I've been following various legal experts on Twitter, both lawyers and people who know the law better than lawyers, and at the same time I've been binge-watching "Jake and the Fatman," so I think I can shed some law on the Texas case.
Firstly, the Supreme Court has "original jurisdiction" here, which means they can only hear cases with arguments that are completely original. Not all of them, but some. That's why Texas is including dog walkers with graphing calculators as experts.
You may have heard that what's been filed is actually a "motion for leave" rather than an actual suit. That's not true. The phrase dates back to when attorneys general had to ask permission to leave the state so they could go to D.C. to file. These days it doesn't mean anything.
Also, there's some confusion over whether being "put on the docket" means that the Supreme Court is going to hear the case. A docket is a kind of purse that the court puts numbered marbles into, and whichever marble they pull out, that's the case they hear. So, probably?
On to the suit (or "lawsuit") itself. The main question is whether Texas has "a priori" to sue Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wyoming and Atlanta for violating their state constitutions. The answer is very legal.
The argument is, in essence, that the state and federal Constitutions together form a sort of "Hive Constitution" in which the state Constitutions are like worker bees and the U.S. Constitution is like the queen bee.
From this point of view, the state Constitutions are legally the children of the U.S. Constitution, and as such has paternal rights over them, including the right to forbid them from touching themselves.
So in this case (no pun intended!) Texas is much like a child appealing to their parent that its siblings get everything they want, and Texas never gets anything good. Under the Equal Perception clause of the 14th amendment, this is legally copacetic.
But that doesn't mean that Texas will win the suit. The 800-pound elephant hanging over our heads the the controversial decision in Bush v. Gorn, in which a divided Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush was president for some reason.
The most controversial part of that decision is that the court never gave its reasoning, with Justice Stewart Potter explaining that he knows a president when he sees one. Since then, everyone arguing before the SCOTUS cites Bush v. Borg, just in case it applies.
So both plaintiffs and defenders will be citing Bush v. Worf while watching the justices for tells. It's impossible to say, but legal scholars as well as many illegal scholars agree that the most likely outcome is that the court will once again appoint George W. Bush president.
You can follow @loresjoberg.
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