Dear John,
By now you have surely heard the good news regarding Trump v. Anderson.
This case, which wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court, considered the question of whether the Colorado Supreme Court was in error when it struck former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential primary ballot. The answer was a unanimous 9-0 decision, overturning the Colorado Court.
To arrive at their decision, the Supreme Court had to consider, among other questions, whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was “self-executing” or required an additional act of Congress. (Section 3, which I urge you to read, deals with, among other things, penalties for the betrayal of the Constitution by public official.) And here is where it gets good.
As it turns out, the answer to this question, namely, that only Congress can implement Section 3, was originally argued by Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life Washington Fellow Robert Delahunty and Berkely Law Professor John Yoo.
As an expert witness in the Colorado trial, Delahunty first pressed this reasoning, which was then taken up in a Claremont Institute Supreme Court amicus brief by Yoo. And although the Court didn’t cite any amicus briefs in its opinion, it is not difficult to trace these arguments back to their original source.
This is what real influence looks like.
It is not about who brags the loudest or has the slickest marketing materials. It comes instead from decades-long scholarly and constitutional work married with a courage of conviction. This is the Claremont Institute in a nutshell.
Best,
