But ignoring the Constitution to please his supporters would be a complete breakdown of the rule of law.

In the short weeks since the Colorado Supreme Court threw Donald Trump off the ballot on the grounds that he is barred from office for engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” under the Fourteenth Amendment, the apologists for a man who tried to overthrow the constitutional order by fraud and then force have become pious apostles of democracy.

Republicans and conservative media figures have criticized the decision as “an attack on democracy” and “pro-tyranny.” The latter sentiment was also shared on the center-right, where more sober voices such as The New York Times’ Ross Douthat wrote, “Removing an opposition candidate from the ballot, indeed, a candidate currently leading in some polling averages … through the exercise of judicial power is a remarkably antidemocratic act.” A more straightforward summary from the Times legal reporter Charlie Savage described the ruling as pitting “one fundamental value against another: giving voters in a democracy the right to pick their leaders versus ensuring that no one is above the law.” This argument is simple and intuitive: People should get to vote for whomever they want to vote for.

Democracy is not simply voting; it includes limits on how and under what circumstances political power can be disputed and wielded so that democracy itself can survive from generation to generation. For this reason, democratic constitutions have counter-majoritarian limits; in fact, democracies cannot function without durable rules that set guidelines for contesting political power. That is the entire purpose of a written constitution, to place certain rights and principles outside the back-and-forth of normal political competition. Americans generally accept that these rules cannot be altered except through the formal process for doing so—constitutional amendment—and so, until that happens, democratic competition takes place within the lines that have been previously agreed upon. It is not somehow more democratic to pretend those rules don’t exist if they fall out of fashion with one side. The prospect of allowing Trump on the ballot is not itself so dire, but doing so demands disregarding the rule of law on Trump's behalf simply because of who he is.

There is little factual dispute over whether Trump attempted to seize power by fraud—pressuring state and federal officials to alter the election results—and then force, in the form of sending a mob to coerce Congress into reversing the election results. The real question is whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s........

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