UNLIKE his predecessor, Donald Trump did not teach constitutional law before becoming president. Yet owing to some of his positions on individual rights, Mr Trump’s ascension to the presidency promises new opportunities for Americans to become more familiar with their founding document. A lawsuit filed on January 23rd in a federal district court in New York may add a rather obscure constitutional provision to the layman’s legal vocabulary: the foreign emoluments clause.
Ethics lawyers who once worked for George W. Bush and Barack Obama and a trio of prominent legal scholars, together with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit group, claim that Mr Trump’s “vast, complicated and secret” business interests create “countless conflicts of interest” and “unprecedented influence by foreign governments” in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the constitution. That clause says that no federal official may “accept any present, emolument, office or title” from a foreign entity “without the consent of Congress”. With foreign officials renting rooms in Mr Trump’s hotels, leasing property at Trump Tower in...Continue reading
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