After a few months of summer break, the Supreme Court will begin its next term on Monday, October 3. And it could be another historic term. Some of the cases on the docket involve affirmative action, voting rights, free speech and religious liberty, and the Indian Child Welfare Act. Caroline Fredrickson of Georgetown Law and Adam White of George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School join host Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the key cases and potential themes, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s arrival, of this term. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected] Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly. You can find transcripts for each episode on the podcast pages in our Media Library.

This summer, as a continuation of the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Drafting Project, teams of leading conservative, libertarian, and progressive scholars  convened for a virtual constitutional convention. After debating and deliberating together, they drafted and proposed a series of amendments to the Constitution. In this episode, we share the presentation that the team leaders made on Monday, discussing the five amendments they all agreed upon. Caroline Fredrickson, senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice represented team progressive, Ilan Wurman, associate professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, represented team conservative, and Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, represented team libertarian. Other convention “delegates” included team progressive’s Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School; team libertarian’s Christina Mulligan of Brooklyn Law School and Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute; and team conservative’s  Robert George of Princeton University, Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School, and Colleen Sheehan of Arizona State University.  Read the amendments along with introductions by the team leaders here.  This program is presented in conjunction with the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Drafting Project. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected] Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

September 17 is Constitution Day in the United States, celebrating the day that members of the Constitutional Convention signed the document in Philadelphia in 1787. As a part of the National Constitution Center’s 2022 celebrations, we hosted a panel live at the NCC in Philadelphia called “Originalism: A Matter of Interpretation.” Emily Bazelon of The New York Times Magazine, Rich Lowry of the National Review, Steven Mazie of The Economist, and Ilan Wurman of Arizona State University joined host Jeffrey Rosen to discuss whether the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning, and if the Supreme Court is consistent in applying principles of originalism in its decisions.   Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected] Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

We have just launched an exciting project on the NCC’s website: The Founders’ Library. In it, you can read primary texts that span American constitutional history—from the philosophical works that influenced the Founding generation, to the most important speeches, essays, books, pamphlets, petitions, letters, court cases, landmark statutes, and state constitutions that have shaped the American constitutional tradition. To ensure nonpartisan rigor and ideological diversity, we assembled a group of leading scholars from diverse perspectives to help choose the sources included in the document library. Two of those scholars—Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College and Jonathan Gienapp from Stanford University—join host Jeffrey Rosen today to discuss some of the early texts from the Founders’ Library. Read Professor Rahe’s picks from the Intellectual Foundations of the American Founding (Before 1750): Thucydides — Thucydides, The War between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians (ca. 431-400 BC) Bacon & Hobbes (together) — Francis Bacon, “Selected Excerpts” (1620) and Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651) James Harrington — James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) Locke – religious toleration, right to revolution — John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) and Two Treatises on Government (1690) Hume & Adam Smith — David Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1741-58) and Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) Montesquieu — Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)  Read Professor Gienapp’s picks from the Founding Era (1750-1790): John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (1768) William Cushing, Instructions to the Jury in the Quock Walker Case, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Nathaniel Jennison (1783) James Iredell, To the Public (1786) George Mason, Objections to the Constitution of Government formed by the Convention (1787)   Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected] Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

On August 24th, the White House announced a plan to forgive $20,000 in student loan debt for borrowers who received Pell Grants, and $10,000 for other borrowers—all of whom must meet certain income qualifications. The Biden administration says the plan falls under The HEROES Act of 2003. Those in opposition of the plan say it’s presidential overreach, and unfair to those who didn’t go to college or already paid back their loans. Fred Lawrence of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Charles C. W. Cooke of the National Review join host Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the legal issues on all sides of the loan forgiveness plan.   Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected]  Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.