In commemoration of Constitution Day 2017 and the launch of our "A Madisonian Constitution for All" initiative, this episode explores what James Madison would think of modern American government. Leading constitutional scholars Steve Calabresi and Vikram Amar explore the questions: What kind of public discourse did Madison think the American people should share? How did he hope Congress would function? How did he think republican government should work and why did he prefer it over direct democracy? And how are those aspects of Madison's vision being realized or thwarted today? They also propose some reforms to today's government that they think could help resurrect Madisonian values. Jeffrey Rosen hosts.
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PARTICIPANTS
Steve Calabresi is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He is also the Chairman since 1986 of the Federalist Society's Board of Directors. He is a co-author on three books The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush; The Constitution of the United States (3rd edition); and The U.S. Constitution and Comparative Constitutional Law: Texts, Cases and Materials among other works.
Vikram Amar is Dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He has produced several books and over 60 articles in leading law reviews, and is a co-author (along with Akhil Reed Amar and Steven Calabresi) of the upcoming edition of the six-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (6th ed. 2021).
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, the only institution in America chartered by Congress “to disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.”
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