How did we get here? That’s one of the big questions that I find myself asking today as I think about the past decade or so of our government. We’ve seen Presidents from both parties exercising broad powers—sometimes doing things I agree with, sometimes doing things I very much disagree with; sometimes provoking major political or legal controversy, and sometimes not. 

How much can we learn from our own history? Does the present-day “battle of the branches” have antecedents in the past? What were those past battles about? Who won them? And how did those battles set us on to the path we’re on today? 

To try to find out the answers to those questions. I’m here with two of my colleagues at the University of Chicago – Alison LaCroix, the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law, and Jim Sparrow, an associate professor in history and the college. They both study American history. Alison has published two books – The Ideological Origins of American Federalism and most recently The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms. Jim’s book is Warfare State, and he is completing a sequel: Sovereign Discipline: The American Extraterritorial State in the Atomic Age as well as a third book project: The New Leviathan: Rethinking Sovereignty and Political Agency after Total War. 

I’ve brought them here to help me understand the broad sweep of power shifts throughout American history. Let me add that in my experience many expert historians can have something of a narrow focus, because history requires an intense immersion in a lot of details. But Jim and Alison are especially great in their ability to consider the big picture – and therefore to help us understand where we are today and where we’re going.

Have a listen.