pres eligibility clause

[Mark Tushnet]

I don't know the answers to Tom West's first two questions, but I've found it useful pedagogically to begin my Con Law courses by posing a hypothetical in which a majority of the people located in states with a majority of the votes in the Electoral College (that's somewhere are 12-14) think that Madeleine Albright (born in what was then Czechoslovakia) is far more qualified to be president than any other candidate now on the scene.  I use this to raise questions about the value of constitutionalism in a setting where there's no room for creative interpretation of the Constitution to let a majority do what it wants to do.  (I then use the problem of William Saxbe's appointment as Attorney General to introduce the possibility of interpretation in a setting where the language ― the Emoluments Clause ― points pretty clearly against the appointment, while practice, though not of very long-standing, and policy point pretty clearly in its favor.)

Mark Tushnet
Georgetown University Law Center
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tushnet at law.georgetown.edu