Trump's Run For Power Will Test US Rule Of Law

A court order barring the former US president from Colorado's primary polls has cast a long shadow on his candidacy. How the 6 January case is resolved will be watched worldwide

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In a setback this week for Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of Colorado ordered his name struck off the ballot in the American state’s primary polls for his Republican party to pick its candidate for next year’s presidential election. This has cast a shadow on the candidacy of the former White House occupant, who was held ineligible for federal office under the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Brought in after the US Civil War, its Section 3 bars from such positions people who took an oath to uphold the Constitution but “engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the country or gave “aid or comfort" to its enemies. Trump now looks set to take this matter to the US Supreme Court. If America’s top court agrees with Colorado’s, it would be curtains for his bid to regain power legally. Yet, it is not an open-and-shut case, court proceedings may find only weak insulation from the political dynamics at play, and it is hard to foresee how this story will pan out.