We The People

The Emoluments Clause in court

October 26, 2017

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Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, welcomes you to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.

Oral arguments were recently heard in the Southern District of New York about a novel case involving the President and the Constitution.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (or CREW) believes President Trump has violated the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution due to his failure to divest his business holdings in Trump hotels and other private enterprises. The Department of Justice on behalf of President Trump wants the district court to dismiss the case for various reasons, including CREW’s lack of standing to sue.

Josh Blackman is an Associate Professor of Law at the South Texas College of Law in Houston who specializes in constitutional law, the United States Supreme Court, and the intersection of law and technology. He filed an amicus brief in the CREW v. Trump lawsuit on behalf of another law professor, Seth Barrett Tillman.
 

Jed Shugerman is Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He filed an amicus brief in the CREW/Emoluments litigation against President Trump along with a team of historians.

 

Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, the only institution in America chartered by Congress “to disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.” He is also a professor at The George Washington University Law School, and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. 


Related Briefs


Additional Resources

Our Interactive Constitution is the leading digital resource about the debates and text behind the greatest vision of human freedom in history, the U.S. Constitution. Here, scholars from across the legal and philosophical spectrum interact with each other to explore the meaning of each provision of our founding document. 

Common Interpretation
The Foreign Emoluments Clause: Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 By Zephyr Teachout and Seth Barrett Tillman

Matters of Debate
The Foreign Emoluments Clause By Zephyr Teachout
The Foreign Emoluments Clause Reached Only Appointed Officers By Seth Barrett Tillman

Background ReportCrew V. Trump and the Debate Over The Emoluments Clauses


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