Constitutional Crisis Hotline

For the final episode of the Constitutional Crisis Hotline Season 1 , Fordham Law experts on constitutional law and statutory interpretation reflect on the Supreme Court's recent decisions.

In this episode, Julie talks with Corey Brettschneider, author of The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents about the federal indictment of Donald Trump and what it will mean for Trump’s ambitions to retake the Presidency.

In this episode, leading feminist scholar Deborah Tuerkheimer joins Julie and Jed to discuss Julie’s new book, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women What to Do about It (publishing today!).

What is the future of constitutional rights protections and equal citizenship in our constitutional democracy? Is substantive due process over after Dobbs, or can we reconstruct it?

We talk with Jim Fleming (Boston University School of Law, JD/PhD) about his recent book, “Constructing Basic Liberties: A Defense of Substantive Due Process” (2022), in conversation with Ken Kersch (Boston College, Political Science, JD/PhD), an expert on conservative political and legal thought, and working on a new book "The Right Rights: The Conservative Encounter with Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, 1954-1980."

In this episode, Kathleen Sullivan and Jesse Wegman join Jed and Julie to discuss whether Congress can declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified and part of the Constitution fifty years after it proposed the amendment to the states.

A breaking-news emergencies podcast right after the oral arguments in the Biden Student Debt cases: Nebraska v. Biden and Dept of Education vs. Brown, joined by:

Liza Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program, and a nationally expert on presidential emergency powers. She wrote immediately after the Biden plan was announced for the Washington Post: “Biden Using Emergency Powers for Student Debt Relief? That’s a Slippery Slope”

And we’re joined by Nestor Davidson, Albert A. Walsh Chair in Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law; Faculty Director, Urban Law Center.

Jed explains his amicus brief (and essay proposing an "Emergency Question Doctrine" to limit the Major Question Doctrine), which Justice Kavanaugh mentioned in oral argument.

This Presidents’ Day episode on presidential power over war and foreign policy coincides with the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Feb. 24th. A veteran of four administrations' foreign policy teams, Yale Law professor Harold Koh, and Fordham Law colleagues Martin Flaherty and Tom Lee connect both topics: the Russian invasion, the history of presidential power, and the overlapping questions of national security and the risks to democracy from the outside – and from within the Oval Office.

Harold Koh is a visiting professor at Fordham this spring, and Sterling Professor of International Law and former Dean at Yale Law School. He has served under four US presidents: in the Reagan DOJ, the Clinton State Department, the Obama State Department, and recently as Senior Advisor to the Biden State Department. He is author of the book “The National Security Constitution,” and discusses his update, “The 21st Century National Security Constitution.”

Tom Lee is Leitner Family Professor of International Law at Fordham. Tom has a forthcoming book, “Justifying War,” and he also has extensive experience in the U.S. military in intelligence and in the Defense Department as special counsel.

Marty Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of Law and Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He is the author of the Restoring the Global Judiciary: Why the Supreme Court Should Rule in Foreign Affairs, and he is also a leading expert on the history of the presidency, especially at the Founding.

Trump’s interference in the 2020 Election and the January 6 insurrection were big reasons we started this podcast. In this episode, we get some updates on those investigations and ask some questions about some of the progress and the legal and political problems ahead. Helping us understand the covert jury reports, we talk to Anthony Michael Kreis, professor at Georgia State College of Law. Helping us understand the January 6 investigation and the importance of “overt acts,” we talk to Alan Rozenshtein, law professor at the University of Minnesota (co-host of Lawfare’s Rational Security podcast and co-author with Jed on a new article, “January 6, Ambiguously Inciting Speech, and the Overt-Acts Solution.”)

In this episode, Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel join Julie and Jed to mark fifty years since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision recognizing a woman’s right to abortion. After the Supreme Court overruled Roe last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, how should Roe be remembered?

Ghosts of Elections Past, Present, and Future:

We talked to Rick Pildes (NYU Law) a few days after the Moore v. Harper oral argument, the “independent state legislature” case that instilled many worries about the Court opening a door to state legislatures overriding the popular vote. While those fears were unfounded (so to speak), this case raises other concerns that federal courts will get more intwined with elections and will block state courts from enforcing their constitutions, overturning impermissible gerrymanders, and providing remedies.

In “Ghosts of Elections Past, Present, and Future,” we talk about how this case is haunted not only by the 2020 election and a fake electors scheme based on the Electors Claus(e), it is also haunted by ghost-of-election-past Bush v. Gore and the ghosts-of-election-future. We also ask, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The left embracing Rehnquist’s Bush v. Gore concurrence? Jed also observes a Festivus Airing of Grievances about conservatives’ originalism errors and the Democrats’ litigation strategy. There was barely enough historical evidence to sustain one hour of oral argument, but the Court made it last for what felt like eight. We also talk to Rick about election law in an era of fragmentation (North Pole-arization?)

Rick is the Sudler Family Professor at NYU Law School and a co-creator of the major casebook in this field, The Law of Democracy. He has served on President Biden appointed him to the President’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. As a lawyer, Pildes has successfully argued voting-rights and election-law cases before the United States Supreme Court, and was part of the Emmy-nominated NBC breaking-news team for coverage of the 2000 Bush v. Gore contest.