According to a recent publication by two Constitutional scholars, Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be President of the United States, because of the Constitutional prohibition under Section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars anyone from elected office who has “engaged in” or “given aid or comfort” to an “insurrection or rebellion.”
The scholars—William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas—argue in a law review article that Trump’s attempted coup d’etat “automatically” disqualifies him. The scholars say that “every official, state or federal, who oversees elections has the authority to bar Trump from the ballot.
Baude and Paulsen are not Biden-loving partisans, according to Matt Ford in “The New Republic.” They belong to the Federalist Society, the powerful right wing organization that helped stock the Supreme Court with conservatives.
Section 3 addressed the problem of Southern states sending Confederate official to Washington D.C. after the Civil War. The terms “insurrection” and “rebellion” should apply to “only the most serious of uprisings against the government.”
Baude and Paulsen’s “powerfully argued” case reaches the “obvious conclusion” that Trump tried mightily in several extra-legal ways to overturn an election he had clearly lost. Thus, he “engaged in insurrection and rebellion and gave aid and comfort to other who did the same.”
Legally, the argument is “very compelling,” said Zack Beauchamp in “Vox.” However, MAGA Republicans might well react with violence to a Supreme Court that might agree with Article 14, Section 3, making January 6th into a prelude to more disaster.