Category: Office and Officer

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Does Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment Apply to the Presidency?

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that Professors Tillman and Blackman have written a controversial piece about the current troubles in which, among other things, they reiterate their view that the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause does not bar an impeached, removed and disqualified official from the presidency because that office does not constitute an “Office of honor, Trust or Profit” within the meaning of Article I, § 3, cl. 7. See Blackman & Tillman, Can President Trump be Impeached and Removed on Grounds of Incitement (Jan. 8, 2021) (“The Senate has no power to disqualify a defendant from holding elected federal positions, such as the presidency.”) (emphasis in original).

I will not bore you by restating the reasons why I think this view is very, very wrong. You can read them ad nauseam by following the links in my most recent post on the subject.

The same issue arises, however, in regard to another constitutional provision which, as far as I recall, I have not addressed before. Specifically, section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment (an obscure provision which is enjoying its moment in the sun) provides:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial office of any State, 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 thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

(emphasis added).

I should state at the outset that I am extremely skeptical that President Trump’s behavior, as atrocious and impeachable as it may be, constitutes “insurrection or rebellion” or other conduct covered by this provision. Assuming for the sake of argument that it is, however, the italicized language raises two questions. First, is the president “an officer of the United States” subject to the bar of section 3 if he engages in the proscribed conduct? Second, is the presidency an “office, civil or military, under the United States” which a covered officer is barred from holding?

I assume that Tillman and Blackman would say no to both questions, although I am not entirely sure. Their argument is that the meaning of “officer of the United States” and office “under the United States” as used in the original Constitution applies only to appointed, not elected, offices and therefore excludes the presidency (and vice presidency). Whether they would say that this meaning was understood by anyone as of the time the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted is less clear. As I have pointed out, the view they ascribe (based on highly ambiguous historical practice) to a few members of the founding generation seems to have vanished without a trace by 1834 at the very latest.

It is interesting nonetheless that the only example I have found anyone actually expressing the Tillman/Blackman view (prior to Professor Tillman himself) comes in the debate over section 3 in the Senate on June 13, 1866. During the debate over the draft constitutional language, the following colloquy occurred:

Mr. Johnson. But this amendment does not go far enough. I suppose the framers of the amendment thought it was necessary to provide for such an exigency. I do not see but that any one of these gentlemen may be elected President or Vice President of the United States, and why did you omit to exclude them? I do not understand them to be excluded from the privilege of holding the two highest offices in the gift of the nation. No man is to be a Senator or Representative or an elector for President or Vice President–

39 Cong. Globe 2899 (1866) (emphasis added).

Here we have a U.S. senator suggesting that the disability imposed by section 3 would not exclude anyone from the “privilege of holding the two highest offices” in the land, even though it on its face applies to “any office, civil or military, under the United States.” Admittedly, its just one man’s opinion, but to my knowledge it is closer than anyone else (pre-Tillman) has ever come to expressly endorsing the Tillman/Blackman view of “office under the United States.”

Naturally a fierce debate ensued:

Mr. Morrill. Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.”

Mr. Johnson. Perhaps I am wrong as to the exclusion from the Presidency; no doubt I am; but I was misled by noticing the specific exclusion in the case of Senators and Representatives.

39 Cong. Globe 2899 (1866).

Ok, “oops, I was wrong” might not qualify as a fierce debate, but it is as much of a debate as you will find anywhere on this issue between 1787 and 2008 or so. No doubt if the 39th Congress had any doubt that the language flagged by Senator Johnson was ambiguous, it would have been clarified. After all, there is no chance that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to prevent former rebels from serving as presidential electors but not as the president. Of course, the same can be said of the framers of the Constitution. Clearly it could not have been intended that a president be impeached, removed from office, and disqualified from serving in any federal office other than the presidency. Similarly, it could not have been intended that presidents be able to receive foreign emoluments or titles of nobility.

