David Waldstreicher’s The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley’s life and works. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, Wheatley became a noted poet at a young age. She is considered the first African American author to publish a book of poetry and had a lasting influence on the Founding generation as well as generations to come. In this episode of We the People , David Waldstrei...
Jul 27, 2023•1 hr 2 min
This past term, the Supreme Court handed down two major decisions about Native American law. In Arizona v. Navajo Nation , the Court ruled 5-4 that a treaty did not require the U.S. Government to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajo Nation; and in Haaland v. Brackeen , the Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). In this episode, Native American law experts Professor Marcia Zug of the University of South Carolina Law School and Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institut...
Jul 20, 2023•1 hr 1 min
In a 6-3 ruling at the end of the 2022-23 term, the Supreme Court handed down a major First Amendment decision about the intersection of free expression rights and anti-discrimination laws in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The Court held that Colorado could not force a website designer to design a site and create expressive designs that she disagreed with, which included creating a website for same-sex marriages. In this episode, host Jeffrey Rosen is joined by ACLU National Legal Director David Cole a...
Jul 13, 2023•53 min
In a special Independence Day episode, scholars Akhil Amar of Yale Law School and Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia join host Jeffrey Rosen for a discussion on the historical legacy of founding father Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. In a National Constitution Center event a few months ago, Professor Amar announced his intention to “break up with” Thomas Jefferson; and in this episode of We the People , we explore why he’...
Jul 06, 2023•50 min
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, including Allen v. Milligan , in which the Court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; Moore v...
Jun 30, 2023•55 min
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 this episode of We the People , guests Judge Michael Luttig and Professor Evan Bernick join to break d...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr
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 cases that have narrowed the scope of the Voting Rights Act, including the Brnovich v. DNC case in 2021 ...
Jun 22, 2023•54 min
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 Hathaway of Yale Law School and Jamil Jaffer of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 3 min
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 week, the first ever AI defamation lawsuit was filed, by a Georgia radio host who claim...
Jun 09, 2023•55 min
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 future of constitutional reform. The four scholars are: Akhil Reed Amar of Yale Law School, Caro...
Jun 01, 2023•42 min
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 book, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the...
May 25, 2023•57 min
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 Jeffrey Rosen sits down with Khan Academy founder and CEO Sal Khan , in a one-on-one conversation to dis...
May 18, 2023•46 min
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 University. They discuss the history of affirmative action, the current cases before the Court, how the ...
May 11, 2023•56 min
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 to the Right and its Historic Consequences . She and host Jeffrey Rosen have a reporter's chat and c...
May 04, 2023•56 min
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 issue in the case is whether or not his messages actually constituted under “true threats” (or if con...
Apr 27, 2023•54 min
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 founders? In other words, should we still look to the drafters of the Declaration and Constitution—from T...
Apr 21, 2023•53 min
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 prevented it from being sent to by mail and limited its approved use to the first seven weeks of pregn...
Apr 13, 2023•52 min
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 French , an opinion columnist at The New York Times and co-host of Advisory Opinions , and Kimberly ...
Apr 06, 2023•53 min
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 limit the power of the Court to review administrative acts. Large-scale rallies and protests across...
Mar 30, 2023•50 min
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. Why did the North Carolina Supreme Court strike down the maps in the first place, and why is it re...
Mar 23, 2023•58 min
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 Amendment protects the right to carry guns outside the home. Bruen also created a new history-and-tradi...
Mar 17, 2023•51 min
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 poet, and author of America’s Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor , join to explore th...
Mar 09, 2023•53 min
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 Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (or the HEROES Act), a law passed after 9/11 that gives t...
Mar 02, 2023•51 min
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 content as internet companies were protected from lawsuits. Two current Supreme Court cases— Gonzalez v...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 5 min
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 current Supreme Court justices like Justice Clarence Thomas–have criticized the decision and its effect ...
Feb 16, 2023•59 min
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 elected in a fully representative democratic election. He served as president from 1994 to 1999, ov...
Feb 10, 2023•53 min
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 episode, we drill down on why the public debt clause was written, how it's been interpreted by the Supre...
Feb 02, 2023•49 min
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 Body in Public Bioethics , discuss the Roe decision in historical and constitutional context. They a...
Jan 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min
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 University, discuss some of Dr. King’s most seminal writings and speeches and talk about the key tex...
Jan 19, 2023•57 min
Last week, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California became the Speaker of the House, after 15 rounds of voting. It was the first time since 1923 that a Speaker was not elected on the first ballot. In this episode, we are joined by scholars Matthew Green, author of The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership , and Josh Chafetz, author of Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers , to discuss the role and the history of this powerful constitutional office. ...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 5 min
