The Public Debt Clause of the 14th Amendment states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law...shall not be questioned.” Recent debates—including the most recent standoff between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the debt ceiling—have raised the question as whether and how this clause can be invoked to overcome the crisis. In today’s episode, we drill down on why the public debt clause was written, how it's been interpreted by the Supreme Court, and how things might play out today if it were invoked by President Biden. Guests Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, and law professor Gerard Magliocca, author of American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment, discuss this often-overlooked section of the 14th Amendment written at the end of the Civil War.
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Today’s show was produced by Lana Ulrich, Bill Pollock, and Julia Redpath. It was engineered by Kevin Kilbourne. Research was provided by Emily Campbell, Sophia Gardell, Liam Kerr, Sam Desai, and Lana Ulrich.
Participants
Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. He is the author of more than a dozen books. His work The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010) was winner of the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer Prize for History, and The Lincoln Prize. His latest book is The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (2019).
Gerard Magliocca is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He is the author of four books, including American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment (2013), and more recently, Washington's Heir: The Life of Justice Bushrod Washington (2022).
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Perry v. United States (1935)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 22, 1933 Fireside Chat 4: On Economic Progress
- Eric Foner, “The Constitution has a 155-year old Answer To The Debt Ceiling,” The New York Times, Jan. 23, 2023
- Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (2013)
- Gerard Magliocca, American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment (2013)
- Interview with Gerard Magliocca, “Could the 14th Amendment end debt ceiling negotiations?” The Washington Post, (2011)
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
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