The Reconstruction Papers

Written by Liberal Currents publisher Adam Gurri, read by Tessa Flannery.
Drawing inspiration both from peer countries with federalist systems developed after America's and from the basic logic of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, Gurri proposes a radical overhaul of the relationship between federal and state governments on the one hand, and state and local governments on the other.
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Written by constitutional lawyer Robert Black, read by Tessa Flannery.
Black examines the hard problem of amending the Constitution—in particular, the hard problem of fixing the very process by which the Constitution is amended.
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Written by attorney and mediator Judith Starr, read by Tessa Flannery.
A proposal to rebuild the system of watchdog agencies that were put in place after Watergate, as well as to reform the Privacy Act. The toothlessness of these measures in the second Trump term has revealed vulnerabilities of the system that Congress has the tools to fix.
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Written by Marquette University law professor Patrick J. Sobkowski , read by Tessa Flannery.
If there is anything we have learned from the Trump era, it is that the checks on executive unilateralism have all but evaporated. Sobkowski proposes some much needed reforms to roll back executive dominance.
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Written by University of Illinois political-science professor Nicholas Grossman, read by Tessa Flannery.
This essay is unique among those in this collection in its focus on the short term. Before any more expansive and permanent work can be done, we will need to move beyond our immediate democratic crisis. Grossman lays out the path to do so, once Republicans have been defeated electorally.

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Written and read by Liberal Currents publisher Adam Gurri.
The old methods are no longer enough. The status quo is dead. This chapter introduces The Reconstruction Papers, a project to provide bold visions for a liberal democratic future.

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