In celebration of Native American Heritage month, Keith Richotte Jr., author of the forthcoming book, The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution and Matthew L.M. Fletcher of the University of Michigan discuss Native American history and law through the stories of landmark Supreme Court cases. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Resources: 

• Matthew L.M. Fletcher, The Ghost Road: Anishinaabe Responses to Indian Hating (2020)
• Keith Richotte Jr., The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution (forthcoming 2025)
• United States v. Kagama (1886)
• United States v. Lara (2004)
• Matthew L.M. Fletcher, “Muskrat Textualism,” Northwestern Law Review, Jan. 16, 2022.
• McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020)
• Ex Parte Crow Dog (1883)
• Major Crimes Act
• Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (1978)
• Montana v. United States (1981)
• Indian Civil Rights Act
• Duro v. Reina (1990)
• Haaland v. Brackeen (2023)
• Turtle Talk Blog
• Worcester v. Georgia (1832)
• Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta (2022)

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On the eve of the 2024 presidential election, join Jesse Wegman, author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, and professor Robert Hardaway, author of Saving the Electoral College: Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy, for a program examining the history and current debate over the Electoral College. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Resources: 

• Robert Hardaway, Saving the Electoral College Why the National Popular Vote Would Undermine Democracy (2019) 
• Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College (2020) 
• Electoral College, Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3, Interactive Constitution 
• National Popular Vote 
• Ranked Choice Voting 
• Article I, Section III, The Senate, Interactive Constitution 
• Cass Sunstein, “On Jan. 6, Will Vice President Harris Certify the Election?,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 25, 2024 
• Gary Lawson and Jack Beerman, “Congressional Meddling In Presidential Elections: Still Unconstitutional After All These Years; A Comment On Sunstein,” April 2023 
• “The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway,” Politico, Oct. 20, 2024 
• Moore v. Harper (2023)

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This month, the National Constitution Center convened the 2024 National First Amendment Summit, in partnership with FIRE and NYU’s First Amendment Watch. America’s leading legal thinkers joined for a vigorous discussion on the state of free speech in America and around the globe. This episode features a conversation about global free speech with Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post. He spent 544 days unjustly imprisoned by Iranian authorities until his release in January 2016. Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates. 

Resources:

• 2024 National First Amendment Summit 
• FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression 
• NYU’s First Amendment Watch 
• The Washington Post’s Press Freedom Partnership
• Jason Rezaian, Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison―Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out (2019)

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This month, the National Constitution Center convened the 2024 National First Amendment Summit, in partnership with FIRE and NYU’s First Amendment Watch. America’s leading legal thinkers joined for a vigorous discussion on the state of free speech in America and around the globe. “Free Speech on Campus Today” features Mary Anne Franks, author of the new book Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment;  FIRE’s Vice President of Campus Advocacy Alex Morey; and Keith Whittington, author of You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms. “Free Speech In and Out of the Courts” features Nadine Strossen, author of Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know; Jonathan Turley, author of the new book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage; and Kenji Yoshino of NYU School of Law and Meta's Oversight Board.  

Resources:

• 2024 National First Amendment Summit 
• FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression 
• NYU’s First Amendment Watch 
• Mary Ann Franks, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment (2024) 
• Keith Whittington, You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms (2024) 
• Nadine Strossen, Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know (2023) 
• Jonathan Turley, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (2024) 
• Meta Oversight Board 

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David Greenberg’s new biography, John Lewis: A Life, chronicles the remarkable story of the civil rights activist and congressman. Professor Kenneth Mack of Harvard University joins Greenberg for a discussion of Lewis’ life and impact on American history, whose heroism during the Civil Rights Movement helped inspire America’s new birth of freedom. Lana Ulrich, vice president of content and senior counsel at the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Additional Resources

• 2016 Liberty Medal Ceremony in honor of Representative John Lewis
• David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (2024)
• “Rep. John Lewis on MLK and ‘Good Trouble,’” Live at the National Constitution Center podcast (Jan. 2020)
• Boynton v. Virginia (1960)
• Civil Rights Era documents selected by Kenneth Mack and Christopher Brooks, NCC Founders’ Library
• Kenneth Mack, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (2012)
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
• Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement”
• Voting Rights Act (1965)
• John Lewis, Remarks at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016)

