William Baude: On the Supreme Court after Dobbs

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2022

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

After the historic Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, what should we look for as the Supreme Court begins a new term? How will the Court handle controversial subjects such as affirmative action and religious freedom? How should we understand the current Court’s jurisprudence? To discuss these questions, we are joined by University of Chicago law professor William Baude. According to Baude, with its emphasis on originalist jurisprudence, the Court has become more willing to take bold actions—and likely will continue to do so this year. Yet Baude argues that the centrality of the Court today in settling the most controversial matters in our politics is as much a consequence of the failures of Congress as the judicial philosophy or temperament of Supreme Court justices. Kristol and Baude also discuss similarities and dissimilarities with eras like the New Deal when the Court acted as a counter-majoritarian force against a popular and unified Congress. Kristol and Baude also consider the threat of election subversion, a theme Baude addressed in greater depth in a memorable and important Conversation last year.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by the
0:20.4	second time by University of Chicago Law Professor Will Boad, Director of the Constitutional Law
0:26.8	Institute at Chicago Law School, author of many important works both for popular audiences and
0:34.4	for his fellow legal scholars, constitutional liquidation, something I really want to talk to him
0:39.7	about at some point on a conversation, but every time we schedule one of these conversations,
0:43.2	there's so much to talk about that's happening in the real world for now that Madison and
0:47.6	constitutional liquidation gets shoved aside, but we will do that, we will do that sometime
0:52.1	soon. Will has an excellent podcast, divided argument with his colleague Dan Epps and you should
1:00.3	listen to that and read everything he writes. Will, thanks for joining me again today. Thanks for
1:05.6	having me. And we had a good conversation a year ago, which I highly recommend to people,
1:10.4	because it stands up very well. You were worried, you said you were alarmed, but not alarmist,
1:15.4	but still worried that the peaceful transfer of power can no longer be taken for granted,
1:19.9	we focused on the whole question of the peaceful transfer of power, election denial,
1:24.0	and so forth, elections aversion that you said we blew through a lot more of the safeguards
1:29.9	than people expected. So it's a year later now, things have happened in the political world,
1:35.6	and legislatively things may be about to happen on the electoral counter act, and they've been
1:40.0	some judicial developments. How worried are you? I just want to get to the current state of the
1:43.9	Supreme Court more broadly in the last term in the next term in a minute and a few minutes, but
1:47.7	just on the question of the peaceful transfer of power and recognizing the victors in elections,
1:55.4	are you more worried, less worried than you were a year ago? I mean, is it possible to be more
1:59.7	and less worried at the same time? Totally, that's much of life, is that way, you know?
2:05.4	So on the one hand, one of the things I was worried about is that this was going to
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