 So, this is a virtual panel discussion, hopefully, everybody can hear me, that is hosted by the Department of Political Science and the School of Education and Behavioral Sciences, as well as being sponsored by the MGA Political Science Student Organization and the Alpha Muzeta chapter of PySigMalpha, which is the National Honorary Society for Political Science. Before we do get started, I just want to do a couple things. First, we'll tell you a little bit about our department for those of you that don't know much about us. And then also, I'll introduce our panelists and talk a little bit about the structure of the event and ground rules and things like that. And then we'll proceed to our panel. So, our department offers several different programs, including two bachelor's degrees, a bachelor's science degree in political science, as well as the bachelor's science degree in interdisciplinary studies. We also have several minors offered in the department. So, if you're majoring in another field, like, say, business or history or English or education or nursing or anything like that and want to learn some more about a topic that is outside that field, that's what a minor is for. And we have quite a few of them available. We have a minor in political science, a minor in African and African diaspora studies. So, if you're interested in the African American experience and things like that, as well as the experience of other African peoples, that would be a good minor for that. Environmental policy studies, if you're interested in sustainability in the environment and related topics. Global studies, if you're interested in learning more about the world beyond the United States and things like foreign languages and foreign cultures and foreign policy and all sorts of other foreign things. And let's see. Also, we have a minor in pre-law as well, so if you're interested in potentially going to law school or doing paralegal work and things like that, those things are available through the pre-law minor. Last but not least, we also participate in the University System of Georgia's certificate in European Union studies, which is a collaboration between about nine universities and colleges in Georgia, and we're one of the participating schools in that. So, if you're interested in European politics and the European Union in particular, that would be a good program as well and requires about five additional classes. Of course work, which might also count towards your other degree requirements and other degrees. So, without too much for the radio, go ahead and introduce our two panelists for today. So, in no particular order, first, I want to introduce Dr. John Hall, who is an associate professor of political science and has been here at the Georgia State since 2015. So, that would make this his eighth year, I think, with my math is correct. He has a doctorate in public policy and public administration from Auburn University, and he teaches primarily courses in American politics, as well as some legal studies courses, pre-law type things as well, constitutional law. We also have with us today Dr. Annie Watson, who is an assistant professor of political science. She is in her third year having arrived here in 2021, and her PhD in political science is from the University of Georgia. And her primary area of expertise is international politics and particularly focusing on issues like human rights and things like that, which we'll be certainly getting into today, because there are certainly civil rights and civil liberties issues, there are certainly human rights issues as well. And then I am your moderator. I am Dr. Christopher Lawrence. I'm the chair of the Department of Political Science and a professor of political science. I've been here since 2012, so this would be my 13th year or 11th year. See, I can't do math. And my PhD in political science is from the University of Mississippi. So let's see. So we'll just tell you a little bit about the structure of today's events. So we're going to get started with a few questions that I and the panelists discussed beforehand that will kind of give you an idea of some of the questions that you might want to ask perhaps as well. We also, though, do want to have questions from our participants, from our audience, and you can ask those questions in our chat, as well as make other contributions as well. You're certainly welcome to ask more than one question if you want to, with the caveat that we will prioritize trying to answer at least one question per participant. In other words, we do have limited time, and we'll certainly, if all we get is silence and one person really wants to ask a bunch of questions, we can do that. At the same time, we do want to make sure that everybody that does have a question does at least have a chance to ask their question if at all possible. So we will remind you at various points during the discussion to put questions in the chat. Go ahead and do them now if you want to, although some of them may anticipate questions we're going to answer anyway. Please do be courteous and civil to each other. I know some of the issues that are going to be discussed today may be controversial to some of you, or maybe all of you, or some subset thereof. And while certainly we don't want to discourage you from sharing your points of view, nonetheless, at the same time, we do want to make sure that all discussion is civil and not personalized and not otherwise problematic. So let's see. So as far as specific questions, we are, or cases we're likely to discuss. Some of these will come up with similar questions early on. Some may be deferred a little bit. Some we may not get to. It just kind of depends on what you guys want to ask us. But we've singled out about six Supreme Court cases from the last year or so that were particularly important. And we'll probably talk about those in some more detail, as well as some of the legal issues that have arisen in recent months and years, regarding both Donald Trump as well as the