Season 5, Episode 38 (Show 247): Dereliction of Duties
October 8, 2025
As the legality of Trump’s immense tarrifs approaches its imminent reckoning at the Supreme Court, Professor Amar presents an argument from history, precedent, structure, and text.
CLE Credit Available for this episode from podcast.njsba.com.
Tarrifs may be Trump’s favorite word, but it remains to be seen if he has the authority he claims to employ them. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in November, and ahead of this, Professor Amar takes you inside the argument. He offers the history and takes us through an originalist approach, a textual approach, a structural approach, a precedential approach, and presents the case as an advocate might. Listen to a possible amicus brief in the making; a possible opening argument in outline and in any case, arm yourself with an understanding of the issues in this potentially momentous case.
(LAWYERS AND JUDGES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT by visiting podcast.njsba.com after listening.)
Show Notes:
Season 5, Episode 37 (Show 246): A Tale of Three Cities
October 1, 2025
Professor Amar’s travels take him to the cities of our current constitutional angst, including Portland and Salt Lake City, and this is discussed at a live podcast taping at the Yale Club of NYC.
CLE Credit Available for this episode from podcast.njsba.com.
Professor Amar visits cities that are in the constitutional news these days: Portland, where the military pays an uninvited visit; Salt Lake City, where gunfire continues this year’s alarming litany of political assassination also seen in Minnesota and elsewhere. Akhil’s epic trilogy, with Born Equal now taking its place as the second volume, speaks to how our history shows us the constitutional principles at work – or not at work – in these and other happenings in our nation. And he speaks of New Haven, where work has been and is still done that enables these lessons to be told. All this takes place during a live podcast taping at the Yale Club of New York City, with a live and lively audience that treats us, and you, to their questions and comments.
(LAWYERS AND JUDGES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT by visiting podcast.njsba.com after listening.)
Show Notes:
Season 5, Episode 36 (Show 245): Out in the World
September 24, 2025
Now that Born Equal is available, readers and scholars are having at it. We present a symposium with Professors Kate Shaw and Kermit Roosevelt weighing in on the book, having read advance copies, and Professor Amar’s responses.
CLE Credit Available for this episode from podcast.njsba.com.
Born Equal is being read – by academics, pundits, historians, and citizens. Reaction has begun to pour in, and discussion has begun. In this episode, we bring you some of the very best flavor of such discussion – an academic symposium held at Penn Carey Law School on the book. Professors Kate Shaw and Kermit Roosevelt each read the work with great care and deliver extensive remarks on the book, pointing out themes and insights – and raising questions. Oh, so many questions. Professor Amar then responds in the moment, and students in the audience pose their own queries. The constitutional conversation continues, and is never complete. But this one in particular will go on, as there were so many important questions raised that they could never be answered in this short interval. But you will thrill to deep engagement and fascinating perspectives from this all-star panel of great thinkers.
(LAWYERS AND JUDGES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT by visiting podcast.njsba.com after listening.)
Show Notes:
Season 5, Episode 35 (Show 244): Blast Off!
September 17, 2025
Born Equal is published, and we mark the event – and Constitution Day – with a live event from Princeton University as Professor Amar proudly introduces some of the many themes from the book.
CLE Credit Available for this episode from podcast.njsba.com.
Happy Constitution Day! And Happy Born Equal Publishing Day! The book tour is underway, and we treat you to an event held live at Princeton University. Professor Amar speaks about the bridge from the last book to this one, and in doing so, the importance of the uniquely grand sweep of his project becomes apparent – as themes from The Words That Made Us merge crucially with the new revelations of Born Equal to shed light on some of the most important constitutional questions in American history. The audience gets involved, too, with questions that might well be your questions. And this is just the beginning, as some amazing events have already taken place that will fill our podcasts with debate and insight in the weeks and months to come.
(LAWYERS AND JUDGES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT by visiting podcast.njsba.com after listening.)
Show Notes:
Season 5, Episode 34 (Show 243): The Big Equal
September 10, 2025
Born Equal hits the shelves next week, and with it a new lens to look at birth equality and all it implies. We begin the project of explaining and exploring this grand vision.
CLE Credit Available for this episode from podcast.njsba.com.
With the imminent publication of Born Equal, we explore Lincoln’s grand vision of equality as it played out during and after his life. The new book goes further still, offering an expansive though still relentlessly originalist view of this constitutional vision. And now Professor Amar sees this vision through with even greater implications for the 160 years since his death and into the future. The new book introduces, and this podcast and those to follow explore, a new unifying thread that gives even greater coherence to the Constitution, as amended and as understood through this momentous scholarly effort.
(LAWYERS AND JUDGES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT by visiting podcast.njsba.com after listening.)
Show Notes:
Season 5, Episode 33 (Show 242): The 64 Percent Question
September 3, 2025
Courts are reacting to the many activities of the President – on tarrifs, on firing, on voting, and more. We discuss.
CLE Credit Available for this episode from podcast.njsba.com.
Trump is keeping the courts active; this week saw a ruling against many of the widespread tarrifs he has sought to impose, and the Fifth Circuit upheld his dismissal of an NLRB member. Meanwhile, a Fed governor was dismissed, supposedly for cause. And the social media announcements of supposedly impending executive orders imposing voting requirements such as voter ID kept coming. And there’s more. We try to keep it all straight for you, identify the constitutional issues, and look at what the Courts might do. Meanwhile, your fantastic response to the impending Born Equal release is noted, appreciated, and we respond to it.
(LAWYERS AND JUDGES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT by visiting podcast.njsba.com after listening.)