We the People

By National Constitution Center

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What's We the People about?

A weekly show of constitutional debate hosted by National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen where listeners can hear the best arguments on all sides of the constitutional issues at the center of American life.

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A Debate about Religious Li...

09.21.2023

How did America’s founders view religious liberty? What does it mean today? And to what does the Constitution require religious exemptions from generally applicable laws? Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty, and ...

We the People episodes:

09.21.2023 A Debate about Religious Liberty in America How did America’s founders view religious liberty? What does it mean today? And to what does the Constitution require religious exemptions from generally applicable laws? Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty, and ...
09.14.2023 The First Amendment on Campus and Online The National Constitution Center, in partnership with a coalition of leading free speech organizations, convened a National First Amendment Summit on September 13, 2023, to discuss the increasing threats to freedom of expression and to celebrate the opening of the ...
09.07.2023 The U.S. Supreme Court and Ethics Reform This summer, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would attempt to set ethics rules for the U.S. Supreme Court and a process to enforce them, including rules for transparency around recusals, gifts, and conflicts of interest. The bill, which ...
08.31.2023 Is President Trump Disqualified from Office Under the 14th Amendment? Two constitutional law scholars—Will Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen—recently published an in-depth article arguing that President Donald Trump is disqualified for running for reelection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. In this episode, law professors Mark Graber and Michael ...
08.24.2023 Montesquieu and the Constitution Described in The Federalist as “the celebrated Montesquieu,” Charles de Montesquieu was cited more often than any other author from 1760-1800. In what ways did his writings and ideas help shape the U.S. Constitution and the structure of American government? ...
08.17.2023 Civic Virtue and Citizenship Christopher Beem, author of The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy; Richard Haass, author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens; and Lorraine Pangle, author of Reason and ...
08.10.2023 Judge J. Michael Luttig on January 6 and the Indictment of President Donald Trump Earlier this month, President Trump was indicted in federal court in Washington, D.C. for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential elections. Judge J. Michael Luttig joins Jeffrey Rosen for a conversation about the constitutional and historical questions raised by the ...
08.03.2023 The Modern History of Originalism In this episode, a panel of libertarian and conservative scholars—J. Joel Alicea of the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, Anastasia Boden of the Cato Institute, and Sherif Girgis of Notre Dame Law School—explore the different strands of ...
07.27.2023 The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley David Waldstreicher’s The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley’s life and works. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, Wheatley became a ...
07.20.2023 Justice Gorsuch and Native American Law This past term, the Supreme Court handed down two major decisions about Native American law. In Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the Court ruled 5-4 that a treaty did not require the U.S. Government to take affirmative steps to secure water ...
07.13.2023 303 Creative and Other Key Cases From SCOTUS’s 2022-23 Term In a 6-3 ruling at the end of the 2022-23 term, the Supreme Court handed down a major First Amendment decision about the intersection of free expression rights and anti-discrimination laws in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The Court held that ...
07.06.2023 The Historical Legacy of Thomas Jefferson In a special Independence Day episode, scholars Akhil Amar of Yale Law School and Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia join host Jeffrey Rosen for a discussion on the historical legacy of founding father Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president ...
06.30.2023 Live from the Aspen Ideas Festival: 2022-23 Supreme Court Review This week, NCC President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderated a panel live from the Aspen Ideas Festival featuring three of America’s leading legal scholars: former deputy solicitor general and Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan, and ...
06.29.2023 The Supreme Court Rejects the Independent State Legislature Theory This week, the Supreme Court handed down a major decision relating to elections in America in the Moore v. Harper case. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court rejected the independent state legislature theory, finding that the Elections Clause does not ...
06.22.2023 Recapping Allen v. Milligan: The Court Upholds Section 2 of the VRA Earlier this month, the Supreme Court handed down a major voting rights decision in the Allen v. Milligan case. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and found that Alabama’s 2022 ...
06.15.2023 Presidents, Prosecutions, and the Rule of Law Last week, former President Donald Trump was indicted by the U.S. government for allegedly retaining, mishandling, and concealing classified documents after he left office. Charged with 37 criminal counts—including many that stem from the Espionage Act—Trump appeared in a Miami ...
06.09.2023 Artificial Intelligence, Defamation, and New Speech Frontiers As ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms have taken off, they’ve demonstrated exciting possibilities about the potential benefits of artificial intelligence; while at the same time, have raised a myriad of open questions and complexities, from how to regulate the ...
06.01.2023 New Amendments and the Future of Constitutional Reform Earlier this year, the National Constitution Center hosted an event in Miami, Florida, featuring a series of meaningful conversations about the Constitution with speakers of diverse perspectives. In this episode, we’re sharing one of those programs with you: A conversation ...
05.25.2023 The Shadow Docket Debate The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—cases in which the Court issues emergency orders and summary decisions without oral argument—has been subject to growing scrutiny. Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak of The New York Times and Jennifer Mascott of the George Mason ...
05.18.2023 Sal Khan on Civics, AI, and the Constitution The National Constitution Center and Khan Academy are partnering to create a free online Constitution 101 course premised on a simple, radical act: bringing together genuine experts who genuinely disagree about the most important constitutional issues facing our nation today; ...
05.11.2023 The Future of Affirmative Action The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing two cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that could end affirmative action in higher education. The National Constitution Center hosted a live program on May 4, 2023, featuring a ...
05.04.2023 Joan Biskupic on "Nine Black Robes" Last year's Supreme Court term was one of the most significant in recent history with landmark decisions and cases about abortion, guns, religious liberty, the administrative state, and more. In this episode, veteran Supreme Court reporter and CNN Legal Analyst, ...
04.27.2023 What are “True Threats” Under the First Amendment? Last week, the Supreme Court heard a case about a Colorado man, Billy Ray Counterman, who was sentenced to over four years in prison for stalking due to threatening Facebook messages that he sent to a singer named C.W. Counterman ...
