We the People

This week, NCC President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderated a panel live from the Aspen Ideas Festival featuring three of America’s leading legal scholars: former deputy solicitor general and Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan, and Clark Neily of the Cato Institute. During the program, they discussed the major decisions from the Supreme Court’s most recent term, i...

This week, the Supreme Court handed down a major decision relating to elections in America in the Moore v. Harper case. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court rejected the independent state legislature theory, finding that the Elections Clause does not give state legislatures exclusive power over elections, and upholding the power of judicial review in electoral cases, including redistricting decisions. In th...

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court handed down a major voting rights decision in the Allen v. Milligan case. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and found that Alabama’s 2022 congressional map likely violated Section 2. This comes as a surprising victory for voting rights and the Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) test after a series of other Supreme Court case...

Last week, former President Donald Trump was indicted by the U.S. government for allegedly retaining, mishandling, and concealing classified documents after he left office. Charged with 37 criminal counts—including many that stem from the Espionage Act—Trump appeared in a Miami federal court on Tuesday and pled not guilty to the charges brought against him. In this episode, legal experts Oona Hath...

As ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms have taken off, they’ve demonstrated exciting possibilities about the potential benefits of artificial intelligence; while at the same time, have raised a myriad of open questions and complexities, from how to regulate the pace of AI’s growth, to whether AI companies can be held liable for any misinformation reported or generated through the platforms....

Earlier this year, the National Constitution Center hosted an event in Miami, Florida, featuring a series of meaningful conversations about the Constitution with speakers of diverse perspectives. In this episode, we’re sharing one of those programs with you: A conversation with four leading constitutional experts about the NCC’s Constitution Drafting Project, the amendment process, Article V, and...

The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—cases in which the Court issues emergency orders and summary decisions without oral argument—has been subject to growing scrutiny. Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak of The New York Times and Jennifer Mascott of the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School join Stephen Vladeck of The University of Texas School of Law for a conversation on Vladeck’s new...

The National Constitution Center and Khan Academy are partnering to create a free online Constitution 101 course premised on a simple, radical act: bringing together genuine experts who genuinely disagree about the most important constitutional issues facing our nation today; and use their examples to model thoughtful, respectful civil dialogue. In this special episode of We the People, host Jeffr...

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing two cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that could end affirmative action in higher education. The National Constitution Center hosted a live program on May 4, 2023, featuring a conversation between constitutional law experts William B. Allen of Michigan State University and Hasan Kwame Jeffries of The Ohio State Univ...

Last year's Supreme Court term was one of the most significant in recent history with landmark decisions and cases about abortion, guns, religious liberty, the administrative state, and more. In this episode, veteran Supreme Court reporter and CNN Legal Analyst, Joan Biskupic, joins to unpack these recent developments and to discuss her new book, Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court's Drive...

Last week, the Supreme Court heard a case about a Colorado man, Billy Ray Counterman, who was sentenced to over four years in prison for stalking due to threatening Facebook messages that he sent to a singer named C.W. Counterman argued that the charges violated his speech rights and that his messages were not “true threats,” which is a kind of speech not protected under the First Amendment. The i...

Earlier this year, the National Constitution Center hosted an event in Miami, Florida, featuring a series of meaningful conversations about the Constitution with speakers of diverse perspectives. In this episode, we’re sharing one of those conversations with you. During an evening keynote program, five great constitutional experts were asked an important question: Should we break up with the found...

Last Friday, judges in Texas and Washington state handed down conflicting decisions on the legality of abortion medication pills. In Texas, a district judge invalidated the FDA’s decades-old approval of the widely used drug mifepristone. Late this Wednesday, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially overruled that decision by allowing mifepristone to remain available, but temporarily pr...

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, April 4, former President Donald Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. President Trump pleaded not guilty. This indictment is legally and constitutionally significant as it is the first indictment of a president in American history. In this episode, David...

In January 2023, the Israeli government under newly re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a series of legal reforms that set off a wave of protests and calls of a constitutional crisis. The reforms seek to empower the Israeli legislature, known as the Knesset, to override decisions of the Supreme Court of Israel as well as to control the appointment of justices to the Court, and to...

Last week, the North Carolina Supreme Court agreed to re-hear a case that found the state’s redistricting maps unconstitutional under the state’s constitution. The outcome of this decision could affect another case already before the U.S. Supreme Court, Moore v. Harper—a challenge to a decision striking down North Carolina’s redistricting that involves the “independent state legislature” doctrine....

Earlier this month, in United States v. Rahimi, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down as unconstitutional a decades-old law barring people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. The ruling comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen last term, which held that the Second Amen...

March is women’s history month—and in commemoration of the celebration, this week we hosted a conversation exploring the story of the pursuit of women’s rights in early America. Sara Chatfield, assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver and author of Her Own Name: The Politics of Women’s Rights Before Suffrage, and Nicole Evelina, bestselling novelist, biographer, and poe...

This week the Supreme Court heard two separate legal challenges to a student loan forgiveness program proposed by the Biden administration: Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown. The plan aims to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for low-to middle-income families, and was rolled out last August during the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. It relied on the Higher Education Reli...

Three decades ago, in the fledgling days of the internet, Congress amended Section V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to grant broader legal protections to websites who host information from third parties. Part of Section 230 of that law (known as the Communications Decency Act) has been referred to as “the 26 words that created the internet,” due to the burgeoning effect it had on online con...

In 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling decided The Slaughterhouse Cases, which narrowly interpreted the new Privileges and Immunities Clause of the recently ratified 14th Amendment. With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the decision, we’re joined today by two leading scholars to understand what The Slaughterhouse Cases were about, and why some scholars and judges–including curre...

Nelson Mandela—born in South Africa in 1918—was an international freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped overturn the apartheid system of racial segregation and usher in democracy for his nation. After being convicted of sabotage and serving 27 years in prison, Mandela was released, and soon after was elected president, becoming the country's first black head of state and the first...

The Public Debt Clause of the 14th Amendment states: “The Validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law …. shall not be questioned.” Recent debates—including the most recent standoff between President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy over the debt ceiling—have raised the question as to whether this clause can be invoked to overcome the crisis. In today’s epis...

This January marked the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the seminal and contentious decision recognizing abortion rights, which the Supreme Court overturned last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In this episode, scholars Mary Ziegler, author of the new book Roe: The History of a National Obsession, and O. Carter Snead, author of What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Bod...

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2023, we pay tribute to Dr. King by discussing his historical legacy and constitutional and moral philosophy through his key writings, speeches, and intellectual and moral inspirations and influences. Guests Christopher Brooks, professor of history at East Stroudsburg University, and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at Ohio State...