Your Weekly Constitutional

The Me Too movement has prompted sudden and dramatic changes in American society, most of them for the good. But does it also have a dark side? We’ll hear from two professors, Michele Goodwin, of UC-Irvine, who recently wrote in the Huffington Post about her experiences trying to report sexual harassment as a young law professor, and KC Johnson, a historian from Brooklyn College, who is concerned about due process for the accused.

Among the best aspects of our relationship with Montpelier is that it gives us frequent contact with brilliant minds. Among the most brilliant is Jack Rakove, a Madison scholar at Stanford University and a member of Montpelier's Board. Jack has published a new book, "A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison." Recently, he and Stewart sat down at the Potter Family Studios at Montpelier and talked about it. Join us for a fascinating discussion.

The notorious Kelo decision was handed down more than a decade ago, giving states and localities broad powers of eminent domain. But states have, largely, turned their back on that power -- or claim to have done so. We’ll speak with Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, who’ll bring us up to date on whether the government might take our homes and give them to someone else. We’ll also speak to Patrick Baker of the University of Tennessee at Martin, who will tell us about an emerging property issue that may implicate Kelo: what to do with the underground voids left over when coal and other fossil fuels are mined. Some states, it seems, want to take that property away, without compensation. Join us!

The President, our Commander-in-Chief, has the ultimate authority over whether to use nuclear weapons. Lately, some people are wondering whether vesting so much power in one person is such a good idea. We speak with Peter D. Feaver, a Duke professor who recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on this very subject. We also speak with Stephen I. Schwartz, the former Publisher and Executive Director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

There are many laws regulating advertising. But, wait – advertising is speech. Isn’t such speech protected by the First Amendment? How does the government get away with regulating it? The government even regulates how people describe themselves, at least professionally. It's typically illegal, for example, to call yourself a doctor or a lawyer unless you've actually gone through some sort of licensing process. But, again, don't you have a right to describe yourself as you see fit? Attorney Mary Lou Serafine thinks so. The State of Texas threatened to penalize her when she called herself a psychologist without obtaining a Texas license to that effect. Law professor Tamara Piety disagrees. She thinks that there is room for regulation of commercial speech, including professional speech. It's quite a debate. Join us!

In the constitutional sense, we mean. Everyone knows that it’s an island, but what is its status under U.S. law? And how did it obtain that status? And what happens next? We speak with Professor Harry Franqui-Rivera, who teaches history at Bloomfield College.

After the tragedy in Charlottesville, many people are calling for limitations on “hate speech.” But, what, exactly, is hate speech? And can the government do anything about it? Stewart speaks with two experts: Eugene Volokh, the creator of "The Volokh Conspiracy," a legal blog hosted by the Washington Post, and Richard Delgado, one of the founders of “critical race theory."

The Second Amendment protects our right to keep and bear arms. But what, exactly, does that mean? And has anything changed since the tragedy in Las Vegas? Stewart speaks with historian Saul Cornell of Fordham University, an expert on the early history of the Constitution, and with Professor James Jacobs of New York University, who questions whether gun control can ever work.

Immigration is a very constitutional issue, as well a matter of great political debate. Sometimes, we forget that it is also a human issue. Join us as Stewart speaks with three students at the Duncan School of Law at Lincoln Memorial University who came to this country at a very young age. Their stories are poignant, inspiring, and sometimes terrifying.

Each year, the Abraham Lincoln Institute for the Study of Leadership and Public Policy at Lincoln Memorial University hosts the R. Gerald McMurtry Memorial Lecture at LMU's Duncan School of Law. This year, the topic was Reconstruction, and the focus was Tennessee. Our McMurtry Lecturer was Sam D. Elliott, a lawyer and Civil War historian from Chattanooga. Sam was joined by Professor Stewart Harris, who spoke about secession, and by Dr. Charles Hubbard, who described Abraham Lincoln's many ethical dilemmas. Join Sam, Charlie, and Stewart as they re-cap and discuss their presentations.

It's been five years since Stewart recorded a Constitution Day episode at Montpelier, and boy, have things changed! Join him as he walks around the grounds on a spectacular September day, talks to staff members and guests, and even has a chat with President Madison himself.

Kat Imhoff has been the President and CEO of James Madison’s Montpelier for five years. During that time, she’s raised millions of dollars and supervised major improvements to Montpelier's grounds and programs. Recently, Stewart sat down with her in the brand-new Potter Family Studio at the brand-new Claude Moore Hall at Montpelier's Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution. Stewart and Kat talked all about her many accomplishments, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. Join us for a fascinating conversation!

Talk of impeachment seems to be in the air these days, at least among Donald Trump's opponents. But is it likely? What, precisely, is the constitutional standard for impeachment? We talk to David O. Stewart, author of what the Wall Street Journal recently identified as the very best book on the subject. It's called "Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy."

Does it seem to you that the United States is perpetually at war? How did that happen? What, if anything, can we do about it? Stewart was recently out at Montpelier, where David Adler, the former Director of Boise State University’s Andrus Center for Public Policy, taught a seminar on how the Constitution treats the most significant decision any country can make: whether, and how, to go to war. The Framers had some very definite ideas on the subject, but modern presidents, and many members of Congress, see it differently.

If the southern states wanted to secede, why didn’t Lincoln simply let them go? One could argue that they were making the same democratic decision that the British American colonies had made in 1776. One could also argue that secession was preferable to war. But Lincoln thought differently, and he was passionate in his belief. Why? Professor Charles Hubbard, the Director of Lincoln Memorial University’s Abraham Lincoln Institute for the Study of Leadership and Public Policy, tells the fascinating tale.

Can you sue the President of the United States? Sure. But will a court hear the case? In legal terms, is the President immune from civil claims? We’ll speak with Doug McKechnie, our First Amendment Guy, who’s just written a very timely article on the subject. We’ll also hear from our good friend, Christopher Phillips, about the latest developments with his ongoing project, Democracy Café.

Do you know the difference between de facto and de jure? They’re Latin terms, the first of which means “in effect,” and the second of which means “according to the law.” The distinction is important, since, generally, there is no constitutional remedy for wrongs that are de facto, only for those that are de jure. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute has written a new book, The Color of Law, which exposes the myth that segregated housing patterns in the United States are simply the de facto results of millions of private decisions; he shows that they are very much de jure results of American law.

Julius Caesar died over two thousand years ago, on March 15, 44 BC. So why are we talking about him now? Well, because our Founders talked about him, and about others involved the Fall of the Roman Republic, and they talked about them a lot. You see, the Roman Republic was perhaps the most successful republic in history before it failed in the face of demagoguery and tyranny. Could the same fate befall our republic? We’ll talk to Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell University, about his new book, The Death of Caesar.

It’s been a year since the historic referendum in favor of Brexit, the British Exit from the European Union. But while negotiations over this fundamental change to the British Constitution have just begun, that doesn’t mean that our British cousins have just been sitting around. In fact, they’ve just had another historic vote. William Walton of Northumbria University brings us up to date.

You’ve heard of the Shoah foundations, haven’t you? They are organizations designed to record and preserve the memories of Holocaust survivors before those survivors pass away. There’s a similar project underway for survivors of America’s concentration camps, where over a hundred thousand Americans of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated during World War II. It’s called Densho, and one of its founders, Tom Ikeda, tells us all about it.