Earlier today.

The U.S.

thank you.

Court heard arguments from the Trump administration over the sweeping tariff powers at claims the court has become a focal point in the battle over executive power and how to apply the Constitution with many of its members arguing for strict deference to the documents.

Long-dead framers.

But as historian and author Jill, the Poor argues in her new book, We The People, The U.S.

Constitution was meant to be amended, even though it's become almost impossible to do so.

And I think Joe Laporte joins us now.

She's a professor of history and law at Harvard University and a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Thank you for being here.

We appreciate it.

Thanks so much from So Supreme Court justices earlier today appeared fairly skeptical that President Trump has these pretty expansive tariff powers.

Did that surprise you given the Broad de France this court has shown to presidential power?

I think it surprises most people who are watching the court so closely remains to be seen, of course, with the decision will be.

And I think it's really worth pulling back and asking ourselves.

How did we get to a moment where >> the nation is on tender they've opinion by the Supreme Court.

Even just the fact that normal opinions are moving oral arguments are.

Suspect tickle the way, right, the people listening to them for them so closely, follow them online isn't all to American constitutional history.

because you could argue they're both good this absolutely well.

You're right that at the time the Constitution was ratified in the math required to get an amendment passed by enough states was was workable.

>> Why has it gotten so difficult to change the Constitution?

Now?

>> Well, when the framers met in Philadelphia in 17, 87, they knew from the beginning that they were gonna have an amendment provision in the Constitution.

That's why they were there.

But the the articles of Confederation, an amended bill and you should kind of question how should we work this out mathematically?

And they came up with the rule that we have an article 5 of the Constitution to amend the Constitution requires a two-thirds super majority in both houses of Congress and then ratification by 3 0th, 3 fourths of the states.

That is effectively impossible in our political moment.

With course Congress can do hardly anything.

One way to think about that when the framers meant there were no political parties in the United States, nor did they anticipate that there ever would be their theory of Republicanism of their whole notion of the system of government.

They were erecting was hostile to political parties and think the Republicans of could survive with political parties.

So they really couldn't anticipated the kind of polarization that the country is an hour that it was in before the Civil War say yeah, well, you know, part of the genesis of this book is a project you and your students undertook to research the history of >> all the various proposed amendments found that history wasn't well documented.

You've not got ahold database of them.

What kind of a range of amendments did you find?

>> Yeah.

So we put together practical, the amendments project funded by the national down for the humanities and it's free in online and anyone can look at and you can put in a topic and pull up all that proposals that have ever been made introduced on the floor of Congress or and petitions to Congress to amend the Constitution and, you know, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of these.

>> you know, some of the ones that evergreens that keep coming up and up and up single six-year presidential term.

That was proposed very early on reform that just kind of never got enough steam.

The first time that anyone proposed abolishing the Electoral College in a serious way with 18.

0, 3, That has been unpopular fairly steadily.

Icarus American history.

You know, there are moments eras in American history where there some kind of >> wild-eyed wide eyed proposals, the progressive people wanted to abolish the Senate.

>> So the it's it's a whole world of constitutional ideas that we have forgotten.

And, you know, they're filled ideas.

Maybe they're worth forgetting from the he's going to have a story and they're not worth were getting really We need to archive them.

We need be able to study them.

But there's a lot to be discovered in the patterns.

What parts of the country want, which things and at which time?

>> Well, you know, a lot of conservative legal scholars and judges, including many of the Supreme Court justices subscribe to this idea of originalism.

We should be deferring to the framers, but for a lot of American history wasn't even possible for most people to get their hands on the kinds of writings and notes from the conventions that the original list site.

>> Yeah.

So the original is is a pretty consistent mode of judicial interpretation.

And I think defensible is that.

But it is not original.

Among the many things that is not it's not original.

It's there's no evidence that the framers of the Constitution intended for the Constitution to be read in this way, that there was no commandment from on high that that shelled defer to notes on the constitutional convention or to the Federalist Papers or the notes of the ratifying conventions, the kinds of things that originals actually use exclusively to interpret the meaning of the Constitution actually are really not available in any meaningful way, searchable way until digitization.

There's a reason.

regional isn't doesn't emerge until the 1980's.

It kind of depends on did.

It is a shun of sources not just printing, but there was part availability yet.

Can you get James Madison's notes?

Easily could be a tricky thing.

write that the article 5 that allows for amendment says it's often a sleeping giant woken by war.

>> Hasn't woken up in decades.

What do you see in our current political moment that might wake up?

Is there anything?

>> think there's actually a lot of conversation about what happens because for long stretches of American history, Constitution has been effectively an amended bill is when the people can't amend the Constitution, the Constitution is going to change one way or the other in 5th this moment.

Right now, the Supreme Court has the only capacity to change the Constitution and something the court shouldn't have that capacity in some way to review congressional laws did make the kinds of determination that that the court is making.

You know, as we speak about executive acts, but not counter veiled by a power that the people hold.

That lack of balance as we see the kind of problems with the lack of separation of some proper separation of powers, cause a lot of disequilibrium in the system and also contributes to with the framers expected it would contribute whose should insurrection Arie politics live.

People don't have this peaceable the meal.

You're this power to amend fundamental law by constitutional amendment.

They get restless and we're living in an era of of of great deal of political violence a great kind of insurrection, airy.

Feel to our politics day today.

the Constitution isn't working as it's intended, is there any argument toss it out and start over?

>> That's the question people have asked across American history it emerges time and time again and you know, I've been going around the country talking to people about amending the Constitution.

What that means.

It has been historically this always comes up in the Q and A and often just put it to a vote in the room.

Do you think we should keep the constitution and, you know, fix it repaired if it needs repair or should we start again?

Audiences are overwhelmingly in favor of the Constitution that we have a. Enforcing hoping that it can realize its promises.

Maybe that requires amendment.

Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe that requires, you know, making different arguments to the Supreme Court.

But >> there's there's a not too constitutional veneration, which I think the framers were terrified of, that.

That would be a problem.

>> But there's a lot of dedication to the Constitution.

>> We've got about a 30 seconds left.

You know, you've been teaching Harvard for more than 2 decades.

What do you make of the current administration's efforts to to sort of single out higher education to punish some ways?

>> I think it's it's it's a lot of posturing.

It has dire consequences for medical research.

And I'm proud that my university has not caved to that pressure thus far.

In spite of all that it has cost the university.

Well, Jill, up or congratulations on the book and thank you for joining us.