Unprecedential

After fifteen months and 46 episodes, Unprecedential is packing up and going to the beach. Today’s episode features Adam and Elayne reflecting on their favorite conversations thus far. They also draw out some general lessons about constitutional governance from the wide-ranging i ...  Show more

The Bill of Rights provides a great number of protections for accused and convicted criminals: it promises trial by jury; it prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment. And in this system, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet few criminal indictments today are ...  Show more

From today’s vantage point, the Founding era often seems a time churning with decisive hopefulness. The 1789 Constitutional Convention certainly featured vehement debate, as Gary Schmitt and Joseph Bessette noted in our last episode. But optimism appeared to prevail: on the last ...  Show more

When the Constitutional Convention began in 1787, delegates were tasked with creating a government that could simultaneously avoid monarchy’s overreaches and the Articles of Confederation’s ineffectiveness. In other words, the Convention needed to craft a republican executive. Th ...  Show more

Since the 19th Amendment ratified women’s right to vote in 1920, the quest for women’s equality in America has taken many turns. But the philosophical lineage behind the legal and cultural debates about women’s rights remains visible in today’s disagreements. Intellectual descend ...  Show more