitution did not really mean it. In such cases, the argument goes like this:
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: We cannot help noticing that when this amendment passed, everyone was pretty clear on what it meant. Let me read you a quote on the subject from Daniel Webster. “Hello, future Supreme Court justices,” Daniel Webster says. “If you are reading this, please know that the Fourteenth Amendment meant what we said it meant. Don’t disenfranchise a huge class of people because you think we didn’t mean what we said we meant. Everyone knows that the amendment means what it literally says in the text.”
SOLICITOR GENERAL SAUER: Yes, but we have reason to believe that Daniel Webster actually felt the opposite of what his words were technically saying.
SOTOMAYOR: What reason?
SAUER: Good reason.
SOTOMAYOR: Is that reason in court with us today?
ROBERTS: Hey, look! He’s got Mr. Marbury! Mr. Marbury is in that cage!
When you ask yourself, What should I do now?, remember: The Constitution doesn’t know your home address. The Constitution will not post on Truth Social about your disloyalty and how you have disappointed him. The Constitution will not come to your house and put a partial horse in your bed, peacefully and patriotically. The Constitution doesn’t have Mr. Marbury. Think very carefully about which one of us you want to disappoint.
Great day for an oral argument! Have fun out there!
The post I Am Here to Watch the Birthright-Citizenship Arguments but Not in a Threatening Way appeared first on The Atlantic.