President's son, Hunter Biden, because I know those have been in the news as well. And certainly they are newsworthy, not to suggest there is an equivalence between the two in any way, shape, or form. But nonetheless, they are both certainly in the news and certain questions we may want to address as well. So with all that said, and I know you guys are probably ready to start hearing from our panelists. So I think we'll go ahead and start with our first question if everybody's ready. Seems like we are. So first just kind of as a very basic sort of question we usually start our presentations on or discussions on the courts about just with some general overview of what the Supreme Court does and how it does its work. And this time is no exception. So how do arguments before the Supreme Court work? And can just any case be appealed to the Supreme Court or are there some particular criteria that go into the question of whether or not the Supreme Court is going to hear cases? So either John or Annie, if you want to tackle that one, I'll let you say. I'll jump out on this one. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Annie for joining us. Thanks to all of the students and other faculty members who are with us today. Great question to kick things off. How do cases get to the federal Supreme Court? There's one quick way to answer this and that is to appreciate the fact that the Supreme Court has appellate and original jurisdiction. The original jurisdiction of the court is quite small. We're going to focus on the appellate jurisdiction. Basically, anything that is in the lower federal courts can make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. What does that involve? Basically anything involving the U.S. Constitution, anything involving federal law, anything involving federal treaties. This can all go through the federal court system and make its way all the way to the Supreme Court. Anything involving ambassadors, anything involving admiralty law, all of these variables will allow the federal courts to get their hands on a case at the district court level. It can then be appealed to one of 11 numbered geographic circuit courts of appeals. And then if the federal Supreme Court decides to take it, the Supreme Court can take it. In addition, the federal Supreme Court can hear cases that come from state Supreme Courts. So you can either go through the federal court system or you can go from a state Supreme Court, provided the state Supreme Court case involves the U.S. Constitution or federal law or federal treaties. So that's the general direction that cases can get to the federal Supreme Court. Any of my constitutional law students, we've covered this. Any of my American government students, we will cover this. Beyond that, in terms of how cases are actually decided, when you appeal to the federal Supreme Court, if you are incredibly lucky, and I mean about 4% of the time, they will accept your case on review, usually through granting a writ of certiorari. And a writ of certiorari involves one of the only words in the history of Latin that does not roll off the tongue. It does not sound good. So we usually just say a writ of cert. If the court, if four justices decide to hear a case on appeal, the rule of four kicks in and they'll hear the case. You will submit briefs to the court. It will go through the clerk's office. At this point, fast forwarding through a lot of details. If the court does decide to accept your case, then you having already read the briefs from the lower courts, they will hear oral arguments. Now, there's a huge debate over how valuable oral arguments actually are, are the opinions already made up. But once oral arguments have been made, then the justices will go into a conference. They will start to identify which direction the court might be going. And when they start to identify a majority opinion, if the chief justice is in that majority, he may write the opinion or assign who will write the opinion. If the chief justice is not in what appears to be the majority opinion, then the most senior justice in the majority will be able to write the opinion or assign the opinion. The key here is opinions. In class, I've said this. If I ever use the word Supreme Court decision, I'm being intellectually lazy and you should call me out on it. The Supreme Court doesn't make decisions. They write and author educated opinions on what they feel, a particular case, how it is involved with the Constitution, how the Constitution should be interpreted. At this point, I'm talked long enough to where it might sound like I'm just droning on. So I'll summarize by you get to the federal court through the federal court system, or you can jump from a snake Supreme Court if there's a constitutional issue. I'm sure there are a few gaps there. I can turn it over to Annie if you'd like to fill anything in. Done a good job covering a very complex process in, I don't know, 30 seconds or less. The only thing I would probably add is that by the time you get to the Supreme Court level, you're no longer quibbling about the facts of the case. Evidence is established. You already know what the facts are. At this point, you're arguing about interpretation. You're arguing about which precedent supply and don't apply. You're arguing about what precedent should be in the future, sort of. And so you're shifting the kind of outlook you have here beyond what you would see in sort of the beginning stages of courtrooms. Okay, great. Yeah, thanks for that overview for both of you. And yeah, it is a good point that on the appellate stage when you're appealing to the Supreme Court or appellate courts in general, right? The old saying is the courts of original jurisdiction trial courts deal with questions of fact. Whereas appellate courts deal with questions of law. In other words, what does the law mean? What does the purpose of the law, that sort of thing? The facts should be settled by that point. I think that was a good point that Dr. Watson brought in there. And always