I took advantage of yesterday’s tropical cyclone (see my previous post) to finish reading some of the items on my end-of-summer reading list, including a 126-page law review article on “The Sweep and Force of Section Three” co-authored by my conlaw colleagues William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen.

The tweet version of their paper is that the disqualification clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is a “self-executing” provision, so that former president Trump — and presumably his past and present allies as well — is/are automatically prohibited from holding any federal office. Alas, now that I have read their forthcoming article in full for myself, I can safely say that most of their legal, historical, and textual claims are not only wrong — full of gaping logical holes and self-refuting internal contradictions — I can also confirm how dangerous and ill-advised their “self-execution” argument is. It would mean, for example, that Trump’s slate of presidential electors (assuming he wins his party’s nomination next year) should refuse to cast their ballots for him even in those States where Trump is the victor. Crazy, right?

Given the massive amount of national media attention that Baude and Paulsen’s work is receiving (see here, for example), as a public service I have decided to write up a point-by-point critique/rebuttal of their paper, starting tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to check out my takedown of another pair of anti-Trump legal agitators, which I am reblogging below.