The Lawfare Podcast: Roger Parloff Talks Madison Cawthorn, Donald Trump, and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment

Jen Patja, Benjamin Wittes, Roger Parloff
Monday, June 13, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been following in a way that just about nobody else has the litigation to keep people off ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment—the part of the amendment that says that if you engaged in an insurrection, you're excluded from public office. It was the subject of a recent major Fourth Circuit opinion, and the state of Section 3 litigation is also the subject of a significant new Roger Parloff piece on Lawfare entitled, “After the Cawthorn Ruling, Can Trump Be Saved From Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?

Roger joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the piece. What are the major legal arguments that people involved in Jan. 6 are using to keep themselves on the ballots? How strong are the factual cases against different gubernatorial and congressional actors? And why is Donald Trump uniquely vulnerable to a challenge on this basis?


Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Roger Parloff is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. For 12 years, he was the main legal correspondent at Fortune Magazine. His work has also been published in ProPublica, The New York Times, New York, NewYorker.com, Yahoo Finance, Air Mail, IEEE Spectrum, Inside, Legal Affairs, Brill’s Content, and others. An attorney who no longer practices, he is the author of "Triple Jeopardy," a book about an Arizona death penalty case. He is a senior editor at Lawfare.
}

Subscribe to Lawfare