What the Constitution really says about removal from office

Is a post-presidential impeachment trial valid? Can the Senate still bar Trump from future office?

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

How much does the text of the written Constitution matter, especially, at the level of individual words and even punctuation marks?

There are certainly limits to what one can glean from the punctuation of 18th-century English texts, replete as they are with what the lexicographer Eric Partridge referred to as "ornamental" semicolons and slapdash broken appositives. As some legal wags pointed out years ago, if one were to interpret the presidential eligibility clause in Article II ("No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President") according to the norms of English usage, with the second comma establishing that "at the time" restricts both of the previous clauses, no one who was not alive during the ratification would be allowed to hold the office. Entertaining as it might be, the theory that we have had no legitimate presidents since Zachary Taylor, whose two immediate predecessors were also pretenders, should probably be dismissed out of hand.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.