Your Weekly Constitutional

By Stewart Harris

What's Your Weekly Constitutional about?

Produced in partnership with James Madison's Montpelier, Your Weekly Constitutional is a public radio show featuring lively discussion of controversial constitutional topics, from Gay Rights to Gun Rights. Find us on Facebook and iTunes!

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Your Weekly Constitutional episodes:

08.16.2021
Episode 1: Good Night . . . and Good Luck
Well, it's been ten years. A good run. But all things must come to an end.
10.17.2020
The Constitution and 2020 - WETS Fundraiser
At last! A new episode! Well, kinda. We're not yet resuming production (sorry), but Wayne and Stewart got together via Skype to discuss some of 2020's most pressing issues. Their interview was part of WETS' 2020 fall fundraiser--so,...
07.03.2020
A Tale of Two Papers
Two of Stewart's students join us to discuss papers they wrote for his constitutional seminars. First, Jennifer Bolt tells us about the history of slavery and human trafficking among Asian immigrants. Then D.T. Christmas talks about, well, breasts. Join us!
06.03.2020
The Deep State
Is there such a thing? Well, there’s certainly something called the Administrative State, governed by something called administrative law. Stewart’s colleague, Akram Faizer, is writing a new article on it. He and Stewart discuss Akram's ideas and...
04.06.2020
Presidential Smackdown! Andrew Jackson v. Donald Trump
Donald Trump likes to compare himself to Andrew Jackson. So do his supporters. So do his opponents, for very different reasons. Are any of these comparisons valid? We ask a guy who should know: University of Tennessee historian...
04.06.2020
Exonerated! Part Two
This is Part Two of a two-part episode. In Part One, we told you about Kristine Bunch, who experienced the worst thing that could happen to any parent: the death of her son, Tony. Then we started to tell you what happened...
04.06.2020
Exonerated! Part One
Kristine Bunch experienced the worst thing that could happen to any parent: the death of her son, Tony. But then things got worse. Much worse. She was accused of his murder. She was accused of burning him to...
03.30.2020
The First Impeachment
Nope. Not Andrew Johnson. It's a guy named William Blount, who was kicked out of the United States Senate more than two hundred years ago. But, like Johnson, Blount was an East Tennessean. Perhaps there's something in the...
02.15.2020
Okay, Brexit. What Now?
Well, it happened. Brexit, that is. As of January 31, 2020, the UK is no longer a member of the EU. So . . . what's changed? And what happens next? Our go-to Brexit Guy, William Walton,...
02.15.2020
Does Tort Reform Violate your Right to a Jury Trial?
Appellate Attorney John Vail recently argued a case in the Tennessee Supreme Court presenting a very important issue: Does Tennessee’s $750,000 cap on "noneconomic" personal injury damages violate the Tennessee Constitution? This case could have a significant impact on...
02.15.2020
Defying the President
Remember the parade last fall? The parade of high federal officials lining up to testify before Congress in the impeachment inquiry? Now that the Senate has failed to remove Trump from office, it's payback time. Many of those officials...
02.15.2020
Fault Lines in the Constitution
Sanford Levinson is a law professor from Texas who is very critical of our Constitution’s “structural flaws.” We interviewed him several years ago on this topic. Now, he’s teamed up with his wife, Cynthia, an author of children’s...
01.06.2020
Why Impeach Donald Trump?
Donald Trump often claims that some folks have been trying to impeach him since the day he was sworn in. He's right. Stewart speaks with one of those folks, Ron Fein, of Free Speech for People. Ron's...
01.06.2020
The Ethically-Constrained President
No, not our current president. Another one, perhaps the greatest in our history: Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was anti-slavery, but he didn’t believe that the Constitution gave him the power to ban slavery where it existed. And Lincoln...
12.11.2019
Impeachment in Context
The air is, once again, heavy with talk of impeachment. It’s happened three times before (if you count Richard Nixon’s resignation, which you should). Stewart talks with his buddy Russell Riley from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where the...
12.11.2019
Virginia in the Vanguard
Recently, Stewart attended a conference at Montpelier focused upon the essential role that Virginia has played in establishing and maintaining representative democracy in North America and the pivotal year of 1619. Jon Alger, the President of James Madison University, also...
12.11.2019
Fighting White Supremacy
“Domestic terrorism” has been in the news a lot lately. Many of the mass shootings we’ve recently experienced seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by white supremacist ideology, perhaps with the intent to provoke widespread terror. This...
11.20.2019
Tariff Man!
Donald Trump calls himself Tariff Man, and he certainly seems to enjoy waging his trade wars. Has he exceeded his constitutional authority? What, precisely, is a tariff, anyway? And who has the power to impose them? Joel Trachtman...
10.25.2019
ERA in VA: The Battle Continues
Earlier this year, we told you about the push for Virginia to become the final necessary state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. That hasn't happened yet, but the battle continues. We speak with Virginia's Deputy Solicitor General, Michelle Kallen,...
10.03.2019
Democracy and Truth
Sophia Rosenfeld is a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. She's published an incisive and timely book about the fraught relationship between democratic governance and, well, the truth. Turns out that when it comes to politics--SPOILER ALERT--not everything you hear...
09.24.2019
Sacred Liberty
Steven Waldman has been writing about religion and spirituality for a long time. He is the co-founder of Beliefnet, a website devoted to such issues. More recently, he has written a book about the history of religious freedom...
09.11.2019
Jawing with Jemmy and Bantering With Bryan
Recently, Montpelier installed a time machine in the Potter Family Studios. Stewart had the honor of being the first to try it. So, of course, he set his dials for the founding era, and, of course, his first...
09.05.2019
Constitutional Migration
Birds migrate. So do monarch butterflies. And so do constitutions. So says A.E. "Dick" Howard, the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. And he should know--over the past fifty years,...
08.28.2019
Brexit Update, 2019, Part Two
We finish our two-part interview with our go-to guy on all things Brexit, British barrister William Walton of the University of Hertfordshire. Will Brexit happen, despite the lack of an agreement with the EU? What about Ireland? What about Scotland?...
08.28.2019
Brexit Update, 2019, Part One
The Queen has suspended Parliament at the request of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Is this the end of British democracy? Or just another quirk of that fascinating, amorphous thing called the British Constitution? We talk to our go-to guy...