to have in the back of your head, right? The Supreme Court's not necessarily going to delve back into the details of a case or, you know, relitigate the, you know, they're not going to interview a bunch of witnesses and things like that, right? It's a very different sort of process than, you know, what you might see in, well, I would say Perry Mason, but nobody still watches Perry Mason. So somebody is calling me, so I'll have to mute. Sorry, you know, just a second. Well, hopefully that muted it. Anyway, hopefully it wasn't important. So onto our first kind of substantive question of the evening. How did the Supreme Court's recent opinion in a case called 303 creative versus alinas affect the rights of the LGBTQ community? What was the rationale of the court in that case? And what constitutional liberties were involved there? I don't know. Annie, did you want to start off on that one or? I can start here. So this particular case, 303 creative was looking to expand its business, I believe, to include designing websites for weddings for people getting married. And the owner of the business wanted to make an explicit statement on her business website that she would not design wedding websites for same sex couples, even though same sex marriage was legal. This was in 2016, so it was officially illegal at the national level. But she was sued for this. No, she took, she took them to court, I guess, saying that they couldn't enforce Colorado cannot enforce its public accommodations law. It's known as the Colorado Anti Discrimination Act against her because it would constitute violations of two of her rights, the right to free speech and the right to free exercise of religion. Going all the way up through the process, the Supreme Court actually took the case based on freedom of expression. They declined to sort of consider it under the free exercise of religion aspect. So they're exclusively looking at this under whether or not it is her right as a matter of freedom of expression freedom of speech to write the statement on her business website. And they did in fact rule that she could. And so this is a, I don't know polite words for it. What this means is that according to some of my orders dissenting opinion, this means that a particular kind of business, though open to the public as a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class, which sexuality is. And so her statement continues that the immediate symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second class status. Because this now creates the possibility that any business could potentially deny them service in the same way by making these sorts of statements. Dr. Hall, would you like to great summary there, Dr. Watson, just to add to it, you really encapsulated the. Again, I want to make sure you have the words right from 1964 onward. And this is something we've covered in all of my classes. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we started to recognize that there were certain classifications of people that we will no longer allow discrimination towards basically race, biological sex, nationality, ethnicity. Recent opinions of the court have actually connected sexual orientation to biological sex. So what this does is it creates a situation where discrimination in areas of public accommodation are somewhat allowed. This could be expanded beyond just sexual orientation. It's interesting and you noted this. This was not a free exercise clause opinion while she was claiming her religious beliefs evidently focusing entirely on the book of Leviticus and nothing but Leviticus. This was not where the court went with the decision. This was a free speech opinion. The court was basically saying that they would not be able to force someone to to put forth views that were not their own and that would be a violation of speech. And it's really hard to see where this would end if my free speech rights lead me to indicate that there are a variety of different groups that I will not allow into my business that I will not take part in public affairs with. This this opens a potential Pandora's box, not just for the LGBT community, but for many, many others. So it's also interesting to note that the court was not as specific as they could have been. Justice Gorsuch's opinion didn't necessarily define expressive activity. The lower courts are about to go into a nightmare slash field day, depending on how you look at it, with similar cases that are going to becoming their way that involve discrimination. So where we're left is Dr Watson perfectly summarized. It is somewhat constitutionally permissible to discriminate against other groups if not doing so would violate your freedom of speech. So this definitely opens up an interesting and I'm using the word interesting in a very strange way. This opens up a dangerous area of jurisprudence that we will watch over the years to come. This is this is not without precedent for the Supreme Court. What we've seen is that hate speech, for example, is technically seen as constitutionally protected under free speech in the United States and the Supreme Court has held that up multiple times in cases. And so this is another case sort of directly tied to that is that you can say what you want. I believe I had a quote that I wanted to make from Brits and I can't find in my notes anymore, which is a shame, but Gorsuch wrote that the First Amendment protects an individual's right to speak his mind, even when others may regard that speech as quote deeply misguided, or it may cause anguish. And so this is this is the sort of consistent thread coming out of the Supreme Court is that our ability to speak that way is the harm that it might cause the individuals for speaking out. And on that same note, something that is somewhat unprecedented about this, the court just does not have a lot of examples where they're allowing businesses to use speech in order to discriminate. So that's another potentially landmark element of the 303 opinion there. When it comes to individual