04.21.2023 Should We Break Up With the Founders? Earlier this year, the National Constitution Center hosted an event in Miami, Florida, featuring a series of meaningful conversations about the Constitution with speakers of diverse perspectives. In this episode, we’re sharing one of those conversations with you. During an ...
04.13.2023 The Legality of Abortion Pills Last Friday, judges in Texas and Washington state handed down conflicting decisions on the legality of abortion medication pills. In Texas, a district judge invalidated the FDA’s decades-old approval of the widely used drug mifepristone. Late this Wednesday, the Court ...
04.06.2023 The Indictment of Former President Trump Earlier this week, on Tuesday, April 4, former President Donald Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. President Trump pleaded not guilty. ...
03.30.2023 Israel’s Constitutional Crisis In January 2023, the Israeli government under newly re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a series of legal reforms that set off a wave of protests and calls of a constitutional crisis. The reforms seek to empower the Israeli legislature, ...
03.23.2023 Can Courts End Partisan Gerrymandering? Last week, the North Carolina Supreme Court agreed to re-hear a case that found the state’s redistricting maps unconstitutional under the state’s constitution. The outcome of this decision could affect another case already before the U.S. Supreme Court, Moore v. ...
03.17.2023 Domestic Violence Laws and Gun Rights Earlier this month, in United States v. Rahimi, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down as unconstitutional a decades-old law barring people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. The ruling comes on the ...
03.09.2023 Women’s Rights in Early America March is women’s history month—and in commemoration of the celebration, this week we hosted a conversation exploring the story of the pursuit of women’s rights in early America. Sara Chatfield, assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver ...
03.02.2023 Presidential Power, Standing, and Student Loan Forgiveness This week the Supreme Court heard two separate legal challenges to a student loan forgiveness program proposed by the Biden administration: Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown. The plan aims to cancel up to $20,000 of student ...
02.24.2023 Google, Twitter, Section 230 and the Future of the Internet Three decades ago, in the fledgling days of the internet, Congress amended Section V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to grant broader legal protections to websites who host information from third parties. Part of Section 230 of that law ...
02.16.2023 The Slaughterhouse Cases at 150 In 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling decided The Slaughterhouse Cases, which narrowly interpreted the new Privileges and Immunities Clause of the recently ratified 14th Amendment. With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the decision, we’re ...
02.10.2023 Richard Stengel on Mandela: The Lost Tapes Nelson Mandela—born in South Africa in 1918—was an international freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped overturn the apartheid system of racial segregation and usher in democracy for his nation. After being convicted of sabotage and serving 27 ...
02.02.2023 The Public Debt Clause and the Debt Ceiling The Public Debt Clause of the 14th Amendment states: “The Validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law …. shall not be questioned.” Recent debates—including the most recent standoff between President Joe Biden and Speaker of ...
01.26.2023 Roe v. Wade at 50 This January marked the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the seminal and contentious decision recognizing abortion rights, which the Supreme Court overturned last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In this episode, scholars Mary Ziegler, author of ...
01.19.2023 The Constitutional and Moral Philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King In honor of Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2023, we pay tribute to Dr. King by discussing his historical legacy and constitutional and moral philosophy through his key writings, speeches, and intellectual and moral inspirations and influences. Guests Christopher ...
01.13.2023 The History of the Speaker of the House Last week, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California became the Speaker of the House, after 15 rounds of voting. It was the first time since 1923 that a Speaker was not elected on the first ballot. In this episode, we are ...
01.05.2023 Religious Liberty at the Founding In this episode, Professor Vincent Phillip Muñoz of Notre Dame Law discusses his newest book, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses. He is joined by Professor Michael McConnell ...
12.29.2022 Cicero and the Constitution How did Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman and philosopher, influence the Founding generation, the Constitution, and American political thought? Join Scott Nelson, author of Cicero, Politics, and the 21st Century; Benjamin Straumann, author of Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political ...
12.22.2022 FDR and the Transformation of the Supreme Court This month, we hosted a conversation about FDR and the Transformation of the Supreme Court. Legal historian Laura Kalman, author of FDR’s Gambit: The Court Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism; Ken Kersch, professor of political science at ...
12.16.2022 The Supreme Court Considers the Independent State Legislature Theory On December 7, 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Moore v. Harper, a case out of North Carolina about the power of state courts to review election regulations set by state legislatures. At the heart of the case ...
12.09.2022 Free Speech, Same-Sex Marriage, and Anti-Discrimination Laws On Monday, December 5, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the 303 Creative v. Elenis case. The petitioner, Lorie Smith, is an artist and website designer in Colorado, who says creating wedding websites for same-sex couples against her personal ...
12.01.2022 Justice William O. Douglas: Public Advocate and Conservation Champion The Honorable Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, joins the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown, senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, for a discussion on McKeown’s new ...
11.24.2022 The Indian Child Welfare Act and the 14th Amendment On Wednesday, November 9, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Haaland v. Brackeen, a case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act. Opponents of ICWA say that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, discriminating against non-Native ...
11.17.2022 The Battle for the American West For Native American Heritage Month, the National Constitution Center hotsed a discussion with historians H.W. Brands, author of The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America; Lori Daggar, author of Cultivating Empire: Capitalism, Philanthropy, and the Negotiation of ...
11.10.2022 Thomas Jefferson: The Reader and Writer Historians Andrew Browning, author of Schools for Statesmen: The Divergent Educations of the Constitutional Framers; Nancy Isenberg, author of Madison and Jefferson; and Thomas Kidd, author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh, explore Thomas Jefferson’s life and ...
11.03.2022 Affirmative Action and the 14th Amendment – Part 2 On Monday, October 31, 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for more than five hours in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard. In this pair ...
10.27.2022 Affirmative Action and the 14th Amendment – Part 1 On Monday, October 31, 2022, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard. In this pair of cases, the Supreme ...
10.21.2022 Pork, the Dormant Commerce Clause, and Legislating Morality Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in National Pork Producers v. Ross. The case is about a 2018 California ballot initiative, in which voters decided that the state should prohibit the in-state sale of pork from animals confined ...

