President-elect Donald Trump is poised to violate the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution, at least according to the chief ethics lawyer of the George W. Bush administration. The idea is that when foreign officials stay in a Trump International Hotel to ingratiate themselves with the president, they'll be giving him an emolument -- that is, a form of payment -- in violation of Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution. And The Washington Post recently reported that Trump's Washington hotel actively solicited diplomats with a reception that included a tour of a 6,300-square-foot suite that goes for $20,000 a night.

This suggestion prompts three questions, none of which I could have answered without research: What the heck is the foreign emoluments clause? Does it cover Trump's conduct? And if it does, who, if anyone, can bring a case in court to do anything about it?

The clause itself says that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." I teach constitutional law for a living and am the co-author of what my publishers assure me is the leading constitutional law casebook; let me tell you, I've never given the foreign emoluments clause more than a moment's thought before.

The framers didn't spend much time on it, either. They cribbed the language almost verbatim from Article VI of the Articles of Confederation, altering it only to add the exception for the consent of Congress and to leave out state offices, which the Articles covered.