citizens, well, then we're outside in many cases of public accommodation areas of public accommodation that serve anyone in the public. Businesses have generally been restricted in terms of what free speech arguments they can get away with in terms of discrimination. So that's another area where this is this is definitely opening up new possibilities for discrimination that could be overwhelmingly problematic in terms of compelled speech for individuals. The court has basically no history of forcing that here. However, it's not necessarily that because this is a business. But again, kill your opinion that is definitely going to take us into directions that might invite brand new areas of discrimination. Yeah, it's a good point all around. And yeah, I think, you know, as both of you have acknowledged, right? Historically, the courts have allowed for greater restriction of commercial speech or non individual speech or speech related to making money, essentially, right? And there are certainly reasons for, you know, for that, you know, for example, prevention of fraud and things that obviously are important and in commercial speech. That would necessarily be the case when we're just talking about say individual speech that isn't quite, you know, is connected to money or something like that or exchange of goods. But here, right? So we're seeing, you know, kind of a case where, you know, again, the courts are sort of going to this idea that, you know, for lack of better term corporate personhood, right? The idea of, you know, that, you know, when you're when you're engaging commercial activity, you're not forfeiting your other constitutional rights or whatever. And that that could be an interesting kind of interesting again and kind of a more academic sense legal development, right? Because historically, the courts have been, you know, certainly since the 1930s been very sort of sympathetic to, you know, regulation of a business for the greater good, right? And this might be perhaps, you know, moving the other direction just in general, right? And even putting aside questions of, you know, how this might impact, say, you know, enforcement of aspects of the Civil Rights Act or something like that, right? Where, you know, in this case, right, we're talking about a state law, a state anti-discrimination ordinance. But it's hard to see a clear distinction between the argument here and say an argument that, you know, somebody would not, you know, produce a website for an interracial marriage or something like that, right? So, you know, historically would probably, most people would think would probably fall under the Civil Rights Act, at least I would think so. Without doing too much research into it, but just it seems like that, I mean, it was almost like a no-brainer that you couldn't, you know, you can't advertise, you know, we won't hire, you know, somebody in an interracial marriage or something, right? So, so, so definitely right. We're seeing kind of some interesting or potentially problematic developments there. Let's see. So, but definitely right. An area where, you know, again, we're seeing a conflict between rights. And this is often another point that's worth pointing out is that, you know, oftentimes the court is in a situation where it has to balance, right? One set of rights versus another set of rights, you know, the rights of, you know, individuals who want to get married to somebody of the same sex versus individuals who want to engage in, you know, commercial activity, right, in this case. Speaking of rights and conflicts potentially between them, we have another case that came up recently and actually was decided not too long ago. Students for fair missions versus both the University of North Carolina and Harvard College, which of course dealt with potentially different issues. And of course, those, that pair of cases dealt with affirmative action, right, which is an area where the Supreme Court really hadn't weighed in too much since, I would say, the Bakke decision back in 1978. So almost a generation where there hadn't been really a ground change and, you know, where the Supreme Court was kind of thinking in terms of affirmative action. And so, you know, first, you know, what is kind of the outcome of this case? And what was the court's argument for the position that ended up carrying the day or what was the majority argument that ended up carrying the day here? John? I'll jump on this one. Incredibly, incredibly important opinion that has been a long time coming. It's just that the direction the opinion went was quite aggressive. We'll get there before we get into the students for fair admissions and their complaints at North at the University North Carolina Chapel Hill and at Harvard College. We need to look at what is affirmative action. Now, affirmative action policies are designed to provide a degree of advantage to minorities, to women, to groups that have been historically discriminated against in US history. And this goes along with what, again, we cover in government or American government classes just literally today. When you look at a quality of results versus a quality of opportunity. Now, advocates of a quality of opportunity want a legally even playing field. And we have basically achieved that. It's hard to identify, it's not impossible to identify legislation federal, state, local that is discriminatory based on race, based on ethnicity, nationality. Advocates of a quality of results, however, recognize that discrimination in the past, let's say like chattel slavery for over a century discrimination in the past that takes the form of Jim Crow laws for a century post Civil War, excessive discrimination over centuries tends to echo into the future. So affirmative action policies are intended to help people now who have been discriminated against in the past. And the case law is unique in that the court has generally favored affirmative action policies going all the way back to the 70s. There's a case called the Bakke opinion. This