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We the People

Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy

We the People

National Constitution Center

News, News Commentary, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On July 6th, the National Constitution Center hosted a panel to present the reports of teams participating in the Center’s Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy project. The project brings together three teams of leading experts— conservative, libertarian, and progressive—to identify institutional, legal, and technological reforms that might address current threats to American democracy.  Team conservative is comprised of Sarah Isgur, Jonah Goldberg, and David French—all of The Dispatch. Team libertarian includes Clark Neily and Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, and Ilya Somin of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Team progressive is comprised of Edward Foley of The Ohio State University and Franita Tolson of USC Gould School of Law.  The three team leaders—Sarah Isgur, Clark Neily, and Ned Foley—presented their reports and discussed their various suggested reforms, including those on which they agree and disagree about. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderated.   Learn more about the Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy initiative and read the full reports on the National Constitution Center’s website. Read the reports: Sarah Isgur, David French, and Jonah Goldberg, Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy: Team Conservative Clark Neily, Walter Olson, and Ilya Somin, Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy: Team Libertarian Edward B. Foley and Franita Tolson, Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy: Team Progressive The National Constitution Center relies on support from listeners like you to provide nonpartisan constitutional education to Americans of all ages. Visit www.constitutioncenter.org/we-the-people to donate, and thank you for your crucial support. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution

0:06.8

Center. I'm so excited to share today's episode with you on both of our

0:10.8

podcasts, We The People, and Live at the NCC.

0:14.8

On July 6th, we hosted a panel

0:17.3

to present the reports of the teams participating

0:20.7

in our Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy initiative.

0:24.4

The project brings together three teams of leading experts,

0:26.9

Libertarian, Conservative, and Progressive, to identify legal and technological reforms that might address current threats to American democracy.

0:36.8

Edward Foley is the leader of Team Progressive, he holds the Ebursole chair in constitutional

0:41.7

law at the Ohio State University.

0:44.0

Sarah Isker is leader of team conservative.

0:46.6

She's a staff writer at the dispatch where she co-hosts the legal

0:50.0

podcast Advisory Opinion.

0:51.9

And Clark Neely is leader of team libertarian.

0:54.3

He's senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute.

0:58.3

It was a wonderful conversation and I'm so happy to share it with you.

1:02.0

On with the show.

1:03.4

Welcome, team leaders and friends.

1:06.9

I'd like to start by asking each of you

1:09.8

to summarize the highlights of your reports

1:12.3

and then we'll explore similarities and differences.

1:15.8

What was most striking in reading the reports is that all three of you acknowledged a common problem, namely that safeguards are necessary to prevent the kind of what the progressive report calls negation of election results attempted by Donald Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

...

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