Older episodes

We the People

What's We the People about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

We the People episodes:

A Debate about Religious Liberty in America

The First Amendment on Campus and Online

The U.S. Supreme Court and Ethics Reform

Is President Trump Disqualified from Office Under the 14th Amendment?

Montesquieu and the Constitution

Civic Virtue and Citizenship

Judge J. Michael Luttig on January 6 and the Indictment of President Donald Trump

The Modern History of Originalism

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

Justice Gorsuch and Native American Law

303 Creative and Other Key Cases From SCOTUS’s 2022-23 Term

The Historical Legacy of Thomas Jefferson

Live from the Aspen Ideas Festival: 2022-23 Supreme Court Review

The Supreme Court Rejects the Independent State Legislature Theory

Recapping Allen v. Milligan: The Court Upholds Section 2 of the VRA

Presidents, Prosecutions, and the Rule of Law

Artificial Intelligence, Defamation, and New Speech Frontiers

New Amendments and the Future of Constitutional Reform

The Shadow Docket Debate

Sal Khan on Civics, AI, and the Constitution

The Future of Affirmative Action

Joan Biskupic on "Nine Black Robes"

What are “True Threats” Under the First Amendment?

Should We Break Up With the Founders?

The Legality of Abortion Pills

The Indictment of Former President Trump

Israel’s Constitutional Crisis

Can Courts End Partisan Gerrymandering?

Domestic Violence Laws and Gun Rights

Women’s Rights in Early America

Presidential Power, Standing, and Student Loan Forgiveness

Google, Twitter, Section 230 and the Future of the Internet

The Slaughterhouse Cases at 150

Richard Stengel on Mandela: The Lost Tapes

The Public Debt Clause and the Debt Ceiling

Roe v. Wade at 50

The Constitutional and Moral Philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King

The History of the Speaker of the House

Religious Liberty at the Founding

Cicero and the Constitution

FDR and the Transformation of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court Considers the Independent State Legislature Theory

Free Speech, Same-Sex Marriage, and Anti-Discrimination Laws

Justice William O. Douglas: Public Advocate and Conservation Champion

The Indian Child Welfare Act and the 14th Amendment

The Battle for the American West

Thomas Jefferson: The Reader and Writer

Affirmative Action and the 14th Amendment – Part 2

Affirmative Action and the 14th Amendment – Part 1

Pork, the Dormant Commerce Clause, and Legislating Morality

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