Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 August 20

= August 20 =

The Black Cauldron (1985)
Please, can you search if the production had modelled the face of the evil king from a real-life character? And maybe also the Horned King's castle? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.31.238.201 (talk) 11:42, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You might look at Lewis Chessmen. Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It's obviously a stylized face. Nobody actually looks (or looked) like that. Shantavira|feed me 17:18, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Can you be sure? Were you there? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:15, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Reminds me of my dad on a good day. The insane red-eyed rage is missing. Compare my mum below. MinorProphet (talk) 16:30, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

is overthrowing the US government a civil offense or a criminal one?
Not seeking legal advice since I'm sure Trump already has plenty. This thing about the 14th amdt preventing would-be overthrowers from holding office again puzzles me though. It was written to handle the then-still-around leaders of the Confederacy which gave a literal civil war, right?

Anyway, if they try to use that clause to stop Trump from being re-inaugurated, there will surely be a court case about whether he really tried to overthrow the government. So I'm wondering whether it would be a civil case (decided on preponderance of evidence standard) or a criminal case (beyond reasonable doubt). There was a similar thing with OJ Simpson where he was acquitted of murder but still held civilly liable for wrongful death, because the evidence against him met one standard (according to the jury) but not the other.

Amusingly, the movie Fahrenheit 911 has a scene that basically criticizes Al Gore for not doing the same thing against George W. Bush after the 2000 election. Bill Clinton at the time said he would have fought it. I wonder if there could have been a 14th amdt case after that. Anyway, thanks. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:F22A (talk) 17:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Added: apparently Eugene Debs ran for president while in prison for sedition, and got 3.4 percent of the vote. I don't know if sedition counts as insurrection under the vague notions of that Atlantic article.  2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:F22A (talk) 17:22, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Not an expert on US law by any stretch of the imagination, but feel like most governments will make "trying to overthrow us" a criminal offence, rather than just something you pay a fine about. They get to pick, after all. Folly Mox (talk) 18:04, 20 August 2023 (UTC)


 * 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:F22A -- If the Federal government accused Trump of trying to overthrow it, then of course that would be a criminal matter, but a lawsuit about whether his name should be on the ballot, or whether he should be allowed to assume office, would be a different matter (the trial would not be directly accusing Trump of a crime, but trying to determine whether his past crimes affect his eligibility for office). AnonMoos (talk) 19:39, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The amendment spoke to the Civil War situation. In the case of Trump, it would be hard to apply the amendment if he hasn't been convicted of insurrection at the time of the election. Hence his efforts to delay the trials. As to Debs, I don't think he was accused of insurrection, but only of opposing our entry into WWI. Hence the sedition charge. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:19, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Debs was convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:32, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, for fighting against the draft. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:02, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not about criminal vs civil offenses per se. It's about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the so-called Insurrection Clause, which, at the time it was written, disqualified a relatively clear class, namely those who had supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.
 * There's a huge current debate about this, especially on those sections of the American center-right that would like to see a Republican Party disencumbered of Trump. A description that broadly includes me, for whatever that's worth, not that that matters here.
 * The legal side of it gets fairly arcane fairly quickly, with different people taking different positions on whether the clause is "self-executing", whatever that means exactly, and who needs to take notice of the fact that someone is disqualified as an insurrectionist. The substantive matter of whether Trump is actually guilty of insurrection is not that clear either, at least to me; while hardly a stable genius, he does seem to have been smart enough to avoid giving unambiguous instructions to use violence to disrupt the vote-counting process.
 * Anyway, here are some links. You might start with this article by Ross Douthat (note that I've used my subscription to "gift" the article so readers can get past the paywall; we'll see if that works on Wikipedia).  That article gives an overview of the debate and gives links to others, which are also worth looking at directly.  Douthat is a skeptic of the argument.
 * On the "pro" side, here's this piece in the Volokh Conspiracy, which claims that the clause is self-enforcing and that any official charged with evaluating eligibility can and should exclude Trump on those grounds, without further action by anyone else. It links to a more general analysis of the clause, here.
 * The Volokh Conspiracy also published a skeptical counterpoint, here. --Trovatore (talk) 21:13, 20 August 2023 (UTC)


 * See here for an article co-authored by J. Michael Luttig, a well-known conservative former judge, summarizing a paper by conservative legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen fvavoring an expansive view of the insurrection disqualification clause... AnonMoos (talk) 12:19, 21 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The problem with "self-enforcing" of a clause like this is where the line is drawn with regards to "advocating changing the policy and personnel of the U.S. government" and "advocating insurrection against said government". I'm in no way defending anything Trump did here, except to note that lots of governments call political disagreements "insurrection", and insofar as one is to err on one side or the other of the "disagreement vs. insurrection" line, it's usually better for society that one allows things which are a bit insurrectionist, rather than to quash things that are merely disagreements on how the government should be run.  No statement on whether Trump's actions should or should not be considered insurrection, but that's why we have courts.  A robust and independent court system and a scrupulous adherence to due process is what determines that.  Yes, the constitution invalidates insurrectionists from holding public office, but a court needs to decide where an action is insurrection.  -- Jayron 32 14:53, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That's essentially the position taken by Michael McConnell (and also Douthat) in the above links. I tend to agree as well, for whatever it's worth, not that that matters.
 * It does seem a pity that the amendment's drafters weren't a little more clear about how the disqualification was to work in practice. Or they could have just dropped it; the impulse behind it was understandable enough, but
 * It disqualifies an odd class, not insurrectionists in general, but only those who have previously taken an oath to support the Constitution. I mean, sure, that seems worse than if you haven't, but what's the political theory behind that?
 * It didn't seem to accomplish much in practice.
 * It's not really germane to the rest of the amendment, which is already one of the more complicated bits of the Constitution.
 * The 14th amendment is pretty interesting. This is a corner of it I had forgotten existed, before the aftermath of Jan 6. --Trovatore (talk) 20:01, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I suspect it was a compromise, instead of charging the entire Confederacy with treason. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:36, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I would assume the emphasis on oath-breaking is that it indicates untrustworthiness. Its the difference between a former enemy who is no longer an enemy (and might become a friend) vs. someone you thought was a friend and turned on you.  Iapetus (talk) 08:51, 23 August 2023 (UTC)