Gödel's Loophole

At the time, he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was good friends with Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern.

[2][3] When the date of the examination came some months later, Gödel was being driven to the courthouse in Trenton, New Jersey, by Morgenstern and Einstein, who were to be his witnesses.

In the course of the examination, Forman asked Gödel what the government of Austria was, to which he replied: "It was a republic, but the constitution was such that it finally was changed into a dictatorship."

In a 2012 paper, "Gödel's Loophole", F. E. Guerra-Pujol speculates that the problem involves Article V, which describes the process by which the Constitution can be amended.

[1][2] Other writers have speculated that Gödel may have had other aspects of the Constitution in mind as well, including the abuse of gerrymandering, prorogation of Congress, the Electoral College, and the presidential pardon.

Versions of the story can also be found in Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (1997) By John W. Dawson; E: His Life, His Thought and His Influence on Our Culture (2006), edited by Donald Goldsmith and Marcia Bartusiak; Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (2006) by Rebecca Goldstein; Godel: A Life Of Logic, The Mind, And Mathematics (2009) by Casti, John L. and DePauli, Werner; Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Limits of Amendment Powers (2017) by Yaniv Roznai; and When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought (2018) by Jim Holt; among other books.