Narrow But Deep: The McCulloch Principle, Collective-Action Theory, and Section Three Enforcement

Authors

Neil S. Siegel, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Journal Title

Constitutional Commentary

ISSN

2639-7277

Abstract

In Trump v. Anderson, 144 S. Ct. 662 (2024), the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in excluding President Donald J. Trump from the Republican Party's primary ballot in the state.  The Court reasoned that the Constitution makes Congress, not the states, solely responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Scholars of Section 3 have demonstrated that Section 3 is self-executing, so the Court's rationale lacks a sound basis in the original or contemporary meaning of the text of the Civil War Amendments, the original intent of their drafters, or the Court's own precedent interpreting them.  This Essay nonetheless argues that the Court's judgment is justifiable on structural grounds.  As envisioned in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819), the Constitution's federal structure bars states from enforcing Section 3 against candidates for President or Vice-President, at least if they enjoy substantial support within their own political party.  More than two centuries ago, McCullocharticulated a structural principle that disables states from causing multistate collective-action problems by interfering with a function of the national governing process.  That structural, collective-action principle extends in parallel fashion to actions by states that interfere excessively with a function of the national political process.  The Presidency, along with the Vice-Presidency, is a uniquely national office because all states, and all voters in states, play a role in determining who will run for that office and ultimately occupy it.   Just as "a part" may not tax "the whole" because the whole is not represented in the part, so a part may not make presidential eligibility decisions that significantly undermine the capacity of the whole to determine who will represent it in the White House.  Legal scholars can justly criticize the Court's reasoning in Trump v. Anderson, but not the result that it reached.

First Page

219

Last Page

254

Num Pages

36

Volume Number

39

Issue Number

2

Publisher

University of Minnesota Law School

Rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Notes

This article was published online in December 2025, but as part of Volume 39 with the publication year of 2024.

Recommended Citation

Neil S. Siegel, Narrow But Deep: The McCulloch Principle, Collective-Action Theory, and Section Three Enforcement, 39 Const. Comment. 219 (2024).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/2334

File Type

PDF