A. Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment and
Principles of Constitutional Interpretation
¶25 The end of the Civil War brought what one author has termed a “second
founding” of the United States of America. See Eric Foner, The Second Founding:
How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (2019). Reconstruction
ushered in the Fourteenth Amendment, which includes Section Three, a provision
addressing what to do with those individuals who held positions of political
power before the war, fought on the side of the Confederacy, and then sought to
return to those positions. See National Archives, 14th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-
documents/14th-amendment#:~:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20June%
2013,Rights%20to%20formerly%20enslaved%20people [
https://perma.cc/5EZU-
ABV3] (explaining that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on
June 13, 1866, and officially ratified on July 9, 1868); see also Gerard N. Magliocca,
Amnesty and Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, 36 Const. Comment. 87,
91–92 (2021).
¶26 Section Three provides:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector
of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military,
under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously
taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United
States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or
judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United
States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the
same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress
may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 3.
¶27 In interpreting a constitutional provision, our goal is to prevent the evasion
of the provision’s legitimate operation and to effectuate the drafters’ intent.
People v. Smith, 2023 CO 40, ¶ 20, 531 P.3d 1051, 1055. To do so, we begin with...
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