The Least Dangerous Branch

One of the Constitution's most insightful critics, writing under the psuedonym of Brutus, argued that the federal judiciary was particularly dangerous to the authority of state governments and to the liberties of the people. In Federalist 78, Publius insisted that the judiciary was the least dangerous branch of the federal government, because it had "neither force nor will, but merely judgment." In a sense, they were both right.

Om Podcasten

The 1787 Project is the podcast version of the lectures for Professor Justin Dyer's socially-distanced class on the U.S. Constitution at the University of Missouri. Running from August 2020 - May 2021, the course is about how the U.S. Constitution of 1787 frames the way we organize our life together as a political community. Published twice a week, the episodes explore who gets to decide big questions of public policy and why, analyze the design of our national political institutions and the contested boundaries between them, and look at the structure of constitutional rights.