How Our Constitution Works ... And Why It Doesn’t

Students strolling through the courtyard at Loyola Law School may occasionally be a bit baffled to hear a grown woman shouting, “Last call for a good time!” Two surprises: One, she’s talking about a law class. Second, she’s entirely not kidding.
 “I do want the students to love the law,” says Laurie Levenson, the author of the call and a longtime LLS professor. Her sometimes playful manner, she says, doesn’t make what goes on in her classrooms, or in the many real-world efforts she introduces students to, “any less serious or any less important. We always work harder on things we love.”
And while she makes sure students have fun — an annual Dress-as-Your-Favorite-Defendant Contest” is often the highlight of the year — much of what Levenson has invested herself in over the years is dead serious. 
Levenson leads the Fidler Institute, an annual symposium that brings the often isolated political and legal subcultures together. “We’ve had governors, mayors, wardens, defense attorneys, judges, prospective students. It’s not just lawyers,” she says. “If we’re going to make progress, we need to listen to each other. It’s become a home for evaluating and reforming the criminal justice system.”
She also co-founded the Project for the Innocent with a handful of then-students. “I’m insanely proud of it,” she says of the group’s record of saving people who’s spent a decade or three in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. “There’s nothing more rewarding than giving people their freedom.” 
Levenson, who grew up in Inglewood, was a member a high school class that included, she says, more people who’d go to prison than graduate from college. (She took a few courses at the local university where she now teaches.) After degrees from Stanford and UCLA and some apprentice work, she became a criminal lawyer. “It’s a little unusual for a former prosecutor like me to start an innocence project,” she says. Her worldview didn’t so much pivot as evolve. “The longer I was at Loyola, the more I could step back and get perspective on the legal system.” 
It’s also allowed her to stay involved in real-world issues. “Loyola prides itself in putting out good lawyers,” she says, in a variety of specialties. “But our commitment is to social justice. It’s about making the world a better place. And we don’t think that’s hokey.” 

A wide-ranging discussion with the chief legal affairs correspondent of The New York Times and the host of The Docket, a newsletter on legal developments.
According to Adam: I try to make legal materials accessible to readers by translating jargon into something like accessible prose. I aim to put lawsuits and court decisions into a larger context, staying alert to political realities and practical consequences. I draw on, among other things, legal scholarship and data-driven social-science research.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-liptak
 

Georgetown Law Professor Steve Vladeck joins the show to discuss his New York Times bestselling book The Shadow Docket. Steve a leading authority on the Supreme Court and his wildly popular Substack newsletter One First is essential reading for every citizen concerned with (and by) the nation's highest court.

On this episode of How Our Constitution Works ... And Why It Doesn't, we delve into a very timely and important topic: elections during wartime. 

We discuss the biggest cases of the recent term, covering voting rights, federalism, and presidential power in the Trump era.
 

In this episode we explore partisan primaries, a key factor in our highly polarized politics.

We discuss free speech under the First Amendment.
His biography: https://www.hoover.org/profiles/eugene-volokh
His recent article: http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/addiction.pdf (“Addiction to Constitutionally Protected Activity: Speech, Press, Addiction to Constitutionally Protected Activity: Speech, Press, and Religion”)

We discuss Melissa's fantastic new bestselling book, The U.S. ConstitutionA Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader.
 
Melissa Murray is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU. Her award-winning public law scholarship considers constitutional law, family law, and reproductive rights and justice. Murray has written extensively about the Supreme Court, the legal recognition of marriage and its alternatives, abortion, and the legal regulation of sex and sexuality. Her articles has appeared in the nation’s leading law reviews, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. She has also written widely for lay audiences, including two New York Times bestselling books, The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary (with Andrew Weissman) and The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader. Her writing has been cited by state and federal courts, and she has testified as an expert on constitutional law and reproductive rights. In 2019, she received the law school’s Podell Distinguished Teaching Award.
 
 

Two of the most important passages in the history of modern political affairs.

We analyze how the Constitution's power to declare war works ... and why it doesn't. Donald Trump's war with Iran charts new territory in this controversial area.