Episode 6: Snap – You’re in Lisbon

February 17, 2021

The perils of the “lame duck,” and some proposed solutions.  Probably the only time Akhil suggests we become “more British.”

The many dangers of the lame duck that gave rise to our “Bullets Dodged” series raise the question – do we really need a lame duck period at all?  Akhil and Andy recall the “secession winters” of the past and how 2020 shared aspects of all of them; and of course, we have suggestions for how to solve it.  As for Lisbon, this is not the first episode of ours that references “Casablanca…”

Episode 5: Menus Without Eating – Special Guest Prof. Philip Bobbitt

February 12, 2021

Special Guest Professor Philip Bobbitt, engages Akhil in spirited debate on the constitutionality of Trump’s impeachment trial.

Philip Bobbitt is a top academic expert on Impeachment.  He has led the lonely chorus of those who have maintained that Trump’s second impeachment trial is unconstitutional, since it takes place when he is no longer President.  Akhil and Professor Bobbitt debate this and other points crucial to the trial – with surprising results. News flash: opinions change, and consensus is nearer.  One can only wish the Senate had similarly open minds.

Episode 4: Ex-Pres Ex-perts

February 10, 2021

Donald Trump is on trial; Akhil and Andy make sure you are armed and ready.

The impeachment trial has begun.  We depart from our leisurely time-independent pace to go nearly live and address the most important issues.  Can you try an ex-president?  Is this really about “insurrection?”  What are “high crimes and misdemeanors?”  How can Presidents Obama, Bush, et all help? Akhil and Andy also discuss their recent op-ed from the NY Daily News earlier this week.

Episode 3: Bullets (Not) Dodged, Part 3 – Shocked, Shocked!

February 3, 2021

The Presidency – the great and the not-so-great; the person or the platform: the voter’s choice, and the country’s consequences.

The quadrennial choice Americans make was particularly fateful in 2016, and Akhil asserts that itself this was a bullet not dodged. The unique nature of the American Presidency places enormous burdens on the office’s holders, but so, too, does it ask much of the American people as they exercise the franchise. What makes a good president? What should Americans consider, and how can they frame the choice? Akhil and Andy find lessons in the early republic, and the early Akhil, for that matter. And of course, a few words about the recent occupant of the office. Should we have known what we were in for?

Episode 2: Bullets Dodged, Part 2 – The Faithless and the Feckless

January 27, 2021

More constitutional minefields on the road from Election to Inauguration.  Faithless electors; SCOTUS follies; Ministers and ministerial duties; The West Wing, again.

Continuing our discussion of the various disasters that might have befallen America during the election period, this time exploring the period after the election and before the Electoral College, and then as Congress prepared to meet and certify the vote.  The toxic mixture of the Greeley precedent and Faithless Electors was rendered a veritable Chernobyl by a 2020 Supreme Court decision that Akhil finds, shall we say, imperfect.  Life imitates art (The West Wing, again)?  Actually, it’s more frightening than that.

Episode 1: Inauguration: Bullets Dodged

January 20, 2021

Introducing “Amarica’s Constitution;” Electoral pitfalls in the Constitution and the election of 2020 – Part I.

It didn’t feel smooth, but believe it or not, many things that might have gone wrong in the recent election – didn’t.  For example, what happens if a candidate dies on or about Election Day? Akhil and Andy discuss how issues of election timing, the electoral college, the Greeley Precedent, presidential succession, the 12th and 25th Amendments, and partisan politics make for a witches’ brew that is denying Professor Amar his beauty sleep.