Amarica's Constitution

California.  Meanwhile, the tariff case is about to come before the Supreme Court for oral argument.  So it’s timely indeed that Vik Amar joins us with expertise on both topics.  In fact, Vik has submitted an amicus brief in the tariff case. The “brothers in law” take us deep into the gerrymandering world, the major questions doctrine, and we also pause to reflect on the career of former Vice Pres...

Our 250th episode has us looking back 250 years, and looking ahead to the next year of commemoration of those 250 year anniversaries.  Sure enough, there is much gold to mine in those momentous events; much to inform us on matters of current import.  We recall and examine a Declaration that is 250 years old - no, not that one.  To top it off, we have a special guest that joins us to tie it all tog...

The President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen, joins us for a timely discussion of his new book, The Pursuit of Liberty. The relevance to today’s dilemmas is matched only by the fascination of the deep historical analysis and amazing characters the book unearths.  In the differences that separated Hamilton and Jefferson, Professor Rosen finds the genesis of a divide that...

As we continue to wade into the Supreme Court term, developments are taking place in several cases we are following. Professor Amar’s students are making constitutional news all over the place, it seems; several of them have converged on the tariff case once again, as well as now the unitary executive issues.  A new article made a splash, and it prompts us to harken back to an old one - a 1996 art...

Tarrifs may be Trump’s favorite word, but it remains to be seen if he has the authority he claims to employ them.  The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in November, and ahead of this, Professor Amar takes you inside the argument.  He offers the history and takes us through an originalist approach, a textual approach, a structural approach, a precedential approach, and presents the case as an...

Professor Amar visits cities that are in the constitutional news these days:  Portland, where the military pays an uninvited visit; Salt Lake City, where gunfire continues this year’s alarming litany of political assassination also seen in Minnesota and elsewhere.  Akhil’s epic trilogy, with Born Equal now taking its place as the second volume, speaks to how our history shows us the constitutional...

Born Equal is being read - by academics, pundits, historians, and citizens.  Reaction has begun to pour in, and discussion has begun.  In this episode, we bring you some of the very best flavor of such discussion - an academic symposium held at Penn Carey Law School on the book.  Professors Kate Shaw and Kermit Roosevelt each read the work with great care and deliver extensive remarks on the book,...

Happy Constitution Day!  And Happy Born Equal Publishing Day!  The book tour is underway, and we treat you to an event held live at Princeton University.  Professor Amar speaks about the bridge from the last book to this one, and in doing so, the importance of the uniquely grand sweep of his project becomes apparent - as themes from The Words That Made Us merge crucially with the new revelations o...

With the imminent publication of Born Equal, we explore Lincoln’s grand vision of equality as it played out during and after his life.  The new book goes further still, offering an expansive though still relentlessly originalist view of this constitutional vision.  And now Professor Amar sees this vision through with even greater implications for the 160 years since his death and into the future. ...

Trump is keeping the courts active; this week saw a ruling against many of the widespread tarrifs he has sought to impose, and the Fifth Circuit upheld his dismissal of an NLRB member.  Meanwhile, a Fed governor was dismissed, supposedly for cause.  And the social media announcements of supposedly impending executive orders imposing voting requirements such as voter ID kept coming.  And there’s mo...

Gerrymandering, borders, the use of the military on US soil, and even the status of the District of Columbia.  All these relate to geography, and the "more perfect union" our founders sought.  The Constitution therefore speaks to all these issues, and originalism must be considered.  We look at what the Constitution has to say, why it says these things, and what the underlying principles tell us....

President Trump has taken to social media, as usual.  This time he asserts an authority to control elections through executive order.  He claims that he is empowered to do this as the sole representative - nay, the sole decider - of the nation’s interest.  We look to the constitution for a reply. He also echoes some election complaints, and election claims, from controversies past, and we have an...

With all our recent discussion on Skrmetti, and questions of scrutiny as applied to gender dysphoric individuals, the question of where women’s rights stand in this morass deserves new attention.  Professor Jill Hasday has written an important book, We the Men, which is deeply relevant to these discussions.  To what extent does inequality persist in the law?  When Courts seek to answer this questi...

