I will start with a question that you posed with your title. Why is it important to read it, and how you read it for the average person . Its important to read it because we are seeing issues of massive and constitutional importance in the headline news. At that level of the presidency and in congress we have called for concern over the constitution. As an educator, i felt it was important to produce a book that is accessible by regular people so people can educate themselves on how the constitution functions as well as their constitutional rights, and get on that bike and ride it themselves. Make their own decisions about whats going on in the country. Many scholars, including myself, are worried about the state of our democracy, our republic, and well and whether it can sustain the body blows happening to the separation of powers. If people care about having their independent individual liberties going forward, educating themselves for the sake of their children and grandchildren about what to do in this moment is really important. You write is,what the constitution is becoming sort of an antijaywalking law. It can be violated with no consequences. Ew people realize it a big reason is that most people dont know what the constitution says and does. Can you expand on that . Parts ofere are two the constitution. One is the separation of powers. The three branches of government. It is not actually in the constitution, those words, separations of power. The second part is the bill of rights. Students for law 13 years. There is nothing really too basic or too simple that is not worth breaking down for them. School need basic instruction on what is a case. What is a law and how is it passed by a legislator, different than a law that is created by the Supreme Court . Concepts, my core students benefit from them, and the book is almost a firstyear law class. It breaks it down in common sense language. You mentioned the jaywalking law. People dont understand that the constitution is like a contract to renovate your kitchen. If the contractor walks off on the job with your 10,000 deposit after demoing your kitchen, the piece of paper itself will not get your money back. You have to enforce it by going to court. Thats expensive, its difficult, it takes blood, sweat and tears. Thats the same what the constitution. If this president , the next president , or the last president bulldoze his over the limits set zes over the limits that are set forth, it it no longer exists and that will goes into the president ial toolbox for the next president. It might not be a president you like. If we expand the office of the presidency, then i think we are all at risk for having a government that is a bully. That has to much power down the line. When we care, it might be too late to take that tool out of the twill box. Host spell out what the constitution says about the powers that a president has. Guest the constitution has vesting clauses. It gives congress a bunch of makes, mainly powers to laws. It gives the president the power to execute those walls. Those laws. I tell my students to think about a prosecutor or Police Officer. A Police Officer does not decide what the speed limit is, they flag someone who is violating the speed limit and hands it off to the prosecutor to prosecute that person for violating the speed limit. It is a lot faster these days, you get something in the mail. The idea is that the president does not make the laws, the president enforces them. Ther our system right now president is a lot of lawmaking. We have heard a lot about executive orders. That is not in the constitution. The president will issue an executive order and make a law that way. That is the power of congress. Aboutr a lot administrative bureaucracy. We have too much regulation. This is a fight we saw at the Supreme Court level around the citizenship question. That question was not about president ial power, it was about agency power. Authority tothe set forth the limits on what goes in the census for him census forum. Congress handed off what i call the legislative baton to the department of commerce and said, you fill in the blanks for us. You make regulations for us. And commerce did. That is the part the Supreme Court struck down. The agencies lawmaking at the behest of congress. This is a nuance that is complicated and theoretical. It is under administrative law. Center in ourd headlines. Its something people feel strongly about. People dont really understand sometimes. The other thing that is happening in the last 2030 years is social media. Massive amounts of new technology. We have all kinds of information coming at us but did not exist when i was a kid. We had a few channels in a few newspapers, now it is hard to determine what is accurate and whats not. Muellerfrom the robert investigation, the 2016 attack on our electoral process, that other foreign powers, in this instance, russia is implanting misinformation and our inboxes. My objective with the book is to encourage people to go back to basics. The book walks people through the language of the constitution. It is not an easy beach read. But for people that want to understand the baseline. They can rely on their own knowledge and old analytical abilities own analytical abilities. Kimberly wehle host our guest. Host our guest teaches law if you want to ask her questions, democrats, 2027488000. Republicans 2027488001. Independence, 2027488002. Host there has been debates over whether it is a living document, where do you find on that duality . Dichotomy. S a false its not a real debate because the constitution is old. 230 years old. Leaving a lot of definitions undefined. If we had everything spelled out in the constitution it would be like the tax code. Volumes and volumes. By definition, conservative justices and more liberal justices have to fill in the blank here it we have to define what is an unreasonable search and seizure under the fourth amendment. The word unreasonable is not defined in the constitution. I introduce this concept with a poem, and talk about different ways of interpreting and how your point of