The question of whether the president or vice-president is an “officer of the United States” within the meaning of section 3 is somewhat closer. As was pointed out during the same Senate debate, section 3’s language regarding the individuals whose violation of oath triggers the disability tracks the Constitution’s Oath Clause in Article VI, which requires that “all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”

There is a plausible structural argument that the term “officer of the United States” as used in Article II refers to individuals appointed and commissioned by the president, which would exclude the vice president and the president himself. Whether or not this is correct, it does not follow that the phrase used elsewhere in the Constitution is necessarily so limited. For example, while it is true that the president’s oath is separately provided for in Article II, the vice president’s is not; therefore, interpreting Article VI’s reference to “executive . . . Officers . . . of the United States” as excluding the president and vice president would mean the nowhere in the Constitution is the vice president’s oath provided for, a result that Tillman finds a good deal more plausible that do I. And while Tillman’s view of the Oath Clause has some support from a 1974 OLC memorandum written (or at least signed) by Assistant Attorney General Antonin Scalia, as I explain here that memo’s reasoning leaves much to be desired.

It also seems unlikely that the framers of section 3 would have deliberately omitted the president and vice president from the list of officials prohibited from engaging in insurrection and rebellion, although this conclusion seems more reasonable if one assumes their focus was entirely on the immediate past rebellion rather than potential future ones. In short, the argument that the president is not an “officer of the United States” within the meaning of section 3 seems to me to be quite weak, but not as weak as the claim that he holds no “office under the United States” under section 3 or the Disqualification Clause.

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Scalia, Trump, Tillman and the Foreign Emoluments Clause

Apropos of the debate whether the president holds “any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States]” within the meaning of the Foreign Emoluments Clause (art. I, § 9, cl. 8), reference has been made to a December 1974 memorandum written by Antonin Scalia, then the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. See Memorandum to the Honorable Kenneth A. Lazarus, Assoc. Counsel to the President, re: “Applicability of 3 C.F.R. Part 100 to the President and Vice President” (Dec. 19. 1974). Professors Seth Barrett Tillman and Josh Blackman have suggested that this memorandum is relevant to the debate, presumably in providing support for Tillman’s position that the president is not covered by the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Indeed, Tillman here cites the 1974 memorandum as contrary authority to a subsequent OLC opinion that expressly acknowledges that the Clause applies to the president.

For those unfamiliar with the background, Professor Tillman has long maintained that the president (and vice president) do not hold (1) “any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States” within the meaning of the Disqualification Clause (art. I, § 3, cl. 7); (2) “any Office under the United States” within the meaning of the Incompatibility Clause (art. I, § 6, cl. 2); (3) “an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States” within the meaning of the Elector Incompatibility Clause (art. II, § 1, cl. 2); and, of course, (4) “any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States]” within the meaning of the aforementioned Foreign Emoluments Clause.

It is fair to say that these claims were greeted with a large degree of skepticism by this blog. See, e.g., here (Disqualification Clause); here (Incompatibility Clause); and here (Foreign Emoluments Clause). At the time, however, the stakes were low with regard to a debate of primarily academic interest.

The stakes are higher now. The president-elect has received some criticism for refusing to divest himself of a large portfolio of international business interests. Among other things, this situation is said to create a high probability or virtual certainty (depending on whom you ask) that Mr. Trump will be in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause once he assumes the presidency. This thesis, of course, assumes the Clause applies to the president, and therefore it becomes a matter of some importance to know whether there is anything to Professor Tillman’s position.

Continue reading “Scalia, Trump, Tillman and the Foreign Emoluments Clause”

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Not So Fast, Speaker Winfrey

Is it a “fact” that non-members of the House are constitutionally eligible to serve as Speaker? The keepers of congressional knowledge and precedent (i.e., the Parliamentarians, the House historian, and other recognized experts on this sort of thing) would tell you, with perhaps an unwarranted degree of confidence, that the answer to this question is “yes.”

The basis of this answer seems to be the following: (1) the Constitution says only that the “House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers,” but does not specify any qualifications for these positions; (2) it is well accepted that the House’s “other Officers” (e.g., Clerk, Sergeant at Arms and Chaplain) need not be, and indeed never are, members; (3) although the House has always elected a member as Speaker, an occasional vote for a non-member candidate has been cast without being ruled out of order; and (4) various congressional publications say in passing that a non-member could serve as Speaker. The last point, of course, is a somewhat circular reason as it merely reflects the written assertion by some of the congressional experts already noted.