goes to the University of California. The medical school had set aside a quota, a certain number of seats just for minorities and women. This was challenged and the court basically said no. They looked at the University of California at Davis Medical School and said, we like what you're trying to do. We appreciate what you're trying to do, but you can't do it with quotas, quotas are unconstitutional fast forward to the University of Michigan. And this is going to give us the what up into this point was the precedent and the University of Michigan law school had an affirmative action program that wasn't quotas. It was a point system. Basically, it set up a situation where you can provide opportunities for minorities and women if it's a small percentage of the overall admittance policy. Meaning if you're looking at law school at the University of Michigan, your LSAT scores are going to be incredibly important. Your GPA from your undergraduate university is going to be important. Letters of recommendation are important. The race and status as a biological woman, we're going to let that also count, but it's just going to be a little bit. It's not going to be a quota. It's not going to be something where you're getting into law school because you're a minority or because you're a woman. It's just going to help. That's it. And then we get to the current case. The University of North Carolina, Harvard University, their affirmative action policies were questioned. It goes to the federal court and it is a relatively conservative court. And they looked at affirmative action programs at these two universities and basically said the petitioners were right that affirmative action programs like these even narrowly tailored or violations of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. This has effectively, I don't want to put too much on this opinion, but I don't know how we can say anything other than this. It has effectively ended affirmative action programs as we know them at universities across the nation. There's a lot going on here. There are different ways to look at this. It is very easy to look at this as one of the more depressing cases that you will find. It's very easy to look at this as a case that will make it harder for minorities and women to get into universities to get into graduate schools. It's easy to look at this as an opinion of the court that will decrease diversity in universities. Yeah, those are really, really easy things to see. On the other hand, the late Sandra Day O'Connor back from the Bakke opinion had once mentioned that affirmative action programs are by definition destined for extinction. There should come a point in the future where we have achieved a quality of results, where we have achieved true diversity. Are we there now? No, no, we're just not. I mean, the data show that we're not there. Did the court go way too far in advance ending affirmative action policies? It's easy to argue that they did. I'm trying to show both sides of this and not just focus on the horrible, soul-crushing, depressing side of this. But there was that prediction from the late Sandra Day O'Connor that this would eventually happen. It occurred to me. I have been speaking for quite some time, so I'm going to stop now, turn it over to Dr. Watson to fill in any blanks. I'm actually fine coming in wholly on the, this is super depressing angle and I'm just going to really hunker down on that part because I looked up some of the statistics behind this just to really make my opinion as informed as possible. And so there have been studies, even recent studies, showing that people of color have benefited from these efforts to increase campus diversity. So between 1976 and 2008, black and American Indian and Alaska Native people saw their share of total college enrollment increased by 39% and 46% respectively. And Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander people's enrollment share more than doubled during this period as well. And so they made huge advances during this time because it was, they were making what we call race-conscious decisions. What we know is that when we make race-blind decisions, it is people of color who suffer. And so today, the New York Times, not today, but in today's world, the New York Times found that students of color are actually more underrepresented at selective universities than they have been in the past because they're still not matching with graduation rates from high schools. And so while we have started to see sort of high schools diversify and graduating students diversify, we're still not actually giving them up in the appropriate amounts to selective universities in particular. And so we can statistically show that we have not yet achieved sort of unquestionable diversity that won't roll back as soon as we're no longer focusing on it with our admissions policies. Additionally, what we know is that it's not just the fact that everybody deserves the right to have equal access to education, equal access to quality education and equal chance at these kinds of things. Everybody benefits when we have diversity. And so we have studies showing that teams that are more diverse in business settings are more innovative. They perform better. There's evidence that suggests that diverse classrooms can reduce students' racial biases. They can improve sort of satisfaction of the experience and intellectual self-confidence. You can improve leadership skills. You're getting more, every time you get more perspectives in a room, you're coming out with better answers probably, or at least better informed answers. Additionally, at least part of the argument here is that, well, what we know is that because of discrimination in the past and discrimination today, individuals of color are more likely to have on average lower incomes. And so if we're still considering income in admissions policies, we're probably still capturing some of this concern. The problem is that income alone isn't going to capture all of these