We continue our discussion of the deep issues raised in the case of US v. Skrmetti.  Last time we observed the Court wrestling with questions of whether the Tennessee law banning gender dysphoria treatments in minors was a form of sex discrimination.  Later in the argument the Court addressed the question of whether transgender individuals, or some related group, constituted a so-called “suspect c...

The Supreme Court’s term is long since complete, but we turn back the clock and take a deep dive into one of the major cases of the term, United States v. Skrmetti.  This case addressed questions of gender dysphoria treatment and transgender rights, but fundamentally, it was a case about the law of equality, say the brothers Amar.  Yes, Vik Amar is back as a guest, and our two experts go back and...

We pay tribute this week to a titan in the field whom you may not have heard of.  Professor Richard Fallon, the Joseph Story Professor of Law at Harvard, passed away last week.  As you will hear from his collaborator and friend, our guest Professor Michael Dorf, Dick Fallon had a deep impact in the law and the academy, and did so with grace, class, and integrity.  The parallels between his career...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD 8) was the House manager of the second Trump impeachment in the Senate; is an outstanding constitutional scholar; a long-time law professor; a renowned author; a driving force behind the January 6th committee; and the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.  For the great privilege of interviewing him, we need all the tools a great interviewer would have....

The Birthright Citizenship case reached the Supreme Court - sort of.  The Court ruled on the executive branch’s request for a stay in response to nationwide injunctions issued by three different circuit courts, where the executive order purporting to alter more than a century’s practice regarding the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship was blocked by these courts.  In doing so the C...

The end of the term arrives, and the Court is busy.  We begin our dive into  the cases with Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case involving inclusive books in a school, parental guidance of religious education, opt-outs, advance notification, and issues of gender and sexual education.  Professor Amar goes beyond the case with an overall theory of religious accommodation; indeed, he goes beyond this into quest...

The US enters a violent part of the world once again, as Iran’s nuclear facilities are bombed.  The President orders this without consulting Congress; indeed without asking for, much less receiving a declaration of war.  Does the Constitution require this?  What has past practice been?  What was true at the founding?  Has it changed over the centuries?  Many twists and turns to the reasoning emerg...

Former Justice Breyer returns to Amarica’s Constitution with reflections on his long-time colleague and, yes, his friend, in a rare opportunity to hear about relationships on the Court.  Meanwhile, former Souter clerk and current Professor at Penn Carey Law School, Kermit Roosevelt, looks back on the clerkship as well as at the threads that have emerged in the law and in his career from Justice So...

The Supreme Court left lower courts somewhat in the lurch in its recent Bruen decision; last year, in Rahimi, it attempted to clarify matters.  Now an assault weapons case reaches the Court, Snope v. Brown, but the Court declines to hear it.  Nevertheless, Justice Kavanaugh, though agreeing with the denial of cert, writes a commentary which calls for another, unspecified case to be heard in the ne...

Trump says he will no longer take advice from the Federalist Society, and Leonard Leo in particular, for judicial nominations.  The criteria he will use instead appear to be cause for great concern, and we discuss this. Meanwhile, the Senate is poised to bypass the filibuster for more than judicial nominations, which calls for an analysis that we provide.  And the publication this week of Charles...

This past week, the Supreme Court issued stays of injunctions which lower courts had issued, those injunctions blocking the firings of officials on statutorily independent agencies.  In doing so, the Court may have pointed to an imminent overruling of Humphrey’s Executor, possibly removing existing limitations on the unitary executive theory.  At the same time, the Court moved to protect the Feder...

The Trump executive order on birthright citizenship has been banging around the lower federal courts for months now, with court after court opining on its unconstitutionality and issuing injunctions against it that span the nation.  The Supreme Court took cert on the question of whether such national injunctions are appropriate, and if not, how the relief that appears indicated can be offered.  Al...