view can determine or affect what you think the meaning of is. Poem what your worldview is in a moment. Judges are the same way. Some judges will look to their common sense and say this is an obvious reading of the constitution. I think that is a fallacy because we have a lot of 54 decisions, which means there are ys of reading it. Some justices might say we look to the objectives and goals of the competition. Well,stices conservative justices might say, me want to see what the framers at the time of the framing of the constitution believed that term when mean. When you are talking about a formal imaging machine determining whether there is marijuana inside of a house, scalia saw that as a search issue. We are departing from what the framers anticipated in the 18th century. We are going to other sources to determine the meaning. We can debate which of those sources are better for resolving ambiguity, but the notion that there is a clear way, and an outofthebox living constitutional way, i think that is a way most americans dont understand. Its not their fault. Its framed that way and it is not accurate. Host eric is in Seattle Washington on the desk seattle, washington on the democrats line. Caller the constitution is obsolete. From the verye beginning. It was a flawed document. It was basically a white manifesto document. I mean you can look at the end ofution on the polar it. No one is right and no one is wrong. It in the Supreme Court, we have known judges that one believes this and one believes that. No one is right and no one is wrong. Its left up to interpretation. It is a flawed document because it is left up to decisions. It should be rewritten. We should have a new constitution written in because black people were slaves during it. I would like to address this. No one is right, no one is wrong, slavery was justified under the constitution. No one is right and no one is wrong. Host we will let our guest respond. Professor wehle. Guest do you make a good point. The constitution was written in for white land owners gentry male land owners. It not only excluded africanamericans and enslaved people, it excluded an entire gender, women. That is a critique of the cop to shin. I believe it has worked this far and is the best of the constitution. I believe it has worked this far and is the best we have. If it is in force it creates a boss for our elected leaders. The design of the constitution, and of course it has been amended many times for these inherent problems like you identified by excluding and authorizing enslavement of africanamericans, but the document has been amended to address these problems over the years. Designed to ensure that the individual citizen, the individual voter is empowered to govern themselves. The constitution, the revolutionary war, we just celebrated the fourth of july, was about not having a government that had so much could snapthe king his fingers and arbitrarily throw someone in jail. We get this wrong sometimes. We throw people in jail that dont belong. The system is set up to limit that kind of arbitrary power. We have the due process clause. We have rules that apply to judges and limit their power. As a nation we respect those institutions. If we allow judges orders, and we have seen this in the last to bears, judges orders flouted or treated as if they are not serious or real, to be attacking legitimate, opposing points of view, that destabilizes the whole system. I want to pick up your point on a new constitution. There are two ways of amending the constitution. One is through an amendment and the other is to have a constitutional convention. The last one we have produced our current constitution. Amend thealled to articles of confederation, which was the document in place prior. It was supposed to be an amendment constitution. They threw that out and started froms wretch from scratch. Away, sixew States States away from calling a new constitutional convention. My concern is that in this polarized environment an environment that is lacking in compassion and core values the document we could end up with would look nothing like what we have, and we would roll about a tremendous amount of protections that are in the current document. If you start from scratch, we dont even know what we would get. Even the late Justice Scalia said, this is not a century to start over with the constitution. We have to work with what we have. People understand that it does not mean anything if we bulldoze over it. If we dont enforce it, it will not help ourselves. We dont ask someone at the end of the driveway they are making the short making sure the constitution is in force. Host republican line from missouri. Caller i was recently reviewing part of the constitution and iran entire article one, section into article one, section 10. I am familiar with traffic regulations. I am wondering, i believe those were authorized by congress, but it appears to be congress has to authorize any compacts. I dont think congress is taking efforts to legalize the compacts of that electoral college. You have any ideas about that . Guest not that particular question. But you raise an excellent point with respect to congress. Congress does have not just the power to make laws, but there are many powers. The power to tax, the power to declare war, the power to , the power to allow a president to get an all human or gift. To get a gift. Congress has fallen down the past years. It is not doing its job in the way the constitution envisioned that it would do, and the framers envisioned it would do its job in a bipartisan way. We dont know the answer, lets look at the problem. Lets come up with options and think what the best outcome might be. We have all been in this situation where we are starving solving a heart problem. You come up with a good solution. Policy making that for function is not happening anymore. So polarized. Something is predetermined and it is either a yes or no vote. You mentioned a rights, federalism is another big important the idea of states having her own independent rights to make their own laws and to function as independent