08.22.2019
The Overseer's Cabin
Matthew Reeves, the Director of Archaeology at James Madison's Montpelier, tells us about his next big project: the reconstruction of the overseer's cabin. Montpelier doesn't hide its history as a slave plantation. It's one reason we're so very honored to...
08.11.2019
Vote for Us
Josh Douglas teaches at the University of Kentucky, where he studies voting in the United States. Despite the current political environment, he sees lots of good being done. He’s written about it in a new book, Vote for...
08.06.2019
The Transgender Ban
Is the ban on military service for transgender people unconstitutional? Eric Merriam thinks so. He’s a law professor at the University of Central Florida who previously worked for the Air Force, both as a Judge Advocate General Corps officer and...
08.04.2019
Abortion Update, 2019
What’s up with all the new laws on abortion? What do they contain? Why now? Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University, has written several books on abortion. She puts everything in historical context, and speculates on...
08.03.2019
How to Save the Supreme Court
Does the Supreme Court need saving? Ganesh Sitaraman thinks so. He teaches constitutional law at Vanderbilt University, and, like many of us, he is troubled by current political challenges to the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. Unlike most of...
07.26.2019
The Clinton 12
A year before Little Rock, twelve brave African-American students in Clinton, Tennessee, participated in the first court-ordered integration of an all-white high school after Brown v. Board of Education. Retired attorney Jerry Shattuck, who was a student at Clinton High at...
07.24.2019
Obstruction of Justice and the Omnipresnt OLC
Ever since the release of the Mueller Report, we’ve all been hearing about something called “obstruction of justice.” But what, precisely, does that mean? And what is this thing called the "OLC" that apparently prevented an indictment of...
07.20.2019
Seven Steps toward Revitalizing American Democracy
Many people bemoan the growing gaps in wealth and income in our country, as well as their negative effects on our political discourse and our trust in our government. Akram Faizer has some concrete proposals to fix at least...
07.19.2019
The Trials of Nina McCall
You’re young, innocent, female. Perhaps 18 years old. You’re walking down the street in your hometown on a fine spring day. A car pulls to the curb. A man gets out. He has a gun. And...
05.16.2019
Closin' Down Colleges
Professor Pat Baker of the University of Tennessee at Martin has noticed something troubling about small private colleges. They’re closing down. At an alarming rate. Why is this? And is there anything we can do about it? Some people have...
05.16.2019
Crushin' on Jemmy
Linda Monk has been on our show before, to discuss her wonderful books, "The Words We Live By" and "The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide." She was also this year's keynote speaker at Montpelier's celebration of Presidents' Day, where...
03.26.2019
Congressional Oversight
Since the Democrats overwhelmed the House of Representatives with their Blue Wave, there’s been a lot of talk about investigations and hearings. Investigations and hearings and even impeachment are part of something called “congressional oversight” of the Executive. Dean Ronald...
03.14.2019
National Emergency? What National Emergency?
Andrew Boyle works for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. He and Stewart start at the very beginning of a very current issue: What, precisely, constitutes a “national emergency?” Who gets to declare one?...
03.03.2019
The Schoolhouse Gate
Justin Driver is a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is concerned about the extent to which public school students are paddled, searched, stifled and otherwise denied their constitutional rights. He’s so concerned that he's written a book about...
02.25.2019
Second Amendment Update, 2019
We haven't heard much from the Supreme Court lately on the Second Amendment. That may soon change. So the Law Review at Lincoln Memorial University’s law school decided to host a symposium, bringing together leading Second Amendment scholars...
02.22.2019
Satan Update, 2019
Well, he’s at it again: Beelzebub and his minions are showing up at public buildings, demanding equal space with other religious displays. Doesn't this guy ever quit? Our First Amendment Guy, Doug McKechnie, tells us all about it. He and...
02.04.2019
Deforming Torts and Conserving Nature
“Tort Reform” takes many different forms. One way to “reform” tort law is to limit the damages that a plaintiff may receive, regardless of what the judge or jury considers appropriate. Recently, however, a federal court held that Tennessee’s limitation...
01.29.2019
Marijuana Update, 2019
Prohibition is a very constitutional subject, the focus of both the 18th and the 21st Amendments. Howard Wooldridge of Citizens Opposed to Prohibition joins us, again, to update us on his increasingly successful efforts to end the prohibition of...
01.25.2019
Teaching -- and Rejecting -- Hard History
Hilarie Hicks, a senior researcher at Montpelier, often encounters “hard history,” that is, history that we don’t necessarily like to think about. At Montpelier, most of the hard history involves slavery, which is featured prominently throughout the estate. But not...
01.19.2019
Resurrecting Montpelier
Jennifer Wilkoski Glass has one of the coolest jobs in the world: she’s part architect, part detective. She figures out what buildings used to look like, what they were made of, how they were constructed . . . and then...
01.02.2019
Say What?
Colleges and universities are supposed to be dedicated to the generation and dissemination of knowledge. They can’t accomplish that mission without academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Lately, however, there has been growing resistance to the idea of...
12.28.2018
People Like Us
The Blue Wave that recently swept over the House of Representatives and a number of state legislatures was powered largely by women, and resulted in a number of new elected officials who look a lot less white and a lot...
12.27.2018
ERA . . . in VA?
Remember the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment proposed in the Seventies designed to guarantee equal rights for women? It was never ratified — at least not so far. But a group of feminists in Virginia is determined to...
12.26.2018
Why Montpelier?
Why preserve a presidential home? Because history? Well, okay, that makes sense. But why a particular president's home? Why make the enormous effort, financial and otherwise? Dennis Kernahan is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Montpelier Foundation,...
12.26.2018
For Us? By Us?
Montpelier recently commissioned a national survey on the Constitution--not to measure our constitutional literacy, but to figure out what parts of the Constitution are working, and which parts aren't. The results, which can be broken down by race, gender, and...

