The legal turmoil surrounding former President Donald Trump has raised questions about what qualifies (and disqualifies) someone to run for President of the United States. Given that the Constitution only spells out broad guidelines, the U.S. Supreme Court is now poised to decide several significant issues.
Constitutional Requirements for US Presidents
Under the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, a presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the United States, a resident for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older. The age requirement was intended to ensure that candidates possessed the maturity required for the country’s highest office. As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story explained: “Considering the nature of the duties, the extent of the information, and the solid wisdom and experience required in the executive department, no one can reasonably doubt the propriety of some qualification of age.”
The Framers included a citizenship requirement to ensure that the President’s loyalties lie exclusively with the United States, which was a significant concern in the wake of the Revolutionary War. Meanwhile, the residency requirement was designed to give citizens a “full opportunity to know [the candidate’s] character and merits, and that he may have mingled in the duties, and felt the interests, and understood the principles, and nourished the attachments, belonging to every citizen in a republican government,” as described by Justice Story.
While the above requirements are largely known, a relatively obscure provision recently took center stage in an attempt to prevent Trump from running for president. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment 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 officer 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.
The Insurrection Clause was added to the Constitution following the Civil War as means to prevent former confederates from holding elected office. It had never been used until the Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled that it barred President Trump from appearing on the Colorado primary ballot.
By a vote of 4-3, a divided court held that Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and as an officer of the U.S. who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, he is disqualified from holding office again under Section 3.
“President Trump asks us to hold that Section 3 disqualifies every oathbreaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oathbreakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land,” the majority wrote. “Both results are inconsistent with the plain language and history of Section 3.”
Questions Before the Supreme Court
While the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is ineligible, he is likely to appeal. Should it agree to hear the case, the Supreme Court will determine President Trump’s eligibility for office.
The key questions before the Court will be whether the events of January 6 rose to the level of an “insurrection,” as well as whether Trump “engaged” in that insurrection or gave it “aid and comfort” as set forth in Section 3. Another issue before the Court may be whether the Insurrection Clause applies to the President of the United States. According to some legal scholars, the term “officer of the United States” refers to government appointees and not the county’s highest office. .
There is also the possibility that the justices could sidestep the dispute altogether. Under the political question doctrine, courts are not the proper venue for deciding largely political issues. As the Supreme Court explained in Nixon v. United States, 506 U. S. 224 (1993), the political question doctrine bars judicial review of a controversy that “involves a political question … where there is ‘a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it.’”
Of course, President Trump’s eligibility under Section 3 is not the only weighty issue the Court may have to decide. While the Court denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request for the justices to quickly resolve questions over whether the former President is immune from criminal charges arising from his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the dispute may ultimately end up before the Court.
Should the justices take up both matters, 2024 is poised to be another banner year for the U.S. Supreme Court.