Aristotle, the second greatest logician of all time, was also an expert on political constitutions. Can the same be said for the greatest logician of all time, Kurt Gödel? Gödel had a genius for detecting the paradoxical in unexpected places. He looked into the axioms of mathematics and saw incompleteness. He looked into the equations of general relativity and saw circular time. And he looked into the Constitution of the United States and saw a logical loophole that could allow a dictator to take power. Or did he?

But Gödel's research into time travel was interrupted by his citizenship hearing, scheduled for December 5 in Trenton. His character witnesses were to be his close friends Albert Einstein and game theory co-inventor Oskar Morgenstern, who also served that day as his chauffeur. Being a fastidious man, Gödel decided to make a close study of American political institutions in preparation for the exam. On the eve of the hearing, he called Morgenstern in a state of agitation. He had found a logical inconsistency in the Constitution, he said. Morgenstern was amused by this, but he realized that Gödel was deadly serious. He urged him not to mention the matter to the judge, fearing it would jeopardize his citizenship bid.

On the short drive to Trenton the next day, Einstein and Morgenstern tried to distract Gödel with jokes. When they arrived at the court, the judge, Philip Forman, was impressed by Gödel's eminent witnesses, and he invited the trio into his chambers. After some small talk, he said to Gödel, "Up to now you have held German citizenship." No, Gödel corrected, Austrian. "Anyhow," continued the judge, "it was under an evil dictatorship...but fortunately that's not possible in America."

"On the contrary, I know how that can happen," cried Gödel, and he began to explain how the Constitution might permit such a thing to occur. The judge, however, indicated that he was not interested, and Einstein and Morgenstern succeeded in quieting the examinee down. A few months later, Gödel took his oath of citizenship. Writing to his mother back in Vienna, he commented that "one went home with the impression that American citizenship, in contrast to most others, really meant something."

A couple of other legal scholars I spoke to concurred with Tribe that Article V must have been what was vexing Gödel. But the mystery of whether he found something genuinely kinky in the Constitution remains a bit like the mystery of whether Fermat really had a "marvelous proof" of his last theorem. How I wish I had been the judge at that citizenship hearing. Imagine being presented with the opportunity to lean forward, look this overwrought genius in the eye, and say, "Surely you must be joking, Mr. Gödel."