Personally, I have not questioned this received wisdom, but I haven’t thought much about it either. Now, however, with the House speakership up for grabs, some people are discussing, with more or less seriousness, whether the House could look outside its membership for a candidate. Suggestions have included Newt Gingrich, Arthur Brooks and Oprah.

Some lawyers and scholars argue that allowing a non-member to be eligible for the speakership would violate separation of powers principles by, for example, raising the possibility that the President or Vice-President could simultaneously serve as Speaker.  Professor Schaub also argues that a non-member Speaker would conflict with the constitutional text, particularly the fact that “the Constitution vests its specified legislative powers in Congress, composed of a Senate and a House, each in turn composed of members, elected by the people.” Therefore, she argues, “[l]egislative powers cannot be lodged in the hands of a non-legislative person.”

These arguments are not without force, but it seems to me that they largely go to why the House should not, rather than cannot, elect a non-member as Speaker. Schaub may be right that “it simply never occurred to [the Framers] that someone would take it into his head to contend that the Speaker of the House could be an individual who was not a fellow legislator.” But Professor Tillman is right that the mere fact that the Framers and everyone else expected the Speaker to be a member is not enough to prove that there is a constitutional prohibition on electing a non-member to that position.

This is particularly true when you consider that the Constitution expressly leaves the choice of Speaker up to the House. The Framers may have very well assumed that the House would never consider a non-member as Speaker except in extraordinary circumstances; it doesn’t follow that they saw the necessity to preclude the House from choosing a non-member under any circumstances.

A strong argument against the constitutional eligibility of non-members would depend on showing that the meaning of the word “Speaker” as used in the Constitution was limited to members of a legislative body. As Professor Rappaport notes, it would be a necessary, but not sufficient, component of this argument to show that the speakers of the British House of Commons and state/colonial legislatures were invariably members of the body.

What about the semantic content of the word “speaker” at the time of the framing? Johnson’s Dictionary gives one meaning of “speaker” as “the prolocutor of the commons,” which is very helpful unless, like me, you have no idea what “prolocutor” means. Fortunately, it defines “prolocutor” as “the foreman; the speaker of a convocation.” And it defines “foreman” as “the first or chief person.” So one might argue that the “speaker” of a legislative body is the first or chief person of that body, and therefore necessarily a member (as the foreman of a jury is necessarily a member). Not a terrible argument, but hardly a slam dunk either.

In short, the question of whether a non-member can be Speaker remains an open constitutional question (the House never having had occasion to address it in a serious way) and the correct answer is less than obvious, at least to me.

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Professor Seth Barrett Tillman: Hillary Can Run from Jail

(see update below) More precisely, Tillman argues here that any attempt to disqualify former Secretary Clinton from the presidency based on conviction of a crime, including 18 U.S.C. § 2701 (which provides that anyone convicted “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States”), would be unconstitutional. FWIW, I think he is right.

Now if Clinton were to be elected to the presidency while actually serving time in prison, a different set of issues would be presented. But I think we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

(Clarification: Tillman does not believe that section 2701’s disqualification language is unconstitutional, but he believes it would be unconstitutional if it were intended to apply to the presidency and other elected positions. In part for this reason, he would interpret the “office under the United States” language as not applying to elected positions).

Update: former Attorney General Mukasey, to whom Tillman was in part responding, has emailed Professor Eugene Volokh to acknowledge “on reflection, … Professor Tillman’s [analysis] is spot on, and mine was mistaken…. The disqualification provision in Section 2071 may be a measure of how seriously Congress took the violation in question, and how seriously we should take it, but that’s all it is.” 

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Quinnipiac Law Review Symposium on the Disqualification Clause

A forthcoming issue of the Quinnipiac Law Review features four articles responding to Benjamin Cassady’s “You’ve Got Your Crook, I’ve Got Mine”: Why the Disqualification Clause Doesn’t (Always) Disqualify, 32 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 209 (2014). The editors were kind enough to ask me to write the foreword, which you can find here. It’s extremely hilarious and entertaining. (Not really).

The articles by Peter Charles Hoffer, Brian C. Kalt, Buckner F. Melton, Jr. and Seth Barrett Tillman are well worth reading.

