ELECTORAL COLLEGE SUBVERSION, THE VICE PRESIDENT & THE FEDERAL WRIT OF MANDAMUS.

The certification of the 2020 presidential election was the most dangerous constitutional crisis since the election of 1876, if not the Civil War. The nation avoided catastrophe in large part because Vice President Mike Pence refused to join President Donald Trump's conspiracy to subvert the Electoral College and usurp the presidency. This Comment is the first in the academic literature to identify and extensively evaluate a specific legal mechanism for aggrieved candidates, Electors, states, and Congress itself to seek recourse from the federal courts to ensure that the lawful and constitutional transfer of power need not rest on the Vice President's integrity alone. The writ of mandamus enables the federal courts to compel the Vice President to carry out his or her Electoral College duties at the quadrennial joint session of Congress to certify the result of the Presidential election. Mandamus is justified under existing law because constitutional and statutory text, historical practice, and common sense demonstrate that the Vice President's key duties are ministerial, and the joint session uniquely paralyzes Congress, withdrawing all of its usual tools to secure compliance with the law. Each of the Vice President's nonjusticiability arguments fail. The courts would face the question squarely on the merits, and they may face it soon. The question is not just whether to issue mandamus against the Vice President. Nor is it whether to trigger a grave constitutional crisis. The question is whether to sit one out, or else to re-affirm that ours is a nation of laws, and not men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]