What's Your Weekly Constitutional about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Your Weekly Constitutional episodes:

Episode 1: Good Night . . . and Good Luck

The Constitution and 2020 - WETS Fundraiser

A Tale of Two Papers

The Deep State

Presidential Smackdown! Andrew Jackson v. Donald Trump

Exonerated! Part Two

Exonerated! Part One

The First Impeachment

Okay, Brexit. What Now?

Does Tort Reform Violate your Right to a Jury Trial?

Defying the President

Fault Lines in the Constitution

Why Impeach Donald Trump?

The Ethically-Constrained President

Impeachment in Context

Virginia in the Vanguard

Fighting White Supremacy

Tariff Man!

ERA in VA: The Battle Continues

Democracy and Truth

Sacred Liberty

Jawing with Jemmy and Bantering With Bryan

Constitutional Migration

Brexit Update, 2019, Part Two

Brexit Update, 2019, Part One

The Overseer's Cabin

Vote for Us

The Transgender Ban

Abortion Update, 2019

How to Save the Supreme Court

The Clinton 12

Obstruction of Justice and the Omnipresnt OLC

Seven Steps toward Revitalizing American Democracy

The Trials of Nina McCall

Closin' Down Colleges

Crushin' on Jemmy

Congressional Oversight

National Emergency? What National Emergency?

The Schoolhouse Gate

Second Amendment Update, 2019

Satan Update, 2019

Deforming Torts and Conserving Nature

Marijuana Update, 2019

Teaching -- and Rejecting -- Hard History

Resurrecting Montpelier

Say What?

People Like Us

ERA . . . in VA?

Why Montpelier?

For Us? By Us?