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In Case You Haven’t Had Enough of the Disqualification Clause Already

Professor Brian C. Kalt has posted this response to Benjamin Cassady’s article on the Impeachment and Disqualfication Clauses. (Hat tip- Seth Barrett Tillman. Apparently there is a whole symposium on this topic, and more articles will be forthcoming). I had to smile when I read Professor Kalt’s opening paragraphs:

Benjamin Cassady has put great effort into an arcane subject: When someone is impeached and convicted, and disqualified from any “office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States,” can that person be elected to Congress? I am one of a group of people who would discuss subjects like these endlessly, but for the fact that members of our group can be hard to find. As such, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity both to read Mr. Cassady’s article (referred to below as Your Crook) and to write this response.

This response will disagree with some things in Your Crook, and the discussion may get a bit animated. But this is the excited disagreement of a kindred spirit, not of a harsh critic. When football fans shout at each other about who was the greatest running back in NFL history, it is because they love football, and because they have more fun probing their disagreements than they would cataloguing their much-more-voluminous common ground. So too with the Disqualification Clause of the Constitution. I agree with Your Crook that disqualification does not apply to election to the House or Senate, and I agree that voters should have as free a hand as the Constitution will allow to elect representatives and senators that others in Congress might find scurrilous.

For what its worth, I pretty much agree with everything that Kalt has to say with regard to the application of the Disqualification Clause to the House and Senate. His claim that Barry Sanders is the greatest running back of all time, on the other hand . . .

 

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Is the Presidency an Office “Under” the United States?

Applying Benjamin Cassady’s “electoral pardon” principle might suggest that the Disqualification Clause is inapplicable to the presidency (and vice-presidency). After all, if voters are allowed to disregard a candidate’s prior impeachment (or expulsion) and elect “their crook” to Congress, why shouldn’t the same hold true for a candidate for president? Professor Tillman maintains that the Disqualification Clause doesn’t apply to any elected offices, whether in Congress or the executive branch, thus consistently preserving the “electoral pardon” principle. Cassady, on the other hand, contends that the Framers did not take the principle that far:

[I]t should be noted that the Presidency was a uniquely American institution, substituting an elected and impeachable chief executive for an English monarch who was legally unreachable because he was presumed incapable of wrongdoing. As a result, the Wilkensian lessons of popular sovereignty and electoral pardon did not develop in the context of the executive branch, and it is sensible that the Framers would settle on a different default rule (impeachment and disqualification) for the elected President than the rule (expulsion and re-election) applied traditionally to the people’s legislators. Put another way, disqualifying an elected President for official wrongdoing couldn’t encroach on the people’s traditional right to pardon and re-elect a chief executive, because no such right existed in English history.

Cassady, 32 Quinnipiac L. Rev. at 276 n. 332.

Frankly, this explanation strikes me as rather circular. As indicated in my last post, however, I don’t find the “electoral pardon” principle all that persuasive in explaining the Disqualification Clause in the first place, and it seems to me that there is a stronger policy reason for disqualifying candidates for the presidency than for other offices, elected or appointed. But, as I am sure Professor Tillman would be quick to remind me, my policy intuitions are not constitutional law.

The precise question is whether the president holds an “Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States” as that phrase is used in the Disqualification Clause. Cassady’s article sheds some light on the origin of this language. He provides examples in English statutory law that referred to some variant of an “Office of honor, Trust or Profit,” where it almost always referred to offices conferred by the Crown. Id. at 278-80. As such, the offices were often identified as being “under” the Crown.

Early state constitutions also used terminology like “offices of honor, trust or profit” to refer generally to positions in the executive and judicial branches. See id. at 280-81 (“The overwhelming majority of examples from state constitutions distinguishes sharply between those who hold offices of honor, trust, or profit and members of the legislature”) & n. 355. Sometimes these offices were identified as being “under this state,” “under this commonwealth,” or “under the government.” See, e.g., Ga. Const. of 1777, art. XI (“No person bearing any post of profit under this State . . . shall be elected as a representative.”).

Continue reading “Is the Presidency an Office “Under” the United States?”

