On this special "Connect the Dots" episode, co-hosts Peter Shane and Dale Russakoff discuss how Season 2 episodes on "Disqualifying an Insurrectionist President," "The Electoral Count Act and the Rule of Law," and "The Electoral College" affected their reactions to the Supreme Court argument on the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court to exclude Donald Trump from a primary ballot.

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In a bonus episode, Peter and Dale explore with two constitutional scholars whether the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 Disqualification Clause bars Donald J. Trump from again serving as president. Gerard Magliocca, whose 2020 academic research helped to spark interest in the question, and Garrett Epps, author of Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America, discuss whether the Disqualification Clause covers presidents, whether Donald Trump’s documented actions amount to “insurrection,” and whether Congress needs to enact enabling legislation before the Disqualification Clause becomes operative. They survey the Supreme Court’s options in reviewing the Colorado Supreme Court decision barring Trump from a presidential primary ballot in that state–and the legal and political implications of the different possibilities.

This last regular episode of the season asks whether American democracy is well-served by the institution of the presidency in its current form. Is there an irreconcilable tension between the president as the nation’s foremost mobilizer of party politics and the president as a faithful, steady, law-bound manager of government? Are there aspects of our system for choosing presidents that expand the prospects for effective democracy, or does the system actually increase the risk of democratic failure? Do popular frustrations with our constitutional separation of powers help lay the groundwork for authoritarianism?

Peter and Dale explore these fundamental issues with Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek, one of the nation’s foremost presidential scholars, and Bertrall Ross, the Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Virginia.