Constitutionally Speaking
Latest Episodes
Episode 67: From Ratification to Reconstruction, From Ratification to Reconstruction
Luke and Jay talk through the early development of Congressional power, the appearance of the committee system, and more.
Episode 66: The Constitutional Congress
Jay and Luke take a look at the formal structures and rules that govern Congress in the Constitution.
Episode 65: A Deep Dive on Congress
Jay and Luke are back, this time to discuss the roots of our modern-day Congress.
Episode 64: Van Buren II and Tyler Too [Part 2]
Picking up with Martin Van Buren in Jackson’s cabinet, Jay and Luke trace the Little Magicians rise to the vice presidency, his political knife fighting with John C. Calhoun, and ...
Episode 63: Martin Van Buren: The Red Fox of Kinderhook
A political genius, who created the model of the nineteenth-century political machine, Van Buren is sadly consigned to the second or third tier of American presidencies. Jay and Luke push ...
Episode 62: One-Term Wonders: John Quincy Adams, the Last Jeffersonian?
Jay and Luke trace Adams’s policy priorities, his role in the American System, and how his administration paved the way for the Jacksonian era.
Episode 61: The Decline, Fall, and Peculiar Afterlife of Federalism [The Federalists, Part 3]
Jay and Luke trace the divisions within Federalism, the passage and deployment of the Sedition Act, and its complete collapse in the election of 1800.
Episode 60: The Federalist Agenda: Foreign and Domestic Policy [The Federalists, Part 2]
Foreign policy became a key divide between Federalists and the emerging Jeffersonian Republicans, all the more so as Britain and France escalated a rolling series of continental wars.
Episode 59: The Age of Federalism [The Federalists, Part 1]
We look at Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Marshall, and other lesser-known Federalists and try to understand American politics at the end of the 18th century.
Episode 58: Alexander Hamilton on Impeachment
No Founding Father thought more deeply about the presidency than Alexander Hamilton.