Gregory Blanc | The Constitution Project

Happy Constitution Day!

Thu, September 17, 2020 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

Over 230 years ago today, delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania signed the Constitution of the United States.

Celebrate the birthday of our foundering document and check out our latest film in The Constitution Project series Freedom of Assembly

Full Text of the Original Document.

Tagged Constitution, Constitution Day, constitutional convention

Watch our new film celebrating the 100th anniversary of a women’s right to vote!

Thu, August 15, 2019 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

100 years ago this month, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify what would become the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment: A Woman’s Right to Choose tells the story of the remarkable women who fought for over a century to win one of the most basic rights of citizenship.

Watch our new film on McCulloch v. Maryland!

Fri, September 14, 2018 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

Check our new film on one of the most famous and foundational cases in the history of the Supreme Court, McCulloch v. Maryland. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton founded a National Bank. Pretty simple, right? But this simple act set off a fight over who had power over whom, the States or the newly-formed Federal Government. The answer lay in one line in Article VI of the Constitution: The Supremacy Clause.

Learn more in our new film The Supremacy Clause: McCulloch v. Maryland.

Tagged alexander hamilton, John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, States, Supremacy Clause, Tenth Amendment

Supreme Court overturns Korematsu in response to charge of echos in Travel Ban decision

Wed, June 27, 2018 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

The Topaz War Relocation Center, where Fred Korematsu was sent after his arrest (National Archives)

In his majority opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, Chief Justice John Roberts overturned the ruling in Korematsu v. United States (1944) that had stood for nearly three quarters of a century in response to a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that drew parallels between the opinion in Trump and that in Korematsu.

Roberts’s opinion in Trump upheld an Executive Order by President Donald Trump to exclude people from several predominantly Muslim countries from traveling to the United States on national security grounds. Koremastu upheld the internement of Japanese Americans during World War II ruling that it was based on “proper security measures” in time of war.

Justice Roberts denied any relation between Trump and Korematsu, but took the opportunity of its mention to overturn Korematsu, quoting a dissent by Justice Robert Jackson. “Koremastu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—’has no place in law under the Constitution.'”

In her dissent in Trump, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “By blindly accepting the Government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another.”

Learn more about Korematsu v. United States in our film Korematsu and Civil Liberties.

Tagged Civil Rights, Constitution, executive branch, japanese internment, Korematsu, Trump, Trump v. Hawaii

Supreme Court to weigh the limits of Presidential power

Tue, April 24, 2018 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

President Harry S. Truman (United States Army Signal Corps, Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.)

On Wednesday, April 25th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump v. Hawaii. The case stems from a presidential executive order that bans people from six countries*, five of which are Muslim-majority, from entering the United States. The White House issued the ban arguing that travelers from Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and North Korea could pose a security risk, despite the fact that no citizen from these countries has carried out a fatal terrorist attack in the U.S. in the past two decades. The Court will hear arguments as to whether the President overstepped the limits of the Executive branch by issuing immigration orders that contradict earlier ones issued by Congress.

Trump v. Hawaii could be the greatest test of presidential authority in 66 years. In 1952, in a case called Youngstown v. Sawyer, the Court overturned an order by President Harry Truman that seized control of the U.S. steel industry during the Korean War to prevent it from being disrupted by a labor strike. In a 6-3 opinion, the Court ruled that President Truman violated the Separation of Powers laid out in the Constitution by seizing the industry without Congressional approval. The president cannot give himself that authority, the Court ruled, because “[i]n the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.”

Learn more about the limits of Presidential Power in our film about Youngstown v. Sawyer, Checks and Balances.

*The Executive Order, signed on September 24, 2017, followed two previous E.O.s issued in January and March 2017 that were rescinded following legal challenges. The September E.O. initially included a sixth Muslim-majority country, Chad, but the White House removed Chad from the list earlier this month.

Tagged Article 1, Checks and Balances, executive branch, Korean War, Separation of Powers, Trump v. Hawaii, Youngstown v. Sawyer

Remembering Linda Brown, the 3rd grader whose case overturned “separate but equal”

Tue, March 27, 2018 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

Linda Brown in 1964 (Library of Congress)

Brown v. Board of Education is the case that desegregated schools in America and overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” that enabled segregation in the United States. The third grader at the center of the case, Linda Brown, died this week at the age of 76.

Linda just wanted a closer school and a safer commute, one that didn’t involve crossing a dangerous street and railroad tracks just to get to her bus. But the school five minutes from her home was all white and Linda was African American. And in Topeka, Kansas in the 1950s, like in much of the country, schools were segregated. Linda’s parents objected and their case became a class action lawsuit that eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court.

In a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court ruled in favor of Brown, writing that segregation and the doctrine of “separate but equal” were inherently unequal and thus violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Learn more about the fight to end segregation in schools in our film An Independent Judiciary.

Tagged 14th Amendment, brown v board of ed, Civil Rights, Earl Warren, Independent Judiciary, Linda Brown, segregation

Bill of Rights ratified over two centuries ago today

Fri, December 15, 2017 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, was adopted after being ratified by three fourths of the states. Support for a Bill of Rights gained momentum during the ratification process, with many Framers and state legislators arguing that the new Constitution needed to do more to guarantee certain freedoms for citizens. Originally twelve Amendments were proposed, by the original first and second Amendments, which discussed numbers of Congressional Representatives and Representative and Senator pay, were not adopted at the time.

Watch our film, The Bill of Rights to learn about the fight behind this landmark founding document, and the rights it’s intended to protect.

Remembering Civil Rights Journalist Roy Reed

Mon, December 11, 2017 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

Roy Reed in An Independent Judiciary

Acclaimed Civil Rights reporter Roy Reed passed away this week at the age of 87. Roy Reed was an award-winning author and journalist, covering many of the defining moments of the Civil Rights era, including the March on Selma. Read more about Reed’s life and work here.

And see Roy Reed speak about the integration of Little Rock Central High School in our film An Independent Judiciary.

Political gerrymandering goes before the Supreme Court

Tue, October 3, 2017 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

(Wisconsin Legislative Technology Services Bureau)

The Supreme Court hears oral arguments today in a case that could reshape how legislative districts are drawn in the United States. Every ten years, when the U.S. does a census, political maps across the country are redrawn by state legislatures. This gives the political party in control of the state legislature enormous power because they are the ones who get to decide how these new districts will be drawn. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that you can’t draw districts based on racial lines (something they reenforced two times last term). But making districts that benefit one party over the other by diluting the impact of the minority party’s vote? That’s been totally legal.

Today the Supreme Court will hear a challenged to the way Wisconsin drew its legislative map in a case called Gill v. Whitford. Following the last census in 2010, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature redrew their districts map is such a way that, in 2012, Republicans carried less than half of the overall vote (48.6 %) but won nearly two thirds of the seats in the state assembly. The Supreme Court is set to decide whether maps like Wisconsin’s are unconstitutional.

Learn more about the history of racially-based gerrymandering in our film One Person, One Vote.

Watch our new film about the Confrontation Clause!

Wed, August 30, 2017 No Comments by Gregory Blanc

Check out our new film The Confrontation Clause: Crawford v. Washington. You can find the whole film streaming online for free at the Annenberg Classroom website. The film tells the story of how we got the right to confront our accusers in court (and what happened to one famous person who didn’t have that right). But what happens when your accuser isn’t a person but a taped confession?

Tagged Bill of Rights, confrontation clause, crawford v. washington, Sixth Amendment

Author Archives: Gregory Blanc