problems, especially because you're not taking wealth into account. So income is your paycheck. It's what you're getting monthly or bi-weekly or whatever. It is the money that your family accumulates over time. It's the properties you own. It's the investments you have. And we know that wealth and income don't match up quite yet, especially for people of color. They are far more likely to have reduced wealth in sort of a generational and family sense. And so tied to the idea of wealth is where you go to high school and which colleges your high school feeds into and what kinds of resources you have educationally. And so what we have now is a Supreme Court who has declared that it is unfair and no longer necessary to take race into consideration for admissions policies, but they are not willing to address the fact that we still have an unfair world that is stacked against people of different races. And they're leaving intact the kinds of policies that prefer like legacy enrollments, which tend to prioritize white students because the legacy students from colleges were white. So if you look at like the Ivy League colleges, a lot of their legacies are white, which means that those are disproportionately advantaging those students when they go to enroll. And so we still have harmful policies in effect, but we have now taken away the policies that are meant to help mitigate some of this. That's a great point. Dr. Watson, the when you when you compare this to the fact that legacy admissions are still a thing, we cannot. We technically we will no longer be able to allow affirmative action policies at universities to improve to purposefully increase diversity. Because it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment's equal protection clause, according to the federal Supreme Court. But if my mom or dad went to Harvard, that is going to dramatically improve my chances of getting in. So the fact that one is gone, the other is still there is unique. They are also, I forgot to mention, they are also challenging scholarships that are directed to students who are members of minority groups. And so this is sort of the next item on the chopping block is whether or not scholarships will be allowed to be directed toward specific groups. Or if they have to allow everybody and all the time. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I think, you know, but you're pretty good to overview that. I think the the one thing that I wouldn't necessarily call it a silver lining, perhaps. But one thing that I guess we're noting is that I think is often lost in conversations about education and higher education in particular, which of course this case dealt with. Is that, you know, the vast majority of students in America do not attend selective institutions, right? In the sense that affirmative action, although it's important, critically important, is really a policy that primarily affected highly selective institutions and moderately selective institutions. And particularly private institutions, since a lot of states had already, for better or for worse, passed laws that had limited or otherwise banned the use of affirmative action on the basis of race or that sort of thing. So not to say that this is not critical because obviously elite institutions like Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Stanford and the University of North Carolina are places where, you know, a lot of America's political elites come from, right? For better or for worse. You know, you don't find a lot of Supreme Court justices that did their undergrad degrees at Middle Georgia State University. Maybe that should change. And I think most of us would probably agree that it would be good if it did change. But the reality is that, you know, elite institutions are disproportionately represented in terms of political power and influence and wealth and things like that in our country as well. And this certainly these decisions kind of reinforce some of those inequalities that already persisted, particularly if, as you both suggested, right, legacy admissions are not, are one permitted to continue and two are not, you know, abolished. I'm not sure if there's any sort of from a legal perspective. I'm not sure what the legal argument would be for the legal that legacy admissions are somehow a violation of constitution. But I think as a policy matter, most people would probably agree that they are problematic is certainly the not so many may remember the scandal a few years ago with various celebrities and other relatively well off people trying to you essentially bribe, you know, admissions officials into and athletics officials into getting their kids into in some cases not terribly selective institutions even, which was kind of a puzzling thing in of itself is why why didn't you just give the money directly to the school and do it the the legacy admissions way as opposed to, you know, trying to pretend your kid was a tennis player or whatever. But, but nonetheless, right, you know, definitely reflect there is a underbelly of self dealing corruption, whatever right that has not been tackled and probably sort of ought to be tackled I think most of us would agree. And again, you know, some of the most way affects, you know, lead institutions, you know, nobody in the MGM missions office cares whether your parents went and Jay or not right but again, you know, that's they do care at places like Harvard and Princeton and that sort of thing. And it is worth noting and particularly and also as Dr Watson points out right the impacts on things like scholarships and that sort of thing could actually be much more far ranging right because those are cases that those are situations where there are, you know, a large number of private scholarships and things like that that are very much, you know, directed towards members particular groups, you know, you know, think of say the college fund of the of the you know, I can't remember the acronym I'll stop my head but I think it's just called college fund now. And another