We the People

We the People

A weekly show from the National Constitution Center hosted by Julie Silverbrook and Tom Donnelly where listeners can hear the best arguments on all sides of the constitutional issues at the center of American life.

Episodes

October 15, 2026 • 47 mins
Historian David O. Stewart joins to discuss his latest book, The Democracy We Must Keep, which examines the foundational ideas in nine key founding-era documents that shaped America's constitutional democracy. Stewart discusses how the founders sought to create a government strong enough to govern but constrained enough to protect liberty, the compromises and debates that shaped the Constitution, and the warnings about political pa...
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The National Constitution Center previews the Supreme Court’s 2026-2027 term. Masha Hansford, partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, Amy Howe, co-founder of SCOTUSblog, and Greg Stohr, Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News, join to break down the biggest cases on the docket, unpack the constitutional questions at stake, and explore the issues that could have the biggest impact on the Court in the year ahead. Tom Donnelly, ...
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October 1, 2026 • 46 mins
Frederick Douglass is remembered as one of the most powerful orators in American history, a leading voice for abolition, and an extraordinary champion of equal rights. He was also one of the 19th century’s most important thinkers about freedom of speech. For Douglass, free speech was not simply a constitutional protection against government censorship. It was a fundamental human right, an indispensable weapon in the struggle ...
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In this episode, Joseph Blocher of Duke University School of Law and Clark Neily of the Cato Institute trace the ongoing debates over the Second Amendment. They analyze recent Supreme Court decisions on this key provision, preview a case on the Court’s docket this term, and look ahead to the issues on the horizon. Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at the National Constitution Center, moderates. Resources  The Second A...
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In this special Constitution Day episode, author William Magnuson discusses his latest book, The Just and the Good: How Law Made the Western World, which is a sweeping tour of the history of the law. He explores how the pillars of the rule of law were built—from the courts of ancient Athens to the United States Constitution, to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement. Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at...
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September 10, 2026 • 71 mins
Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School and Eugene Volokh, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and UCLA School of Law, discuss the First Amendment and the rapidly evolving speech landscape—from social media and artificial intelligence to college campuses and the press. Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at the National Constitution Center...
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In this episode, Mary Sarah Bilder, Founders Professor at Boston College Law School, explores the history of rights and liberties in America and the origins of the Bill of Rights. She traces how ideas about rights developed before, during, and after the American Revolution, shaped debates over the Constitution, and ultimately led to the adoption of the first 10 amendments. She also explores how those a...
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In a recent decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that law enforcement’s use of a geofence warrant, which collected identity and location data from mobile phone users, violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Professor Orin S. Kerr of Stanford University unpacks the decision in Chatrie v. United States and explores what i...
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In this episode, prize-winning author and historian Fergus M. Bordewich discusses his latest book, Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future, which explores the story of the nation’s 100th birthday and the first world’s fair. Bordewich traces the lives of President Rutherford B. Hayes, the inven...
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When Americans think about the Declaration of Independence, we tend to remember its most famous words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and its promise of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But to fully understand the Declaration we also need to read the section most Americans skip: its 27 grievances against King George III. For the founding generation, these grievances were not sim...
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The Supreme Court's latest term featured landmark decisions on executive power, birthright citizenship, voting rights, and more. But beyond the headlines, what did the term tell us about the Roberts Court itself? In this episode, Masha Hansford and Jonathan Adler examine the justices' opinions to explore the defining decisions, shifting coalitions, and influential concurrences and dissents that shaped the term. Toget...
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July 30, 2026 • 58 mins
In this episode, Nadine Strossen, New York Law School professor emerita and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Jacob Mchangama, the founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech, discuss the history, enduring debate, and ongoing importance of free expression in our changing world. Julie Silverbrook, chief content and learning officer at ...
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In this episode, legal scholars Michael Ramsey and Jed Shugerman the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook, which address the president’s authority to remove members of the executive branch. They trace the history of presidential removal power from the founding era through the Court’s 1935 landmark Humphrey’s Execu...
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July 16, 2026 • 48 mins
In this episode, legal scholars Jonathan Adler, Greg Garre, Katherine Mims Crocker, and Howard Wasserman discuss the state of civil discourse inside the Supreme Court and in public debate about the Court. Julie Silverbrook, chief content and learning officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates. This conversation was recorded live in Philadelphia on July 7, 2026, as part of the...
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In this episode, legal scholars Gillian Metzger, Julian Mortenson, and Ilya Somin discuss the Supreme Court’s approach to executive power in recent decisions. Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at the National Constitution Center, moderates. This conversation was recorded live in Philadelphia on July 7, 2026, as part of the National Constitution Center’s 2026 Supreme Court Review, which is prese...
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In this episode, Richard Epstein and Martha Jones discuss the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Trump v. Barbara, which struck down President Trump’s Executive Order on birthright citizenship. At issue in the case was whether the Constitution guarantees citizenship to children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the Unite...
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In this episode, David Blight, Robert P. George, and Annette Gordon-Reed explore the enduring ideas at the core of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—including equality, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and government by consent—and examine how those principles have been debated, interpreted, and contested over time. Moderated by Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar a...
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The National Constitution Center recently published The Promise of America: Reflections on Our Enduring Ideals (Simon & Schuster), a keepsake collection of essays bringing together leading thinkers from across perspectives to reflect on the ideals at the heart of the American experiment and what those principles have meant across generations of American life. In this episode, Professor Eric Slauter disc...
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If you ask Americans to name the signers of the Declaration of Independence, they will probably mention John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. But what about the other 52 delegates from the 13 colonies who signed the document?  Men like Thomas McKean, Lyman Hall, George Walton, Francis Lewis, Benjamin Rush, and Roger Sherman? Historian Carol Berkin, ...
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In this episode, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, retired, honorary co-chair of the National Constitution Center, joins to discuss The Promise of America: Reflections on Our Enduring Ideals, a new keepsake volume from the National Constitution Center. Justice Breyer, who wrote the book’s foreword, reflects on the enduring constitutional ideals explored in the volume and their conti...
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