Alan Dershowitz may be a liberal, but when it comes to constitutional law, his opinions blur the partisan boundary to stay within the letter of the law. Once again, he crossed party lines to side with the president, predicting that “the Trump campaign will prevail in its challenge over late-arriving ballots being counted in Pennsylvania.”
Dershowitz thinks ‘Trump will win’
Alan Dershowitz is a seriously controversial character, representing a whole herd of infamous clients in court, ranging from Patty Hearst to O.J. Simpson, along with Julian Assange, Leona Helmsley, Mike Tyson, and Jeffrey Epstein. He fought like a tiger for President Donald Trump during last year’s kangaroo court of an impeachment trial.
Once again, Dershowitz is siding with President Donald Trump. He is convinced, in his legal opinion, that “Trump will win the Pennsylvania lawsuit.” At least, that’s what he told Joel Pollak in an interview. “Namely, the lawsuit that challenges ballots that were filed before the end of Election Day but not received until after Election Day.”
Referring to the deadlocked ruling in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Dershowitz explained the Constitution won’t allow it. The commonwealth’s high court let a lower-court extension stand, “allowing late-arriving ballots to be accepted so long as the ballots are postmarked by Nov. 3 or if the postmark isn’t legible and arrived several days after the election.” That’s a no-no.
Theoretically ‘right’ but not ‘correct’
Dershowitz points out that the Pennsylvania legislature “had basically said no to that and the Supreme Court said yes because of the pandemic. That may have been the right decision in some theoretical sense, but the Constitution doesn’t permit anybody in the state but the legislature to make decisions about elections.” Liberal judges think they can make the laws by interpreting them as they see fit.
One Pennsylvania judge agreed with Dershowitz on Thursday and “ordered segregated ballots to be excluded from the vote count.” That matches the previous week’s ruling by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito who ordered “Pennsylvania election officials to segregate all late-arriving ballots while legal challenges work their way through the courts.”
It’s crystal clear to Dershowitz. As he noted in the interview, the argument made by the Trump campaign “clearly belongs in federal courts.
The Republican argument is the stronger one.” Whether or not SCOTUS will get to weigh in depends on whether or not the outcome of the whole election is in jeopardy. “The Supreme Court will take the case only if it would make a difference, only if the plaintiffs, the Republicans, can show that the number of disputed ballots that were subject to sequestration by Justice Alito’s decision exceeds the difference between the winning margin and the losing margin.” That means the magic number is right around 30,000 votes as Biden has a 60,000 vote advantage the way the numbers sit now.
