This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Robinson Woodward-Burns about the role of state governments in making larger constitutional and political policies for the United States.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "When They Gather In The Hallowed Halls."

Robinson Woodward-Burns is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, where he researches and teaches on American constitutionalism, civil rights, federalism, DC politics and statehood, and slavery and abolition. His first book, Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics, was published in 2021 by Yale University Press. The book proposes that state constitutional reform has addressed national controversies over elections, voting and civil rights, and economic and labor regulation, steering national political development since the founding era. He has also published on abolitionism, constitutionalism, and social movements in the Journal of Politics, Polity, and the Tulsa Law Review. He has also written on these topics, with a special emphasis on DC statehood, in the Atlantic and the Washington Post.