Episodes
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Governments derive powers from “the consent of the governed.” Don’t they? In one of the earliest constitutional cases, the Supreme Court seemed to say so. But the Eleventh Amendment threw a wrench in it all, making it exceptionally difficult for us to hold the government accountable in the courts when it violates our rights. In Episode 3, Georgetown Law Professor Randy Barnett, NYT columnist and author Jesse Wegman, and Cato Institute Senior Vice President for Legal Studies Clark Neily discuss Chisholm v. Georgia.
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To the Framers, happiness didn’t just mean fun. It meant the pursuit of a good life through hard work, discipline, and constant self-assessment. In Episode 2, National Constitution Center CEO Emeritus Jeffrey Rosen, attorney and author Timothy Sandefur, and Supreme Court advocate Alan Gura tell us what the “pursuit of happiness” meant, how that promise has been enshrined in the Constitution, and how the Supreme Court has all but gutted it in one of the most despised decisions of all time: The Slaughterhouse Cases.
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Missing episodes?
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A man rushing on horseback in the dead of night to break a deadlocked vote. A printer faced with the terrifying ramifications of printing an incendiary document. And beleaguered troops—underfed, underpaid, and on the verge of defeat.
In hindsight, the American Independence seems inevitable. But at the time, it was anything but. In the opening episode, Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis, historian and biographer Richard Brookhiser, and Professor of American History Dermot Trainor describe the origins of the first great American dissent: The Declaration of Independence.
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In Dissent traces the founding ideals of the Declaration of Independence from the revolutionary moment of their birth to the courtrooms where they’ve been tested, twisted, and sometimes abandoned. Each episode pairs vivid historical storytelling—a man riding through the night to break a deadlocked vote, a printer setting type for a document that could get him hanged—with landmark Supreme Court cases that reveal the distance between America’s founding promise and its legal reality.
