In America Talk Isn’t Cheap, It’s Free

The First Amendment Is for Everyone—Which Makes a Mess

The First Amendment protects you. The First Amendment also protects your enemies. While the volume of today’s battles may be louder, the right to free speech remains a foundational aspect of American democracy. That was the conclusion of a panel of experts assembled at the ASU California Center in downtown L.A. for the Zócalo/ASU Cronkite School event “Does the First Amendment Still Protect Free Speech?”

Los Angeles Times editorial writer Carla Hall, who moderated the discussion, kicked it off with the words of University of Michigan legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon, …

The Historian and the Murderer | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Historian and the Murderer

A Croatian Historian's Death Ultimately Put Our Profession on Trial

On May 14, 2018, I was led into a nondescript courtroom in Kew Gardens, Queens to testify at a murder trial. I am a historian who loves details, and the …

Why ‘Treason’ Usually Isn’t Treason | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Why ‘Treason’ Usually Isn’t Treason

The Constitution Defines Treason Narrowly. That Hasn’t Stopped the Overblown Rhetoric

The last four years have been a strange time to be a scholar of American treason law. The members of this tiny (and I mean really tiny) group used to …

The Supreme Court Gets Ready to Remake America, But How?

Legal Scholars Foresee Corporations and Criminal Defendants Gaining Protections, While Reproductive Rights and Affirmative Action Wither

The United States Supreme Court could use the power it has over American life to identify new protections for criminal defendants and for people whose privacy has been invaded by …

Suppressing Voting Rights Is as Old as the Republic—But the Tactics Keep Changing 

Discriminatory State Constitutions, Poll and Literacy Taxes, and Now Photo ID Laws All Have Been Used to Keep Ballots From the Less Powerful 

The more that efforts to suppress voting rights in America change, the more they remain the same.

From the earliest days of the republic to the present, politicians have sought to …

Why America Keeps Battling to Live Up to the 14th Amendment

From Its Post-Civil War Origins to Today's Immigration Debates, the Constitutional Guarantee of Equal Protection and 'Birthright Citizenship' Has Been Bitterly Contested

The first clause of the 14th Amendment is a scant 28 words long. Yet when the amendment was adopted on July 9, 1868, it advanced the crucial task of turning …