This episode of the series comes from the Democracy in Danger podcast, hosted by Will Hitchcock & Siva Vaidhyanathan, featuring Melissa Schwartzberg and Joseph Fishkin.

The U.S. Constitution is an 18th-century straitjacket. It’s almost impossible to amend, it gives outsize power to small states, and its meaning is subject to the whims of unelected and increasingly intransigent judges. So what’s new? Well, you might be intrigued to learn on this episode just how America might wrench itself out of that morass, short of trashing the Constitution altogether. With the 2022 midterms on the horizon, our two guests offer up a few ideas — some new, some as old as Athens.

Guests

Melissa Schwartzberg is a political theorist and the Silver Professor of Politics at New York University. Her work focuses on the historical origins of democracy and ancient Greek institutions. She is the author of Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule (2014, Cambridge University Press). Schwartzberg is a frequent contributor to Vox and the Washington Post.

Joseph Fishkin is a professor of law at the University of California–Los Angeles, and a specialist in constitutional law. His new book, with William Forbath, is The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy (2022, Harvard University Press). Earlier in his career, Fishkin clerked for Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. His work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review and the Supreme Court Review, among other leading journals. Fishkin also blogs at Balkinization. Follow him on Twitter @joeyfishkin.

Additional Information

Democracy in Danger Podcast

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