That's not how the court system works, bud.I know about state rights and all that. It's not a state's right to take someone off the ballot because they think it's against the constitution, which needs to be figured out by a federal court.
Cases are seen at the lowest level appropriate, and then get referred upwards by appeals as required. Who gets to be on a state ballot is under state jurisdiction, so it gets heard by a state court. And then if people aren't satisfied and successfully appeal, it goes up to a higher level state court, and then possibly on all the way to SCOTUS.
Federal law conventionally means laws relating to federal statutes: what is passed by the federal legislature, or what is specifically assigned to federal courts by the Constitution. This case is state law applying to state statutes, therefore would not be heard by a federal court (unless it is appealed up). The Constitution of course oversees both federal and state law. Bear in mind that pretty much every single case in existence, state or federal, could in theory be appealed all the way to SCOTUS. But no-one uses this as an argument to say therefore state law is federal law.How is the constitutional not federal law?
Although fact fans might also note there was long a controversy about whether the Constitution applied to state law. The Bill Of Rights, for instance, was initially held to only apply to federal laws. This again was the cause of a major legal kerfuffle way back in the day, as the Constitution was gradually applied more and more over state law as well as federal.
They could try. I doubt it would pass legal challenge unless the US judicial system were comprehensively fucked, or of course unless the candidate had done something spectacularly shady. Like, for instance, inspired a mob to storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election result.And if states had the power to do such things with their own unique interpretations, then red states would remove democrats and blue states would remove republicans from the ballots, it would be a shit show.
This just isn't true, though. The point of civil law is that you can be found to have done all sorts of things without being convicted. For instance, Trump has had to pay a journalist millions of dollars for sexual assault, with no criminal conviction. OJ Simpson was found legally responsible for murdering his wife without a criminal conviction. Your parking and speeding tickets, no conviction involved - but you are most certainly punished. If you are found in a court to have broken the law, tough shit: the legal truth is that you broke the law and may be due any relevant legal punishments.I didn't say that SCOTUS doesn't make up shit at times. I said there's no reason why they'd have to make up shit if they want Trump on the ballot. There's no reason to remove him from the ballot so they don't have to make up anything. You are all acting like because SCOTUS is conservative leaning, they will make up shit to keep Trump on the ballot. But they don't have to make up anything to have Trump on the ballot, it's pretty basic that someone alleged of doing something shouldn't be punished until convicted (regardless of what it is). Because if you start punishing people just alleged of doing something, then that leads down a path nobody wants to walk down.
Even if we take impeachment, there is no standard of "beyond reasonable doubt", and so someone may be successfully impeached on a lower standard of evidence than a regular criminal court conviction requires, and they can't even appeal that to SCOTUS. Are you going to argue no-one can be punished after impeachment either?
Yes, they do have to make shit up. If everyone knew what the answer was, this would never have passed the initial court case because it would have all been sealed up nice and tight with a pretty pink bow, and a higher court would have refused an appeal on the grounds there was no reasonable basis to support one. If there's no known answer, they have to invent one. As per my previous post, I have outlined that SCOTUS could reasonably take a number of different positions, each of which I am sure they could justify at least half-way adequately. This basically means they're going to make shit up as it suits them. The reasoning to support their decision may indeed be very good. However, that's not the same as it being the only reasonable answer, or the best.