Here is one i haven t heard before. you know, he s got all the greatest hits in there, the 14th amendment doesn t apply to the u.s. president. this wasn t an insurrection. even if it was, he didn t engage in it, all the things we might expect. one he led with that is interesting to me is the 14th amendment only bars someone from holding office, not running for office. therefore, he should be permitted to run, be elected, and only on january 20th of 2025, should it be say, sorry, folks, he can t serve. you know, that sounds like a tex textualist argument, but imagine the absurdity. he can t serve, so his vice president is the president of the united states. maybe that s how we ll see the court play out. i believe the court is likely to take an off-ramp. a more likely off-ramp, i think, is one that says this is not a justiciable argument, that is,
Our viewers essentially comes down to these two sentences in the constitution s 14th amendment, no person shall be a senator or representative in congress or elector of president and vice president who having previously taken an oath as an officer of the united states to support the constitution of the united states shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies there of. i m proud of myself for getting through all of that without messing up but let me go to both of you on this, gentlemen. how is this going to work, because donald trump is not going to say, you got me. i m disqualified. judge, i ll let you go first then the professor. jim, thank you for having us on this afternoon. professor tribe is the most celebrated constitutional mind in america and deservedly so and he has been that for the past four decades.
Conservatives on the court tend to be more originalist in their thinking when it comes to the constitution. they may be tempted, i suppose, to align themselves with the i guess the thought process you re laying out today, it s in the constitution, it says it very clearly right there. and its original mean something clear, so they have a real problem. they may personally want to see donald trump president again, though i don t know, but whatever they want personally, if they re going to stick by their guns and interpret the constitution according to its clear meaning and in this case its original meaning, as well, they really are not going to have much choice. but it seems to me that whatever they do, their feet have to be held to the fire. if they decide that this wasn t an insurrection, that s going to be hard to square with the clear meaning of that word in the constitution, if they decide that donald trump was simply,
And paulson that is forthcoming in a law review from the university of pennsylvania. they re monumentally important and the contribution they have made is that they have demonstrated that what might have been is not, which is to say this, section 3 of the 14th amendment means exactly what it plainly and clearly says, specifically as you just read. yeah. any person who previously has taken the oath of office to support and defend the constitution of the united states and who then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the united states and
That section 3 is what we call self-executing, which means that the qualification automatically arises from the condition precedent in this instance in the insurrection or rebellion against the constitution that occurred on january 6th, 2021. the corollary of that is that congress need not act to determine whether the former president engage the in an insurrection or a rebellion or aided and comforted such, neither must a court find that fact and neither must a jury of the former president s peers concluded that he engaged in an