Can The Republican Party Successfully Orbanify the U.S.?

Some comparative reflections on the exceptional vulnerability of American democracy

This past year the U.S. experienced a transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. It was not a peaceful transfer of power. On January 6, a large and angry mob descended on the U.S. Capitol to “Stop the Steal” by obstructing the constitutionally mandated certification by Congress of the ...
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Can The Republican Party Successfully Orbanify the U.S.?

On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law

An excerpt exploring the meaning of treason and the present-day prevalence of alleging treason

As a professor of American constitutional law and legal history, I regularly answer questions for the media about legal issues. But for the most part, those calls tended to focus on constitutional law more generally and on other subjects I have written about, such as the Second Amendment or the ...
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On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law

This Is What Government Looks Like

As the winter’s Covid-19 surge pushes deaths past 500,000, the Biden administration focuses on policy

This week the United States passed the heartbreaking marker of 500,000 official deaths from COVID-19. President Biden held a ceremony to remember those lost, saying "On this solemn occasion, we reflect on their loss and on their loved ones left behind. We, as a Nation, must remember them so we ...
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This Is What Government Looks Like

“Carl Schmitt’s Comeback?”

Understanding Trump and global authoritarianism

As the saying goes: “that was then, but this is now.” I had little inkling that Schmitt would soon become pertinent to present-day political developments. With the dramatic worldwide emergence of authoritarian populism, Schmitt’s thinking seems disturbingly relevant. As the Cambridge jurist Lars Vinx has correctly noted, Schmitt’s significance today ...
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“Carl Schmitt’s Comeback?”

Don’t Believe the Republicans. The Fix is In

The only authority they respect is theirs

I know what Mitch McConnell said, but I’m not a fool. Neither are you. He continues to leak information about “his thinking” to reporters who in turn tell us the Senate minority leader believes a vote for Donald Trump’s guilt or innocence is a matter of conscience in his party, ...
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Don’t Believe the Republicans. The Fix is In

The Case for Impeachment

As Donald Trump’s second trial begins, Representative Raskin warns the Senate that to not convict is to invite future presidents to do whatever they need to do to hold on to power

The second impeachment trial for former president Donald J. Trump began on February 9, this time for incitement of insurrection against the American government. Still, the people who are really on trial are the 50 Republican senators judging Trump’s guilt. The impeachment trial, this time around, covered whether it is constitutional to ...
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The Case for Impeachment

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately

Our effort to create and nourish a “world-wide committee of democratic correspondence” began long before the coronavirus laid waste to our world. And as a world-wide network, our efforts have always involved a strong online component. For the web affords our far-flung group many opportunities for the sharing of ideas ...
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Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

The 1776 Report

Past Present Podcast, Episode 264

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: A day before President Trump left office, his administration issued “The 1776 Report” on American history, which President Biden promptly repudiated upon taking office. Natalia referred to her piece at NBC Think on the report and to her book, Classroom ...
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Embracing Democracy: The Storming of the US Capitol and the Mixed Lessons of Weimar Germany

An assassination that took place almost one hundred years ago echoes today

——— For the past four years, many have wondered when Donald Trump would finally have his “Have-you-no-sense-of-decency?” moment. That was, of course, the memorable rebuke uttered by attorney Joseph Welch on June 9, 1954, just after Joseph McCarthy’s insinuation that one of Welch’s colleagues had ties to a Communist organization. The ...
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Embracing Democracy: The Storming of the US Capitol and the Mixed Lessons of Weimar Germany