LGM Podcast: Not Game of Thrones Edition!
By In our latest podcast, I interview George Lovell, author of the fantastic new book This Is Not Civil Rights. In addition to his new book, which examines the letters ordinary citizens wrote to the fledgling civil rights section of FDR’s Department of Justice, we discuss the recently completed Supreme Court term and a little baseball.
Since even my new office computer doesn’t have a webcam, the podcast is designed for the classic podcast format. But it’s available on YouTube as well:
Other works cited:
- Legislative Deferrals, George’s now-classic first book on Congress, the courts, and American labor.
- George mentioned Mark Tushnet’s Taking the Constitution Away From the Courts. I forget if I cited it directly or not, but I’ll add that a lot of my thinking about judicial power here was strongly informed by Tushnet’s The New Constitutional Order.
- I also mention Emily Zackin’s new book Looking For Rights In All the Wrong Places. Zackin argues that the idea that “positive” rights are absent from American constitutionalism vanishes if you look at state constitutions. As George says, this insight shouldn’t be confused with the (obviously false) argument that states are better at protecting fundamental rights — the forces hostile to civil rights have generally preferred decentralized government for a reason. But as I read it this isn’t Zackin’s argument, and her important book is a useful corrective to the idea that American constitutionalism is uniquely focused on “negative” rights.
Enjoy!
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