examples where you have, you know, those those students are, you know, obvious, you know, they're giving scholarships to people from minority communities and things like that and those could be and those students could be attending, you know, non selective institutions in so many cases probably are. Let's see so so I think for our next question we will move away from the spring for a little bit and move towards has more general a couple of general more constitutional questions if you will. And this is sort of also an observation of Constitution Day although Constitution Day was technically on Sunday, but then the last I guess we'll call it Constitution week. And so we do want to talk a little bit about the Constitution more generally. And one thing one provision one aspect of the Constitution and spend the news of late is part of the 14th Amendment. And there's the quote unquote insurrection clause I believe it's the third clause if I'm not mistaken of the 14th Amendment that deals with, among other things, essentially saying that people that have participated in rebellion or other crime against the United States are disqualified from holding public office right under the United States and I mean obviously the context of the 14th Amendment or 14th Amendment rather is that, you know, immediately in the aftermath of the Civil War to do a lot of things to correct issues related to the Civil War. But, but, but obviously the term not you know the 14th Amendment was not phrased to just nearly confine itself to the circumstances immediately after the Civil War. And so people have asked the question of, given the role of former President Trump in perhaps ginning up the riot slash attack on the Capitol on January 6 2021, whether or not that would constitute such an active insurrection or whatever sort of sentiment we want to use there, that would, you know, constitute of, you know, something that could disqualify him disqualifying from office and so the question I guess essentially is, first, is this isn't even plausible. I guess, second, perhaps more interesting from more of an academic perspective is, you know, what process if any exists to carry this out into the force in other words, you know, just cause the 14th Amendment says something doesn't necessarily mean that anybody is actually obliged to do it. And so, so I don't know, either of you are particularly enthusiastic about tackling that one, but I know if it's my turn or yours, I lost track. Maybe my miss time. I think it was Andy's turn. Yeah, we're going. So, part of the problem is that the Constitution doesn't define insurrection. It names it, but it doesn't define it. And so it's difficult to, to know or to sort of contradict people who argue that this doesn't apply. Because without defining it, anything could apply or not apply sort of. And so that's part of the concern here that it itself does not define what an insurrection is. It also doesn't say who enforces it. And so, there are a couple of options here, sort of, theoretically speaking, states get to set their own election policies. They running elections as a state power. And so state election officials could reject Trump's application to be on the ballot. Some have said that they would be willing to do that. Some have explicitly stated that they would not be willing to do that. And so there's going to, if that is where we let this fall, if that's who we leave carrying this clause out to, mixed results probably. For states that take his name off of the ballot, he is very likely to sue. And so what we are going to see at that point is a case that will probably eventually make its way to the Supreme Court and you have the Supreme Court deciding. Whether or not he was involved in insurrection to the degree that it takes to remove him from the ballot is kind of a different question. So when you look at the January 6 House panel, the investigative panel, what they concluded was that he was. They found that he had obstructed an official proceeding that he engaged in conspiracy to defraud the US that he engaged in conspiracy to knowingly make a false statement and that he had assisted aided or comforted and insurrection is the sort of formal language there and thus recommended criminal charges. But as far as I know, he has not received criminal charges specifically related to the insurrection. He has received criminal charges related to other aspects of this. I'm happy to be corrected. What I had seen today was that was that note that he had not received these specific charges, just others. And so everyone's kind of tiptoeing around the insurrection term. And I think that's probably where the Supreme Court comes into decide whether or not that's what the Constitution is referring to. How they will side I. I will not say a firm response to that one. I would guess if I had to guess it's a conservative supermajority three of the justices were appointed by Trump. And so I would find it difficult to believe that they would rule. Or that their opinion would come down against him, but I'm a little bit pessimistic at heart probably. Great summary there. I'd like to point out that you nailed it there. It could very easily be state governments who have the constitutional power over the time, place and manner of elections. It's not just insurrection article, the 14th Amendment. Article three also mentions insurrection rebellion, a providing a comfort to the enemy. If there were a conviction of President Trump for the January 6 insurrection, then I think this would be a much, much higher probability that 14th Amendment. Antiquated though very much still real realities could kick in. We have some precedent here. If you were literally taking part in the January 6 insurrection, state governments have already taken action there in New Mexico in 2022. A gentleman by the name of Griffin. I can't remember the first name was removed from the ballot for county commissioner because he took part in the January 6 insurrection. The January 6 insurrection is not, it's important