Public debt clause (14th Amendment)

The text

Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, begins: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

It was written after the Civil War, amid fears that Southern members returning to Congress might try to repudiate the Union’s war debts or push the federal government to take on Confederate ones. The same section forbids paying Confederate debts.

How the courts have read it

The Supreme Court has discussed the clause only rarely. In Perry v. United States in 1935, it said the phrase “public debt” should be read broadly, covering more than bonds alone. It has never ruled on how the clause interacts with the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling argument

During the standoffs of 2011 and 2023, some legal scholars argued that if Congress failed to raise the limit, the president could keep borrowing anyway. Their reasoning: defaulting on existing obligations would call the validity of the public debt into question, so the Constitution would override the statutory limit.

Others reply that the clause forbids repudiating debt, not failing to borrow more, and that the Constitution gives the power to borrow to Congress rather than the president. On that reading the Treasury could still prioritise debt payments without breaching the limit.

Why it has never been used

Every administration that faced the question declined to rely on it. Invoking the clause would invite immediate legal challenges, and investors might not treat newly issued securities of uncertain legality as equivalent to ordinary Treasuries. A tool meant to prevent a crisis could create one.

The clause remains in the background of every debt ceiling fight, alongside other untested ideas such as the trillion-dollar coin.