https://constitutionalcommentary.li...nd-section-three-of-the-fourteenth-amendment/
Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment[1]
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Until January 6, 2021, Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment was one of the vestigial portions of the Constitution.[2] Designed to exclude many former Confederate officials and soldiers from federal or state office, Section Three was quickly neutered by Congress.[3] In 1872, more than the required two-thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives passed an Amnesty Act removing disabilities from all of the former state officers covered by Section Three.[4] Then in 1898, comparable supermajorities in Congress removed the few remaining disabilities as a gesture of national unity during the Spanish-American War.[5] After that Section Three was almost completely forgotten, except for posthumous disability removals given to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the 1970s.[6]