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Stanford University professor Jonathan Gienapp, author of the new book, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique, is joined by Stephen Sachs of Harvard Law School to discuss Gienapp’s challenge to originalists’ unspoken assumptions about the Constitution, the history of originalism as a constitutional methodology, and its role in constitutional interpretation today. Thomas Donnelly, chief content officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Additional Resources

• Jonathan Gienapp, “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique” (2024)
• Stephen Sachs and Will Baude, “Originalism and the Law of the Past” (Law and History Review, 2019)
• Michael Stokes Paulsen and Vasen Kesavan, “Is West Virginia Unconstitutional?” (90 Cal L. Rev. 291, 2002)
• William Baude, Jud Campbell, and Stephen Sachs, “General Law and the Fourteenth Amendment” (76 Stanford L. Rev 1185, 2024)
• Jud Campbell, “Four Views of the Nature of the Union” (47 Harvard J. Law & Public Policy 2, 2024)
• Fletcher v. Peck (1810)
• District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
• United States v. Rahimi (2024)

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• Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected]
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On September 24, 2024 the National Constitution Center held its annual Liberty Medal ceremony honoring America’s storyteller, Ken Burns, for illuminating the nation’s greatest triumphs and tragedies and inspiring all of us to learn about the principles at the heart of the American idea. In this episode, Jeffrey Rosen and Burns’s co-director Sarah Botstein talk about Burns’s life and work, followed by Ken Burns’s inspiring acceptance speech. Burns then sits down with Rosen for a conversation about the American Idea.  

Resources: 

• The National Constitution Center’s 2024 Liberty Medal Ceremony 

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On September 17, the Honorable Neil M. Gorsuch, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and NCC honorary co-chair, and his co-author and former law clerk Janie Nitze, joined Jeffrey Rosen for an America’s Town Hall program in celebration of Constitution Day 2024 and the release of their latest book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.

Additional Resources

• National Constitution Center: Constitution 101 with Khan Academy
• Neil M. Gorsuch and Janie Nitze, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law (2024)
• National Constitution Center Classroom resources: Federalism
• National Constitution Center Classroom resources: Federalism and the Separation of Powers

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On September 12, 2024, best-selling author, philanthropist, and National Constitution Center Trustee David Rubenstein joined Jeffrey Rosen at the Center in Philadelphia to discuss his new book, The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency. The book, which features interviews with presidential historians and living U.S. presidents, chronicles the journeys of the leaders who have defined America. They discuss the duties and responsibilities of the presidency, the triumphs and failures of its officeholders, and the future of the role in the twenty-first century.

Resources: 

• David Rubenstein, The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency (2024) 

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• Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected]
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International and national security law experts Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School, Deborah Pearlstein of Princeton University, and  Matthew Waxman of Columbia Law School join for a conversation to explore Trump v, United States and the updated edition of Koh’s landmark book, The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Resources:

• Harold Koh, “The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century”
• Trump v. United States (2024)
• Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024)
• United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936)
• Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (Steel Seizure Case) (1952)
• The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794
• Deborah Pearlstein, “Lawyering the Presidency,” The Georgetown Law Journal (2022)
• Deborah Pearlstein, “The Executive Branch Anticanon,” Fordham Law Review (2020)
• Matthew C. Waxman, “War Powers Reform: A Skeptical View”
•  

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Political theorist William B. Allen, editor and translator of a new edition of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, and Alison LaCroix, author of The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms, explored the intellectual foundations—from Montesquieu and beyond—of the U.S. constitutional vision and core values from America’s founding through the Civil War. The discussion was moderated by Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.

Resources:

• Alison LaCroix, The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms, 2024
• Montesquieu, ‘The Spirit of the Laws’: A Critical Edition, edited and translated by W. B. Allen, 2024
• The Commerce Clause
• Alison LaCroix, “James Madison v. Originalism,” Project Syndicate (Aug. 26, 2022)
• 10th Amendment
• Andrew Jackson, Proclamation Regarding Nullification, (December 10, 1832)
• Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, (1816)
• Preamble to the Constitution

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• Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected]
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