On January 5, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Trump v. Griswold, the Section 3 case from Colorado. Today, my co-counsel and I filed an amicus brief on behalf of Professor Seth Barrett Tillman in support of the Petitioner. We filed early as the Court set January 18 as the deadline for amicus briefs. We are grateful to our co-counsel: Robert Ray, R. Scott Reisch, Jessica L. Hays, and C. Thomas Ludden. We included key excerpts from the brief after the jump. In Griffin’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 7 (C.C.D. Va. 1869) (No. 5815), Chief Justice Chase held that Section 3 is not self-executing. Under Griffin’s Case, the relief sought by the Respondents is barred because they are seeking affirmative relief against the government to enforce Section 3 without authorization from federal enforcement legislation. Griffin’s Case is consistent with the longstanding sword-shield dichotomy in federal courts’ jurisprudence and upholds a core premise of Reconstruction: Congress, and not the distrusted States, was empowered to enforce Section 3. Respondents argue the President is obviously an officer of the United States holding an office under the United States. However, Amicus’s position uses the same methodology employed in D.C. v. Heller to understand the original meaning of “the right to keep and bear arms” and concludes that the presidency was not an “Office under the United States.” Respondents argue that Amicus’s position would lead to absurd consequences, but there is no potential parade of absurdities if the President is not an “Officer of the United States.” Finally, Respondents ultimately abandon all principles of original public meaning and turn back the jurisprudential clock to original intentions. However, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was a compromise and the President was not an “Officer of the United States” in 1788, in 1868, and today. This is enough to definitively resolve this action, and all other Section 3 cases concerning the Petitioner, if the Court agrees.