Two conservative law professors conclude in a University of Pennsylvania Law Review article that former President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president again.
University of Chicago professor William Baude and University of St. Thomas professor Michael Paulsen studied Trump's eligibility to run for president for more than a year, according to The New York Times. They detailed their findings in an article forthcoming in Volume 172 of the Penn Law Review. Both professors are active members of The Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that advocates for an originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution.
Paulsen and Baude declined a request from The Daily Pennsylvanian for comment, citing a desire to let the article “speak for itself.” Editor-in-Chief of the Penn Law Review Ecclesiaste Desir did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
The article claims that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids participants in rebellion or insurrection from holding government office, which consequently bars Trump from becoming president again. The only exception to this rule, according to the article, is if two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to remove this limitation.
“Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6,” Baude said to the Times.
Trump has been indicted on multiple charges in separate cases — most recently, he was indicted on Aug. 1 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“The case for disqualification is strong,” Baude and Paulsen wrote in the article. “There is abundant evidence that Trump deliberately set out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election result.”
The former president is facing 91 criminal charges across four separate cases, according to CNN. On Aug. 24, Trump voluntarily surrendered at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on charges regarding his attempts to reverse Georgia’s electoral results in 2020. His mug shot was subsequently released, making him the first and only president in United States history to have a mug shot.
“I never heard the words ‘mug shot’ — they didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance,” Trump said to conservative media outlet Newsmax about his experience.
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