You are being hoodwinked by a group of conservatives who claim to know what the Constitution means. Their pitch is seductive, because they are telling progressives (and Democrats more generally) they think Donald Trump is ineligible to be President. Their messages is, “We know how to interpret the Constitution, and we believe it says he’s ineligible for office. So, just bear with us.”
Most sane people think the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits him from holding that office, let alone running for it. That makes it all too easy to forgive the sins of originalism, which says we have to go back to the people who wrote the text of the Constitution and learn what they meant, because that’s the only proper interpretation of the law.
This is really a nice bit of sophistry, but it doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Originalism is just one method of interpreting the Constitution. I don’t buy the originalist arguments—and you shouldn’t either. They are based on logical fallacy and a serious misunderstanding of what gives the Constitution legal force.
In this series of articles, I examine why we should take a modernist view of the Constitution, not an originalist view, and what that means specifically for the Fourteenth Amendment. Spoiler alert: It isn’t any better for the ex-Prez.
But it is important to make sure we don’t just side with originalism just because originalists are saying pleasing things about this issue. There’s a serious problem with originalism, and I explore that in Part 1 of this series.
In Part 2, I examine how modernists should look at the Fourteenth Amendment and what it means for insurrections and eligibility.
Part 1 is scheduled for Monday 5 February 2024 at 4:00 PM Pacific Time, and Part 2 is scheduled for Monday 6 February 2024 at 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Please join me for these articles.
Please see the next article here. And the third here.