says, crediting Luke for editing out his father’s tendencies to lapse into “professoritis,” and making the ideas accessible. Paulsen has been recognized for his contributions at St. Thomas, winning the Dean’s Awards for Scholarship (2011, 2019 and 2024) and Teaching (2015). University President Robert Vischer said, “Mike Paulsen is the best type of scholar because he makes you think hard about your own assumptions when you engage his arguments. He’s a model of intellectual rigor and spirited advocacy for our students, and a great gift to the St. Thomas community.” That intellectual rigor has included a willingness to face criticism. In fact, he originally connected with his future co-author, Will Baude, after the younger scholar published an attack on one of Paulsen’s signature articles soon after graduating from Yale Law School. Despite that public disagreement, the two started an email correspondence. When they finally
met at a conference, years later, Baude said, Paulsen greeted him with a hug. Now a law professor at the University of Chicago, Baude won the Bator Award in 2017 and is one of the most-cited legal scholars of his generation. “We became fast friends,” Paulsen said. “We apply very similar methodology, but sometimes disagree as to results, and argue back and forth, cheerfully, about the things we disagree on. We very much respect each other.”
The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in 1868, soon after the Civil War. Section Three aimed to block former Confederate leaders from holding government offices during Reconstruction, barring
anyone who had previously taken an oath to support the
Constitution but had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution, or “given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof.” After Reconstruction ended, however, Section Three was mostly forgotten. “What initially attracted me,” Paulsen said, was the question: “Does an 1868 provision of the Constitution that everybody has left for dead still have Constitutional force?” He started poking around and eventually approached Baude about writing “a short article.” Baude agreed. “It seemed like a part of the Constitution that a lot of people hadn’t paid attention to, and suddenly, it was in the public eye, and it needed some cold, sober analysis.”
“A Short Article”
After the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election, some commentators suggested that President Donald Trump’s actions constituted engaging in an insurrection, which under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualified him and others from seeking future office.
Paulsen, along with T.J. Bowman ‘24 J.D. (far left) and Law Librarian Niki Catlin who provided research support, received the law school’s Mission Award for Scholarly Engagement and Societal Reform in April 2024 for “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” Mike Petschel ’24 J.D. (far right) nominated them for the award.
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