This is CBS, I in the World. I'm John Bachelor. Before the Supreme Court, Trump v. Anderson.

This is the story of Colorado, the Colorado Supreme Court deciding in the middle of December last year

citing section 3 of the 14th Amendment that Mr. Trump is ineligible to appear on

the ballot in the Republican primary March 5th in Colorado because the The concept of self-executing.

All this was presented to the court by two distinguished

representatives of both sides.

And the court, in Q and answer, educated me a deal about how the court moves in front of the

public as opposed to what we get from decisions.

The word which came up several times was in terms of precedentially, that is the court makes a profound distinction between decisions based on precedent, prior precedent, and decisions that are fresh.

And challenging precedent is a big watchword.

However, there was much more to the argument and I need help. So I welcome

Professor Richard Epstein, my colleague and friend, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,

teaches law at NYU and the University of Chicago.

Professor, a very good evening to you. I'm going to divide what I heard yesterday into

two parts. The first one was about the term, the concept of self-executing. The 14th Amendment

section 3 is itself executing. The second was the distinction made between two

words that look a lot alike. One is office, the other is officer. Let's begin with

self-executing. Why was this such a debate, especially between the

council for the for the Trump side saying that Colorado was out of bounds and the

council for the Colorado side was I'd have to say defensive about self-executing.

Good evening to you professor.

Yeah, hi well the problem about self-executing is a very old one in the law and it comes up in lots of context indeed in connection

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