Podcasts by Constitutional

Constitutional

With the writing of the Constitution in 1787, the framers set out a young nation’s highest ideals. And ever since, we’ve been fighting over it — what is in it and what was left out. At the heart of these arguments is the story of America.

As a follow-up to the popular Washington Post podcast “Presidential,” reporter Lillian Cunningham returns with this series exploring the Constitution and the people who framed and reframed it — revolutionaries, abolitionists, suffragists, teetotalers, protesters, justices, presidents – in the ongoing struggle to form a more perfect union across a vast and diverse land.

Further podcasts by The Washington Post

Podcast on the topic Geschichte

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Constitutional
Ourselves and our posterity from 2018-02-12T08:00

In the"Constitutional"finale, we address listener questions about the history--and future--of the nation's governing document.

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Constitutional
The First Amendment from 2018-01-29T08:00

Why do First Amendment rights trump nearly every other right in America? Thank Jehovah's Witnesses.

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Constitutional
Privacy from 2018-01-15T08:00

How should the Constitution's privacy protections be translated for a new era? This is a question before the Supreme Court today, but it was also a question that captivated a justice appointed to t...

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Constitutional
Prohibition from 2018-01-01T08:00

The passage and then repeal of the 18th Amendment, banning alcohol in America, highlighted the pitfalls of trying to legislate against vice.

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Constitutional
Taxes from 2017-12-18T08:00

Congress today faces the same question it faced a century ago when creating the modern tax system: What kind of society should America be?

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Constitutional
The common defense from 2017-12-04T08:00

One intention the framers had when creating the U.S. Constitution was to “provide for the common defense.” But who shoulders that duty has not always been so clear.

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Constitutional
War from 2017-11-20T08:00

What was the original point of the Second Amendment? We examine its colonial and revolutionary roots—plus its quiet companion, the Third Amendment—with renowned American history scholar Gordon Wood.

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Constitutional
Love from 2017-11-06T08:00

The words"marriage"and"love"appear nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. Yet 50 years ago, the Supreme Court issued a decision that would embed those concepts in the heart of the document itself.

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Constitutional
Fair punishment from 2017-10-23T07:00

"There is so much feeling of racial injustice around the issue of punishment. And you have to understand that those feelings have a history -- and that history is Parchman Farm."

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Constitutional
Fair trials from 2017-10-09T07:00

In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that states must offer a defense attorney to all poor people accused of crimes. The decision transformed the concept of fair trials in Ameri...

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Constitutional
Congress and citizens from 2017-09-25T07:00

Is it a feature or a bug of the amendment process that an idea of James Madison's, more than 200 years ago, could be recently resurrected and etched into the U.S. Constitution?

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Constitutional
Senate and states from 2017-09-11T07:00

When the United States changed its process for electing senators, did that lead to a decline in state power? Or did it instead bring us closer to a"more perfect union"?

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Constitutional
Gender from 2017-08-28T07:00

From the American Revolution through today, women have been leading a long-burning rebellion to gain rights not originally guaranteed under the Constitution.

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Constitutional
Race from 2017-08-21T07:00

As powerful as it was to change the Constitution after the Civil War, and enshrine racial equality into our governing document, that wasn’t enough to change the reality of life in America.

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Constitutional
Nationality from 2017-08-14T07:00

What makes someone American? A landmark Supreme Court case in 1898, involving a child born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents, would help answer that question.

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Constitutional
Ancestry from 2017-08-07T07:00

In 1879, a case involving Chief Standing Bear came before a Nebraska courtroom and demanded an answer to the question: Are Native Americans considered human beings under the U.S. Constitution?

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Constitutional
Framed from 2017-07-24T07:00

In the premier episode of “Constitutional,” we go back in time to that hot Philadelphia summer in 1787 when a group of revolutionary Americans debated, drank and together drafted the U.S. Constitut...

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Constitutional
Introducing 'Constitutional' from 2017-06-29T14:00

Preview The Washington Post's newest podcast, a narrative series about the revolutionary figures who shaped America's story. Subscribe now to get the first episode when it launches July 24.

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