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House of Cads: Legislators and the Disqualification Clause

So I have now read Benjamin Cassady’s “You’ve Got Your Crook, I’ve Got Mine,” 32 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 209 (2014), to which Professor Tillman’s article responds. Cassady makes the case that the Constitution’s Impeachment and Disqualification Clauses do not apply to federal legislators. Much of the article is devoted to explaining why this result makes sense as a policy matter: basically that a crooked legislator is not as dangerous as a crooked judge or executive official and that voters should be able to “pardon” a crooked legislator by returning her to office with full knowledge of her misdeeds.

Cassady discusses at some length the famous case of John Wilkes, a radical and controversial member of Parliament who was expelled multiple times by the House of Commons for libelous comments but continually re-elected by his constituents. He argues that the fall-out from this case ultimately led to the recognition of an “electoral pardon” principle in the United States, pursuant to which it is improper for a legislator to be expelled (or not seated) based on conduct known to her constituents at the time they elect her.

I think Cassady is correct in his interpretation of the Impeachment and Disqualification Clauses. He may or may not be right that the “electoral pardon” principle explains why the Constitution treats legislators differently in this regard than executive or judicial officers. I am not sure myself that this distinction, particularly with regard to disqualification, makes that much sense from a policy standpoint. One might argue that there is no more reason to disqualify an impeached official from a future appointment to an executive or judicial office than from a future election to a congressional seat. After all, if the “voters” (who, in the case of senators, would originally have been the members of the state legislature) can “pardon” a candidate for a congressional seat, why shouldn’t the president and the Senate be permitted to “pardon” a nominee to an executive or judicial office?

Continue reading “House of Cads: Legislators and the Disqualification Clause”

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Tillman on the Disqualification Clause

Professor Seth Barrett Tillman has posted this draft article on the Disqualification Clause of Article I, § 3, cl. 7, which provides that “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.” Long story short, Professor Tillman argues that an “Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States” extends exclusively to statutory or appointed offices and excludes elected positions such as President, Vice-President, Senator and Representative. Thus, under his theory if a president, vice-president or a civil officer of the United States is impeached, removed from office and disqualified, that individual remains eligible to serve in any of the aforementioned elected positions. Tillman cites a number of pieces of evidence which he believes support this conclusion (some of which we have discussed in prior posts), and he argues that it is consistent with the “democracy canon” that, all other things being equal, the people should be entitled to vote for whomever they please to represent them.

This particular issue may be of limited practical importance, unless you are planning to work on the Porteous 2016 campaign, but it is of some interest with respect to the methodology of constitutional interpretation as well as other constitutional provisions that apply to “officers of” or “offices under” the United States. Related discussions may be found here (“May the President Accept a Foreign Title of Nobility?”), here (“Tillman’s Puzzles for Amar (or Who You Callin ‘Atextual’?)”) and here (“Six Answers for Six Puzzles”).

 

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Six Answers for Six Puzzles

Over at The Originalism Blog, Professor Michael Ramsey has given his answers to Professor Seth Barrett Tillman’s “Six Puzzles” on the Constitution’s various uses of the terms “officers” and “offices.” FWIW, I tend to agree with all of Ramsey’s answers with one possible exception.

That relates to the first puzzle, which involves the Succession Clause’s provision that “Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President . . . .” The question is whether the term “Officer” encompasses legislative officers (if the answer is no, then it was unconstitutional for Congress to place the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate in the line of succession).

Ramsey and Tillman believe that because the Succession Clause uses the broad term “Officer,” rather than a possibly narrower formulation such as “Officer of the United States” or “Officer under the United States,” as the Constitution does elsewhere, legislative officers must be covered. Given the Constitution’s varied usages of the terms “officer” and “office,” I find the term ambiguous. Structural and other evidence casts doubt on whether legislative officers were meant to be included. For example, in Article VI the Oath Clause applies to “Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States.” I find it difficult to believe that the Framers deliberately decided to exclude non-member legislative officers from being bound by oath, yet decided to include them in the Succession Clause. It seems more likely that the term “Officers” standing alone was understood to include either executive officers only, or both executive and judicial officers, but that legislative officers were not understood to be “Officers” in the same sense, or were simply considered so unimportant as to be not worth mentioning.