How a Civil War-era law has brought Marjorie Taylor Greene into court - Yahoo News
A group of Georgia voters is hoping an arcane Constitutional law could knock U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene off the ballot.
Greene, R-Ga., on Friday testified in an administrative hearing on a challenge to her candidacy for reelection, raised by a group of Georgia voters, who claim that the congresswoman helped facilitate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The riot stemmed from efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden's presidential election win.
Under a rarely-used provision of the 14th Amendment, she could be disqualified from the ballot. Here's what you need to know about the provision and how its influencing the 2022 midterm elections.
History of the provision
The 14th Amendment, which is comprised of five sections, was ratified in 1868, shortly after the Civil War came to an end. It was meant to put the Union's idea of what it accomplished during the Civil War into the Constitution, said Eric Foner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Columbia University.
Part of that was ensuring that formerly enslaved people were extended the liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights. For example, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" and cemented that no state could deprive any person of "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" nor deny anyone equal protection under the law.
But a lesser-known intention of the amendment was to encourage "loyal government" in the South.
"In other words, people holding office would not be former Confederates," Foner said. "(The North) didn't fight the Civil War in order to put Confederates back into power in the South."
The amendment's third section reads:
"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Greene isn't the only lawmaker whose reelection bid has been questioned on the basis of the provision recently. North Carolina voters challenged Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn's candidacy, but that effort was in early March. Indiana voters also sought to keep Republican Rep. Jim Banks off the ballot, an effort in February.
Wisconsin Rep. Victor Berger, the , was convicted under the Espionage Act in 1919 and subsequently barred from Congress after the Senate and House asserted he supported insurrection by opposing American participation in World War I. The Supreme Court.
Berger rejoined Congress in 1923 and served three additional terms, .
source: https://news.yahoo.com/civil-war-era-law-brought-100140787.html
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