Politico: “Legal scholars, national security experts and political analysts imagine the extraordinary fallout that would ensue.”

Here’s my contribution to this roundtable:

No matter how the Supreme Court rules in the Trump disqualification case some people are going to be angry. The questions posed by the case are legally, factually and procedurally complex, and there is very little precedent for the court to rely on in resolving the case. That means that views of the case’s merits, whether by the public, other lawyers or the justices themselves, are likely to be consciously or subconsciously colored by the question of whether Trump should be disqualified from serving. And any ruling that comes out opposite of one’s normative views of Trump is likely to be viewed by many with suspicion.

If the ruling comes out that Trump is in fact disqualified, it will be hard to paint it as a “partisan” or “liberal” decision. There are only three Democratic-appointed justices on the court, so a ruling against Trump would require the votes of at least two Republican-appointed judges. This stands in contrast to a possible 6-3 ruling in which the justices divide along party lines with the conservatives keeping Trump on the ballot and the liberals voting to keep him off. Perhaps if Trump is disqualified with the vote of at least two conservative justices, some voters in the middle who thought Trump should remain on the ballot might be assured by the bipartisan nature of the decision.

My greatest concern of a ruling disqualifying is not therefore about a hit to the court’s legitimacy, but the potential for violence. The idea that the Supreme Court would remove from the ballot a candidate, who has millions of strong followers, in the midst of an election runs the risk of social unrest during a period of intense political polarization. That’s not a reason for the court to avoid doing what’s right. But it is a reason to be prepared for anything, especially given Trump’s track record in encouraging violence when he doesn’t get his way, which is what got us to this point in the first place.