Osler's Razor

I like politics, in the sense that it is about policy-- decisions made by people in power to benefit the country. However, I'm not a huge fan of politics in the sense of party politics and horserace watching, which is hard to avoid right now, as we wait to see how the presidential election finally ends up.

The Trump campaign seems to want it all to end up in court-- in fact, the president seems convinced that the Supreme Court will hand him the election in the end, one way or another. But there are a few issues the Trump team faces with that.

One is having an issue. The election seems to have been pretty clean, and even when they have raised an issue, it involves very few ballots. As Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School in LA put it (in what has to be my favorite quote of the entire election cycle): "A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee."

The other is having some kind of legal talent working for you. From what I hear, the Trump team is having a very hard time finding good lawyers-- and sending Rudy Giuliani to Philly is not exactly deploying top legal talent (though, to his credit, he did find someone who goes by "Thor" to file the Michigan suit). A track record of not paying vendors doesn't help. Neither does the fact that representing Trump will repel the clients of some top firms (not to mention the lawyers themselves-- and yes, good lawyers do turn down clients because they don't like them). 

If Biden prevails in the end, the next important question will be this: is Donald Trump capable of accepting defeat in a way that reflects the best interests of the country?

# posted by Mark Osler @ 1:00 AM