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Paulsen constitution
The Law & Liberty Podcast
August 17, 2015
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Introducing the Constitution: A Conversation with Michael Paulsen

with Michael Stokes Paulsen

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Michael S. Paulsen, co-author with his son, Luke Paulsen, of their new book entitled The Constitution: An Introduction. The Paulsens’ book is a thoughtful and probing overview of the foundations and evolution of American constitutionalism.

Our discussion focuses on key ideas in the book: What does it mean to be a country that is defined by a written constitution? Is the Founders’s Constitution a pro-slavery document? Has the use of substantive due process in Lochner, Griswold, and Roe corrupted our understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment? Of what worth is the Youngstown decision that importantly limits executive power in the age of a rampant regulatory state? By returning power to the elected branches does the New Deal Court really restore the Constitution to its republican principles?

Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. He is co-author, with Luke Paulsen, of The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015).
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Hello from Michael Greve

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The point of this enterprise, as I see it, is to revitalize and elevate a constitutional debate that, in my estimation, has gotten bogged down. On the political Left, constitutional theory has to satisfy a vast range of “progressive” policy commitments before it can get a hearing. On the Right, a well-intentioned insistence on interpreting the Constitution one clause at a time has been taken to excess. In the process, it has crowded out a proper and urgent appreciation of the Constitution’s broader purposes—its “genius,” as John Marshall used to say.

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