Episode 120: Unbound

Oral Argument

In our remote recording location and with returning election-law expert Lori Ringhand, we talk about the election. The electoral college, the moral and legal roles of electors, disputed elections in the House, crises, civil wars. Oh my. (Back in OA World Headquarters for next week’s show.)

This show’s links:

• Lori Ringhand’s faculty profile and writing
• The Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (including a link to some superseding language of the Twentieth Amendment)
• Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68
• Rick Hasen’s link to California’s brief against unbinding California’s Electors
• Geoffrey Stone, Electors Against Trump Are Faithful Not Faithless
• Lawrence Lessig, The Constitution lets the electoral college choose the winner. They should choose Clinton.; Orin Kerr, The Electoral College Shouldn’t Choose Clinton: A Response to Lessig; Lawrence Lessig, A Response to Professor Kerr; Orin Kerr, A Reply to Professor Lessig on the Electoral College
• Rick Hasen, Lessig Urges Faithless Electors Vote for Clinton, Pointing to Popular Vote in a Contest Not Based on Popular Vote; Lawrence Lessig, Rick Hasen: “But Not to Ignore It…”: What Is “It”?; Mike Parsons, On “Hamilton Electors” and the Lessig/Hasen Debate
• Lawrence Lessig, The Equal Protection Argument Against “Winner Take All” in the Electoral College; Lawrence Lessig, On the Equal Protect Clause Argument and the National Popular Vote Project
• Dahlia Lithwick and David Cohen, Buck Up, Democrats, and Fight Like Republicans
• David Corn, A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump
• John Broich, How US Journalists Normalized the Rise of Hitler and Mussolini (citing Dorothy Thompson’s 1935 observation: “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance.”)

Special Guest: Lori Ringhand.