states. That is another check on government howard. The framers were worried about having a federal government that was so powerful that individual liberties, my right to walked on the street, my right to raise my children the way i want. ,o go from one state to another that stuff would fall apart if big becauseot too it is human nature to amass power. From syracuse, new york on the independent line. Caller great discussion, i would be interested in reading the book. I would like to mention that the last color before this last one spoke about arbitraryness. , itts not in your book should be. The reason for the constitution. Mention hear anyone this, but if you read the declaration, you cannot separate those two. The reason for the constitution is to keep us from killing each other. Its not meant to satisfy everybody. It needs to be a political solution in every sense. Thats why we go back and forth from one from the left to the right, to the middle and back and forth. It is ultimately so we do not kill each other. The articleng, seems to come the author seems to come from one position. Issue of the current the day. Basically that trump is usurping the congress. That is a political argument. She should have started with somebody on the other side also. This usurping did not start which from, it is happen in every presidency. Barack obama ignored the constitution in so many ways. Host we will let our guest respond to all those things. Certainly did not mean to pick a side. The book does not pick a side. I am not interested in picking a side. I agree with you about prior president s, barack obama and others have utilized and expanded the scope of the president power. This is not a trump problem, this has been a problem over decades, and a problem with Congress Also not protecting its prerogative to ensure that it maintains its own powers. And that ensures that the other branches dont step outside of their boundaries. Are living in a world today where we have a certain president and those issues have become front and center more than ever before. Not entirely for sure because of donald trump. This is not an antitrump book or a program book, it is april rule of law book. I agree that i dont talk about from killing each other, but the idea behind the constitution is to put the power back in the people with limits on it. With some rules. Some rules of the game. The rules have to be implemented fairly. I am ahe analogy, mother, you go to your kids and if your kid loses you dont know how the calls were called, but they were done fairly, you feel like you go home and you take your kid out for a burger and you go on with your life. If you feel that the rules were side hador the other an unfair advantage, then you get angry. I think that is where we are right now. The system is set up to protect people regardless of political. Trike the book is not a red versus blue book, it is a right versus terms of how we think about the government and how our individual rights are protected across any presidency and any congress. Host professor, you write the text of the First Amendment has two major Areas Congress must be clear of, religion and speech. Congress must be careful when it comes to religion and speech. To plain language, cant Just Congress cannot hamper speech or the press. Congress cannot hamper speech or the press. Talk about free speech. What does it say and what does it not say . Are two big parts of the First Amendment. There is religion and speech. Back to your other point about, is there plain reading . Under the First Amendment is extremely layered and compensated. Not because the clause is complicated, but the supreme multitests. Up it depends on the kind of speech, who is speaking, it depends on who is limiting the speech. The primary thing i think people need to keep in mind is that the framers believed that, if the government limits your speech, pretty soon the government is limiting how you think. If you are limited and how you can speak, you start not speaking. You start speaking in ways that are consistent with what the political win says you should speak. Then it affects your speaking. That is a primary infringement on individual liberties. The other things i remember about the First Amendment is that it is about government limiting individuals ability to speak, not the other ways around. We hear a lot about First Amendment rights of government employees. They have limited First Amendment rights when they were actually working in their governmental capacity. Thats because they have the power and the First Amendment worries about individuals having the power over their own selfgovernment. Debaten, there is some as to how to read that. Does the limit on the governments ability to infringe on religion extend to just beyond establishing a National Religion . Offlimits, but how much entanglement with religion and government is appropriate. That theomething courts hash out and continue to hash out. Subjectiveat will be. The people on the Supreme Court of the United States, like it or function like many legislators. They are judges, they are there to resolve individual disputes, but because what they do is essentially read between the lines in the constitution, they add meaning and definition to the constitution. The constitution cannot be amended by congress. It has to go through a very complex process. When the Supreme Court reads the constitution in a certain way, that is as set and stone as we get an american law. These folks are not elected. We cannot decide we dont like this president so we want a different one. We dont like this member of congress, we dont like we have empowered congress we will switch it. With the Supreme Court of the United States we dont have that power. That is a nuance people dont understand. We talk about rights on the Supreme Court level. That is important on both sides, but the Supreme Court has powers that extends beyond that that affects our individual lives. Understanding how that works and how it functions in relation to the other two branches is really important for every american. Host the book is called how to re