Bruce Howard and Alan Howard: Hawley’s flawed authorized argument against Pennsylvania’s electoral votes | Visitor columnists
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., rises to join House Republican users to item to confirming the Electoral School votes from Pennsylvania on Jan. 7 throughout a joint session of the Residence and Senate to ensure the Electoral Higher education votes forged in November’s election.
Most concur that Sen. Josh Hawley’s argument that the Senate need to have turned down the Electoral School votes licensed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was a gross affront to American democracy. But it was also mistaken as a make a difference of federal law.
Hawley, of Missouri, argued that numerous mail-in votes in Pennsylvania should really be disallowed because they were being licensed by a wide condition mail-in voting regulation adopted by the condition legislature, notwithstanding a provision in the condition structure that Hawley alleged has been interpreted not to allow these wide mail-in balloting. (Though not relevant to our unique authorized examination, other Pennsylvania legislation industry experts have argued that Hawley was mistaken in his interpretation that there exists a conflict in between the Pennsylvania mail-voting legislation and the Pennsylvania constitution).
What is appropriate to our assessment is that, when the point out constitutional problem was manufactured by pro-Trump attorneys to the Pennsylvania Supreme Courtroom, the court docket rejected it on the grounds that it was lawfully far too late to challenge the Pennsylvania mail-in voting law. There is no federal statute or constitutional regulation provision authorizing any federal entity — be it a federal courtroom or the Senate — to reverse the Pennsylvania Supreme Courtroom final decision.
That determination was only a subject of point out law. Neither the U.S. Structure nor any federal statute states how a condition court docket really should choose regardless of whether a challenge to a point out law is well timed. And nowhere experienced Hawley said that there is such a federal law. An application for injunctive relief towards the Pennsylvania mail-in voting law was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court docket primarily based on the very same alleged conflict between the Pennsylvania laws and the Pennsylvania constitution. The Supreme Court denied the software on Dec. 8. By seeking to reargue the similar issues in advance of the Senate in early January, Hawley in influence attempted to get the Senate to act as an appellate courtroom to the Supreme Courtroom and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court docket. Which is not the way the authorized program is effective.
