Equal protection under the law. That’s the best-known part of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
But there’s a little-known part of it that’s urgently relevant now.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution bars from office any public official involved in an insurrection.
“This was written to keep former officials who joined the Confederacy from returning to office unless Congress gave them a waiver or exemption,” Gerard Magliocca, professor of law at Indiana University, says.
Can legal reasoning withstand political reality when it comes to Donald Trump?
Today, On Point: How the 14th Amendment could block Donald Trump from becoming president.
Guests
Gerard Magliocca, professor of law at Indiana University. Author of “American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Michael McConnell, professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Also Featured
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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