Publication Date
6-1-2023
Abstract
This country has recently witnessed firsthand that in the consent of the governed, upon which the legitimacy of democratic government stands, also resides democracy’s innate vulnerability—its dependence on a broad fidelity of its citizens to the institutions and norms by which they agreed to be governed. Battered, though not broken, what has protected American democracy through challenges, present and past, were what are often referred to as guardrails of democracy. Although long-term efforts to rectify the nation’s economic dislocations and entrenched power, and to assimilate its continuing demographic changes, are needed to achieve stronger democratic stability, it is to democracy’s guardrails that attention must be given in the near term, if those efforts are to continue unimpeded. This Article examines, with respect to the Executive Branch, one of several guardrails that the House’s January 6th Committee specifically recommended for attention in its January 2023 final report: the Fourteenth Amendment’s Disqualification Clause. That provision precludes persons who have engaged in certain forms of seditious conduct from holding Executive Branch office. Despite some significant lapses, there can be no doubt that often, at critical moments in 2020 and 2021, individual qualities of official goodwill and character stood strong against assaults on the nation's democracy. The Disqualification Clause’s purpose is assuring such qualities in official office.
First Page
885
Recommended Citation
Alan B. Sternstein, Revitalizing Executive Branch Disqualification: Heeding an Imperfectly Learned Watergate Lesson, 100 Denv. L. Rev. 885 (2023).