Democracy's Future?

Julie Suk
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  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Is democracy falling apart in the United States and around the world? Are law and legal institutions the problem or solution to the crises that are threatening democracies everywhere? This season, the Fordham Law Podcast digs deep into the big questions facing democracy and its uncertain future.

  1. 06/10/2024

    Dangers of Constitutional Veneration

    Read Aziz Rana's book The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize A Document That Fails Them (2024)  Read Aziz Rana's recent New York Times op-ed, The Constitution Won't Save Us from Trump.

    1h 5m

  2. 05/28/2024

    What is Social Media's Role in Our Democracy?

    Sandeep Vaheesan, The Red States Fighting the Good Fight Against Big Tech, The New Republic, Feb. 24, 2024. Amicus Brief of the Open Markets Institute in Netchoice v. Paxton Zephyr Teachout, Texas's Social-Media Law is Dangerous. Striking it Down Could Be Worse. The Atlantic, Feb. 20, 2024.

    42 min

  3. 03/05/2024

    Ireland's Referendum on Women's Role in the Home

    Check out the Irish Electoral Commission's information website for voters about the referendum. Read Professor Cahillane's op-ed, "The ‘women in the home’ provision is hardly a suitable sentiment for a modern Constitution." Irish Citizens' Assembly Report on Gender Equality 2021 Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) Committee Report on Gender Equality 2022

    52 min

  4. 02/26/2024

    Will the French Constitution Enshrine the Right to Abortion?

    Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez is Professor of Public Law at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre and a fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France.  She is an internationally renowned expert on human rights, comparative public law, bioethics, reproductive rights, national security, religious freedom, and feminism.  In recent years, she has held visiting fellowships at NYU, Princeton, Fordham, and other American universities, as well as at the European University Institute in Florence, LUISS-Guido Carli in Rome, and several other institutions of research and higher education around the world.  Her most recent book is L'Ecole et la République (The School and the Republic) (2023).  She is a frequent commentator in the French media on constitutional issues, and has provided expert testimony and advice on the proposals to amend the French constitution to enshrine abortion rights.  Read Stéphanie's article, Why and how to constituitonalize the right to abortion?  (in French) Read The New York Times' coverage of  the proposal to constitutionalize abortion in France.

    38 min

  5. 02/07/2024

    Disqualifying Political Candidates Who Threaten Democracy: Global Perspectives

    Read Tom Ginsburg, Aziz Z. Huq, and David Landau, Democracy's Other Boundary Problem:  The Law of Disqualification in California Law Review (2023). Tom Ginsburg is Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law  and Political Science at the University of Chicago, He is the author Democracies and International Law (2021), How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018), and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003). David Landau is Mason Ladd Professor of Law at Florida State University, and also director of International Programs. He is the co-author of the book, Abusive Constitutional Borrowing (2021, with Rosalind Dixon) and a case book on Colombian Constitutional Law (2017, with Manuel Cepeda-Espinosa).

    43 min

  6. 01/14/2024

    War and the Future of Democracy in Israel

    On January 1, the Supreme Court of Israeli issued a long-anticipated decision, striking down the Government’s efforts to limit the Supreme Court’s power.  The case was argued a few weeks before Hamas attacked Israel, and decided in the midst of ongoing war.  In this episode, two leaders of Law Professors for Democracy in Israel join Democracy’s Future to break down the landmark Supreme Court decision, situating it in the recent history of democratic backsliding and social movement protest before October 7, and assessing the future of Israeli democracy in the context of war. Read an English abstract of the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision here. Read about Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy in Israel here. Gila Stopler is the former dean, and a professor of Law at the College of Law & Business in Ramat-Gan, Israel.  She’s the editor-in-chief of the journal Law & Ethics of Human Rights (LEHR) and has published many articles in her areas of research, including constitutional law, human rights, and democratic erosion in Israel and globally. In fall 2024, Professor Stopler was an Emile Noel fellow at NYU Law School, where she has also been a Tikvah Fellow and Hauser Research Scholar in past years. She has been president of the Israeli Chapter of the International Society of Public Law, and Chair of the Board of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).  Meital Pinto is a senior lecturer at the Zefat Academic College, School of Law, and the Ono Academic College, Faculty of Law in Israel, and a teaching fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Early in her career, she was a law clerk on the Israeli Supreme Court to Justice Asher Grunis. She has been an Israel Institute visiting fellow at the University of Chicago, where she taught three courses about modern Israel. Pinto’s research focuses on the issues of discrimination, and minority rights within multicultural societies (especially language rights and religious freedom), including the rights of women as minorities within minorities.

    51 min

  7. 12/15/2023

    The Polarizing Struggle for a New Constitution: Chile's Upcoming Referendum

    Veronica Undurraga was the President of the Expert Commission created in December 2022 to draft a new constitution for Chile.  She is a professor of Law at Universidad Adolfo Ibañez and author of many scholarly articles on Chile's constitutional process, including Engendering a constitutional moment: The quest for parity in the Chilean Constitutional Convention (2020) in ICON. For background on the first proposed constitution that failed in 2022, listen to the Fordham Law Podcast Constitutional Crisis Hotline Episode, A Constitutional Cautionary Tale: Why the New Constitution Failed in Chile (September 2022, with Julie Suk and Jed Shugerman Samuel Isaaacharoff, Sergio Verdugo, Camila Vergara)

    51 min

  8. 12/11/2023

    From Tyranny, Inc. to "Win-Enough" Democracy

    Sohrab Ahmari is the author of How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do about It.  He also founded the online magazine The Compact, and was formerly the op-ed editor of the New York Post.  He was also a columnist and editor for the Wall Street Journal, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Spectator, Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, Dissent, and The American Conservative.

    51 min
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Is democracy falling apart in the United States and around the world? Are law and legal institutions the problem or solution to the crises that are threatening democracies everywhere? This season, the Fordham Law Podcast digs deep into the big questions facing democracy and its uncertain future.

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