What is a hero? What qualities of courage and selflessness does a person need to exhibit? Is it the person who enters a burning building to save a child, or jumps into freezing water to save someone who has broken through the ice? Or is it the soldier who risks gunfire to save a fellow soldier who is down from a gunshot? Or is it perhaps something less physically dangerous, like the journalist in an authoritarian regime who still writes the truth of what they see even at risk of being jailed or worse?
Most of us think we know heroism when we see or read about it, and can define heroic acts of courage. But while acts of bravery may be performed every day, some are more subtle. Courage is not always black and white, nor are we always privy to the costs of sacrifices and choices facing people who have to step onto this tightrope.
The decision of our secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, not to allow our former head of state to be on the Maine ballot was such an act.
It would certainly have been much easier for Bellows to have decided to bypass any decision, simply claiming that it was really an issue for the courts to decide. Indeed, it will most probably be decided by the courts. But, following Maine state election laws and taking her role and responsibility seriously, Secretary Bellows followed the rule of law and did what she had to do. There are those who applaud her decision and others who decry it as overreach or a breach of her role.
While opinions about Secretary Bellows’ decision are varied in the extreme, such disparate voices as liberal constitutional scholar and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and noted conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig agree that, in a plain reading of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, her decision was the correct one. It reads that “No person shall… hold any office…who, having previously taken an oath…as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Webster’s Dictionary defines “insurrection” as an “act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”
It seems pretty clear that planning, over many months, to find ways to overturn the legitimate votes of the people of the United States and to interfere with the peaceful transition of power from one administration to another fits this definition. Furthermore, Article II of the Constitution states that the “President of the United States … shall hold his Office” for four years. Article VI states that the Constitution “shall be the supreme Law of the Land” and “all Officers … of the United States … shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this Constitution.” Again, Webster’s Dictionary defines “officer” as “one who holds an office.” Since the U.S. Constitution states that the president holds “office,” it is clear that the president is an “officer” of the United States.
I do not hold with the Justice Antonin Scalia position on the sanctity of an “original” reading of the Constitution as written by our founders. I think of our Constitution as a living, evolving document. Our founders could not possibly have imagined a world with telephones, television or social media, let alone AI. It seems to me we must use the tenets of the Constitution as guideposts, helping us to maintain a democratic society.
Moreover, I would suggest that in undertaking her sworn oath to our Constitution and in her deep and abiding commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows risked her reputation, her safety, and perhaps her political future, in executing her duty as secretary of state. In doing so, she is my hero.
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