Independent State Legislature Theory Explained with Akhil Reed Amar, Part 2

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Here's Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon continues her conversation with constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar. They shift gears a little from the U.S. Constitution to a discussion about the controversy around Independent State Legislature Theory. You may have heard it talked about in connection with the upcoming supreme court case, Moore vs. Harper, but the nuances can be tricky to understand. Amar explains the obscurities of the theory and why state legislatures should not be considered independent from the state constitutions that gave them birth.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome, delighted to have you with me here today and this conversation is a continuation from last episode in which I am chatting with one of America's best known constitutional law scholars,
0:13.4	Akeel Reed Amar.
0:15.0	And today's conversation is focused on a very important topic
0:20.6	the Supreme Court is going to be hearing in its upcoming term. So let's
0:24.4	dive in because here's where it gets interesting. I'm Sharon McMahon and
0:30.2	welcome to the Sharon Sayso podcast.
0:35.0	I would love to talk for just a moment about an upcoming Supreme Court case that is going to be heard in the new term.
0:44.3	The new term will begin in October.
0:45.7	I don't believe it has a date set yet for oral arguments.
0:49.0	But that case is more versus Harper.
0:51.8	And it's about something you alluded to earlier about
0:55.1	independent state legislature theory and this is something that is of concern to me
1:12.0	if Americans are concerned about democracy as a whole, I think this is something that should be of interest to them as well. And I wonder, first of of all if you can touch on what that is and also what are your
1:18.0	viewpoints and thoughts on this case.
1:20.0	Right. My personal views do not always track my constitutional views, but on this one they do currently, but I know the world could change and I'm going to stick to my constitutional views even if the party power configuration flips as it easily could flip in a nutshell here's the issue
1:39.6	The current case is about
1:49.8	Congressional districts, but the real thing to keep your eye on is about the electoral college. There are two different provisions in the Constitution. One's about congressional elections in Article 1.
1:55.9	One is about presidential elections in Article 2.
2:00.2	And the case right now is actually about congressional elections,
2:04.0	but the real thing to be worried about is presidential elections.
2:06.8	So that's how I'm going to actually introduce the issue to our audience.
2:11.0	So there are about seven or eight states, six seven, eight states that are
	...

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