Stephen Vladeck, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown Law Center, lucidly explains what we know, and what we don’t (yet) know, about the courts’ treatment of Trump’s mail-in ballots power grab. Permit me to make a couple of points to put this in context.
I don’t have a hidden agenda. I’m not trying to persuade you that the Republican justices are a bunch of jerks, nor am I trying to persuade you that some of the Republican justices are good guys who will stand up to Trump.
I’m just trying to present an understandable analysis of the current state of play, offered by the person who is probably the one individual most qualified to lay out that analysis.
In my day, I am very sorry to say that I was a great expert on standing and injury issues in antitrust litigation. In the early 200s, I read and mastered and published a law review article about the vast body of case law on that topic. And here was my conclusion: all too often, a decision on standing is a rabbit that the judge will pull out of his hat if the plaintiff should win the case on the merits, but if, for ideological reasons, the judge really wants to defendant to win the case—so that, “without reaching the merits,” he rules that the plaintiff lacks standing to sue.
As the good Professor Vladeck implies, we’ll just have to wait a little longer to see how that plays out here.
And while we are waiting and seeing, there’s another twist to ponder. If the Republican justices want to issue a ruling that favors Republican political victories, then they will rule that mail-in ballots are hunky-dory and that Trump should stay the hell away from telling everyone which voting procedures are kosher and which are not.
Trump is barking mad, suffering from a deep seated delusion that mail-in voting hurts his side. Indulging that delusion will in no way, shape, or form help Republicans win elections. I suspect that even Justices Thomas and Alito, whose grip on reality is somewhat shaky, know that Trump’s obsession with mail-in voting is Loony Tunes.
Facing MAGA 