Noah Feldman, Columnist

Alas, Trump Is Still Eligible to Run for Office

The 14th Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists isn’t going to save us from his candidacy.

August 20, 2023 at 12:00 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Unfit, but not ineligible.
Photographer: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

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A law review article claiming that Donald Trump is automatically disqualified from holding elected office is getting attention in large part because it was written by two conservative, originalist law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen. Baude and Paulsen argue that Trump should be excluded from ballots for giving aid to an “insurrection or rebellion” in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

There are two problems with the notion that Trump can and should be kept off the ballot by state election authorities.