Newsom’s Gun Control Amendment Is the Most Important Idea in U.S. Politics

A Violent Country Desperately Needs Constitutional Protection to Fight This Epidemic. How Serious Is the Governor?

Gavin Newsom’s new campaign for a 28th Amendment is the most important political idea in the country today.

But you wouldn’t know that from reading media reports following the California governor’s proposal to enshrine four popular gun control measures in a new federal constitutional amendment.

Instead, political opponents dismissed Newsom’s proposal as at best a waste of time, and at worst a dereliction of gubernatorial duty. Reporters called it a mere tactic in his rhetorical and legal war with the red states. Republicans labeled it a distraction from his job running California. …

by Joe Mathews | June 20, 2023

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

The First Amendment Is for Everyone—Which Makes a Mess

by Jackie Mansky | February 25, 2022

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 …

Why ‘Treason’ Usually Isn’t Treason

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

by Carlton F.W. Larson | September 30, 2020

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 …

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

by Allan J. Lichtman | October 8, 2018

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

By Reed Johnson | August 1, 2018

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 …

Is California Too Exceptional to Be Part of the U.S.?

We're a Progressive Check on Red-State Power—but We Unbalance the Constitutional System

By Joe Mathews | September 25, 2017

America is terribly polarized.

And it’s all on account of California.

The trouble is not merely that California itself is such a politically polarized place. Or that California contributes to the many …

U.S. Constitution