Our final guest for Season 3 is Nikolas Bowie, assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School. In this episode, we dive into two of his recent articles -- “Antidemocracy” and “The Constitutional Right of Self-Government.” We begin by discussing the Court’s recent ruling in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) and how it ties to Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964). Next, we discuss the Assembly Clause of the First Amendment and how early in the country’s founding, activists used their right to assemble to defend their right of self-governance.

This week on the pod we have Jeannie Suk Gersen, the John H. Watson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a columnist for The New Yorker! We begin by discussing Professor Suk Gersen’s documentary “The Crits,” which focuses on the development and legacy of the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement. Several modern ideas and movements have come out of and splintered from CLS. We compare the evolution of CLS to the law and economics movement, debating both why law and economics has become institutionalized in the mainstream and what constitutes success for a legal movement. After, we transition to discussing “The Sex Burueacracy,” which covers the govenrment regulatory apparatus and university bureaucracies that stem from Title IX and similar policies.

We’re back with more state, local, and urban issues -- maybe Sam has become a full convert! In this week’s episode, we’re joined by renowned urban economist Edward Glaeser. We begin by discussing The Survival of the City, Professor Glaeser’s new book written with David Cutler. In just over half an hour, we get through several topics. How will cities adapt to pandemics, will work-from-home continue as it currently exists, and will insider groups continue to dominate local politics? What does the future of work look like in cities; will we ever approach the post-work urban future that Keynes described? Beyond exploring these questions, we also discuss how cities can and should think about race and inequality, both through administration and legislation. All of this and more in less time than it takes to commute on most U.S. subways (and find out why that is while you’re listening)!

It’s SCOTUS reform time! We are joined by Noah Feldman and Christopher Kang. Both of our guests testified to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. On the pod, our guests explain what they think the Commission should do. We talk through and debate whether the Court is political and/or partisan and whether Supreme Court rulings are un-democratic or lack democratic accountability. Given divergent views on these questions, we also have stark disagreements on the degree to which court reform is necessary and what the ideal reform would be. Our guests are leading thinkers on this timely issue, and their varying perspectives demonstrate the political, institutional, and legal complexities of altering the Supreme Court.

This week, we have an all-star duo in Daniel B. Rodridguez, the Harold Washington Professor of Law at Northwestern Law School, and Miriam Seifter, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School! Much to David’s joy, we get Sam deep into the muck of state and local government law. We begin by talking about Daniel and Miriam’s new projects -- The SLoG Law Blog and The State Democracy Research Initiative. Sam then asks our guests which issues in state and local government law they’re thinking about right now. We discuss ongoing battles of state legislatures stripping power from governors, how states and localities are using COVID-related federal aid, and state constitutional law. As part of the conversation, we also get into institutional design of state and local governments and how these institutions promote or hinder majoritarianism.

In this week’s episode, we interview New Yorker staff writer and principal contributor to the Q. & A. interview series Isaac Chotiner. We begin by discussing his challenging interviewing style, which has led to many notable and controversial moments. Beyond Isaac’s own interviewing and writing styles, we talk about the state of journalism overall, including the role of public intellectuals and the effect of nationalized media coverage. Lastly, we get Isaac’s takes on a variety of topics, including the lack of India coverage in American journalism, the media coverage on Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, media coverage on the War on Terror, and SubStack!

In the first episode of Season 3, John Witt joins host David Schleicher to interview host Sam Moyn on his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. In the book, Sam interrogates efforts to make war more humane and the ramifications of this shift. We also discuss the chronology of when the American state began to craft more humane war; the risks that making any practice, such as war or driving cars, more humane might help legitimate it; and whether appeals toward making war humane are recent phenomena or cyclical occurrences. There’s also a sharp debate over methodology in legal history, for all you methodology heads out there, and some stern questions about what exactly Sam has against passion fruit panna cotta.

On our last episode of Season 2, Ian Ayres, professor of law and of professor of management at Yale University, and Frederick E. Vars, professor of law at the University of Alabama, join us to discuss their new book Weapon of Choice: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights. In the book, Ayres and Vars outline decentralized and voluntary policies that can be immediately adopted at the state or federal level to prevent gun-related deaths. We discuss the benefit and the possible downside of presuming second amendment rights and pursuing a neoliberal approach to the issue. We also discuss the politics of the proposal, including the professors’ lobbying efforts.

