"Supreme Court Considers Trump's Ballot Eligibility Amid Election Controversy"
The Supreme Court is considering the relevance of Chief Justice Salmon Chase's 1868 and 1869 rulings in the ongoing dispute over whether former President Donald Trump should be barred from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. This provision was intended to prevent former government officials who joined the Confederacy from holding office after the Civil War. Chase's rulings, which touch upon the same legal issue but reach different conclusions, are being cited in court filings ahead of the Supreme Court's oral argument in Trump's case next week. The history is relevant because several members of the conservative-majority Supreme Court put considerable weight on how people would have understood constitutional provisions at the time they were written.