Join us on this episode as we unpack the election with legal scholars Michael Klarman, Professor at Harvard Law School, and Amna Akbar, Professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Michael’s forthcoming Harvard Law Review foreword outlines the threat President Donald Trump and the Republicans pose to democracy and how the Supreme Court has enabled them. Amna’s response article outlines what she views as the key movements of our time, including defund the police, cancel rent, and others, that seek to deepen democratic participation.

On this episode, we talk to Vox co-founder and noted political and economics journalist Matt Yglesias about his new book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. Matt argues that the U.S. should take active steps — allowing greater immigration and adopting a suite of policies that encourage people to have children — to increase the size of the U.S. population to one billion.

On this episode we discuss the legal theory of the origins of American empire. Stephen Wertheim, Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and Afroditi Giovanopoulou, PhD Candidate at Columbia University, join us to discuss their recent works on this subject and debate the role law played in U.S. efforts to reshape the postwar global order.

Cristina Rodríguez, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and Adam B. Cox, Professor of Law at NYU, join us to discuss their new book, The President and Immigration Law, where they outline how the Executive Branch gained nearly-unchecked discretion over immigration policy, what this system says about the nature of executive power more broadly, and what this all means for future immigration policy.

On our third episode, we speak to Steven Teles, Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center about his new book, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites, co-authored with Robert P. Saldin. He outlines what he thinks drove “Never Trumpers” (elite conservatives) to campaign against then-candidate Donald Trump and the role this group now plays at the margins of the Republic Party. He also touches on the theories underlying his views on Never Trumpers—including the role played by elite policymakers, ideologues, and outsiders in political parties.

On this episode, we speak to Amy Kapczynski, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, about about her new article in the Yale Law Journal, “Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis,” co-authored with Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, and K. Sabeel Rahman. The article outlines how approaches to law that center questions of market efficiency, neutrality, and formal equality render certain forms of power invisible, and “encases” the market from questions of politics and claims of justice.

With the end of Donald Trump’s presidency potentially imminent, debates have begun about how to reform American politics—and the powers of the executive branch in America’s constitutional system. On this episode, we speak with Jack Goldsmith, professor of law at Harvard University, who recently coauthored After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.