On this week’s episode, Oona Hathaway, professor of law at Yale Law School, and Dr. Craig Jones, lecturer in political geography at Newcastle University, discuss their views on law’s role in war and national security. Professor Hathaway’s recent article, National Security Lawyering in the Post-War Era: Can Law Constrain Power?, argues that our current system lacks external constraints on executive branch national security lawyers and suggests division of powers and increased accountability could help remedy these issues. In The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridicial Warfare, Dr. Jones focuses more specifically on how military operations have come to rely on lawyers and discusses the consequences of a system where law and war are co-constitutive. The professors discuss where they find common ground and where they diverge, and answer the question of whether there is too much or too little law in war.

Professors Kate Andrias, of the University of Michigan Law, and Benjamin L. Sachs, of Harvard Law School, join us to discuss their new article, Constructing Countervailing Power: Law and Organizing in an Era of Political Inequality. They argue the law can facilitate organizing by lower-income groups and that doing so can increase their political power in this new Gilded Age. We also discuss what the politics of labor politics and labor history can tell us about the authors’ proposal.

Professors Maggie Blackhawk and K-Sue Park join us to discuss their recent work diving into the erasure of Native people in legal scholarship, pedagogy, and doctrine. Professor Blackhawk tells us about her recent article, Federal Indian Law as Paradigm Within Public Law, which argues that Native history and federal Indian law are necessary to better understand and develop Constitutional law. Professor Park discusses her draft article, Conquest and Slavery as Foundational to Property Law, which argues for acknowledging histories of Native dispossession and slavery in legal pedagogy and scholarship.

Jamal Greene, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, joins us to discuss his new book, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart, in which he argues that we need a new approach to adjudicating rights claims. We discuss the flaws he sees in our current system—namely his assessment that courts either offer an absolute right or total deference to legislatures, depending on the right at issue. He also proposes an alternative approach where we can take everyone’s rights claims seriously.

Stephen Sachs and Ernest Young, professors of law at Duke University, join us for a debate on the Erie doctrine. We pit these two scholars against one another to find out whether Erie was wrongly decided. Should state courts have the “last word” on interpretations of state law? Should we limit the role of general law? Does any of this matter?

On this week’s episode we talk to Gabriel Winant, Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the University of Chicago, about his forthcoming book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. In it, he focuses on the political economy of Pittsburgh since World War II—specifically, how blue-collar manufacturing jobs were eventually replaced by female-dominated, yet lower-paid and less stable, positions in healthcare services. In this conversation, we mostly just try to understand his deep and informative argument. We also speculate about the future of work and discuss what this story should tell us about the working class.

On this episode we speak to our colleague, Claire Priest, about her new book, Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America. We discuss her research into the early American laws that commodified real and personal property as well as how those laws facilitated the rise of credit markets and helped entrench slavery. We also discuss the relationship between property owners and the state as well as the formalization of property rights during this period.

We’re kicking off Season 2 by chatting with the hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, Kate Shaw and Leah Litman, about the future of the Supreme Court, reform proposals, and the Court’s past and present legitimacy.

On our last episode this season, we speak with Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics at Princeton, about his new article that studies how 1960s Black-led protests impacted voting patterns. A key finding is that, while peaceful protests improved Democratic vote share in the 1968 election, violent protests likely led to a shift towards Republicans.

Yale Law School professor Tracey Meares joins us to discuss the past and future of police reform, including her government and academic work in this area. We touch on what the Obama administration did and didn’t do after Ferguson. We also discuss how calls for defunding the police and prison abolition play out in the policy sphere.

John Goldberg, professor at Harvard Law School, and Benjamin Zipursky, professor at Fordham University School of Law, join us this week to discuss their new book Recognizing Wrongs in which they outline what principles underly tort law and why tort law matters.

Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist and conservative political analyst, joins us this week to unpack the election. We discuss the ongoing political realignment. We dig into the future of economic populism on the right and the left. We also debate how each party might build its future coalition, including who might win the hotly-contested neoliberal vote.