An unassuming string of 16 words tucked into the Constitution grants Congress extensive power to make laws that impact the entire nation. The Commerce Clause has allowed Congress to intervene in all kinds of situations — from penalizing one man for growing too much wheat on his farm, to enforcing the end of racial segregation nationwide. That is, if the fede ... Show More
Jun 2018
American Pendulum Reprise
<p>What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? <em>Korematsu v. United States</em> upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens during World War II based solely on their Japanese heritage, for the sake of nat ... Show More
46m 33s
Sep 2018
We've Got a Surprise For You
<p>This fall, More Perfect is doing something brand new: We’re making an album!</p>
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<p>It’s called <em>27: The Most Perfect Album. </em>We’ve partnered with some of the best musicians in the world— artists like Dolly Parton, Kevin Morby, Devendra Banhart, Aisha Burns, a ... Show More
2m 31s
Sep 2024
Anthony Michael Kreis, "Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development" (U California Press, 2024)
One of the great divides in American judicial scholarship is between legal scholars who take the justices at their word and assume that those words define the law and political scientists who dismiss all judicial arguments as smokescreens for partisan bias or wider political forc ... Show More
1h 3m
Feb 2024
Matthew D. Lassiter, "The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority populations, an extension of the federal war on black street crime and the foundation for the "new Jim Crow" of mass incarceration as ... Show More
59m 36s
Apr 2024
Michael J. Graetz, "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America" (Princeton UP, 2024)
The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Graetz.
In his book The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Princeton UP, 2024), Graetz chronicles the move ... Show More
1h 5m
Jul 2024
Mónica A. Jiménez, "Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico" (UNC Press, 2024)
Myths about the powers held by the United States are often supported by the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which derives its logic from the interpretation of a document that the US itself developed. Therefore, when pressure is placed on a specific legal precedent, the shallow ... Show More
1h 24m
Apr 2025
A Constitutional Crisis, Due Process, & the Rule of Law
What is a constitutional crisis? For some, a constitutional crisis is when the president defies the Supreme Court, for others it is when a president simply defies a federal judge’s order. Under the reign of President Trump and his administration, the country has dealt with a numb ... Show More
36m 59s
Apr 2024
David Pozen, "The Constitution of the War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
David Pozen is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of the new book, The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford UP, 2024). An expert in constitutional law, Pozen argues that the drug war has been an unmitigated disaster, in terms of ... Show More
58m 55s
Jun 2021
Juneteenth and the Constitution
On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had been issued over two years earlier, and the South had ... Show More
57m 15s
May 2022
Sean J. Drake, "Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2022)
In Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb (U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced perspective, looking at how race and class intersect to affect mode ... Show More
55m 27s