to note what was happening. This was not a random day. This was the day where Congress was tallying the electoral votes from the 50 states. It was quite purposeful. It was literally designed to get a large number of people unimaginably breaking into the Capitol without getting shot and having them go in and do whatever. What was going to happen on January 6? I believe it could have been exponentially worse, especially if you've seen the House investigation over a multitude of months. Having said all of that, at the end of the day, can the 14th Amendment be used if former President Trump were connected to the insurrection on January 6 if he were convicted in a federal court? Could it be used to preclude him from running for office? Absolutely. Do I think it will? Probably not. If it were to occur, if a multitude of states were to begin taking him off the ballot for this very reason, it would, of course, go to the federal Supreme Court. I will jump out on a limb and say that this 6-3 Supermajority Conservative Court would probably err on the side of allowing President Trump to run. That is sure opinion, and it is absolutely without any value. But when I say Supermajority Conservative Court, I don't mean that as a good or a bad. This is content neutral. The court historically is the more conservative branch of government, but it's not 5-4 as it has been for most of my generation. This is 6-3. I don't think this court would allow him to be removed from the ballot under 14th Amendment violations, although he could. With that being said, I'll leave it at that. Forgive the anti-climactic finish. I do want to add, so technically a conviction is not required to use this clause of the 14th Amendment. We've been talking about convictions. We've been talking about these criminal charges. Technically that's not required for it to be applied, but if we're looking at the sort of legal arguments, especially traveling up to the Supreme Court, that would be sort of more helpful in building a case probably. That being said, for convictions for other things, there's nothing that says that someone who has a criminal conviction on their record can't run for president or can't hold office. You can campaign for office while within prison. It would be harder, but possible. It would be legal. You can run. So all of these things, even if he were convicted on other charges, would still be possible for him. It would still be legal. It's just this case of trying to conceive what the legal argument specifically would be for using this clause where that conviction would be useful. Also, one other element that I have skipped. Not that either party has the supermajorities in the House or the Senate, but it could be a moot point with the court because two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate under the 14th Amendment have the ability to basically forgive this. So for those who literally fought against the Constitution, for those who swore to protect and defend it, and then went off and created a new nation-state that was literally never recognized by any nation-state on the planet, including the United States. Of course, I'm referring to the Confederacy. The House and the Senate, two-thirds vote, they could be allowed back in. That is still there, but neither party has that, so that's kind of a moot point. And to get the other side, this other sort of argument to this, as I was preparing for today, I saw a lot of people arguing that this should not be a question for the judicial branch at all, that the American people should be allowed to decide. And so allow his name to be on the ballot, let the people decide if they're willing to vote for him or not, was the sort of other side of this argument for people who don't believe that he should be sort of restricted at all. And so that would be the kind of alternative approach to this, to let the people decide if they're willing to vote for someone who is engaged in these activities. That is a great point that I've not seen a lot. However, for those who think the court shouldn't have anything to do with this, I would argue that a belief that the federal Supreme Court doesn't have the ability to interpret the Constitution, I would disagree wholeheartedly. But I know that's not your point, but that is an interesting angle to look at this, let the electoral process decide. And just to follow up on that, first we've got some chat discussion about this. And also I think that it's worth pointing out that a couple things. First, the Supreme Court does have something that's referred to as the political question doctrine, essentially a question where it says that while theoretically it might be a legal question in practice, it's a decision that ought to be left to the elected branches of government. And you could argue that for better or for worse, the Congress, the other co-equal branch of government has reviewed President Trump's conduct in office twice, impeached him twice, failed to remove him from office twice, failed to disqualify him from future office twice. And that political decision would arguably trump any, no pun intended, any sort of judicial determination of whether or not he engaged in an insurrection. If the people's representatives have already decided that, or at least not enough of the people's representatives have already decided that he should be disqualified from office, then what role does the unelected judiciary have to make that decision? I think you could at least plausibly make that argument. I think that might be a core argument that the Supreme Court majority would probably make, is that this essentially, this has been asked and answered in this particular case. Getting to the question of other convictions, yeah, I think this is an important point. We've had presidential candidates actually run for office from prison before. Most famously Eugene Debs in 1920 ran for president as the Socialist Party candidate while he was in federal prison. And in fact, you know, had he been elected, he said he was going to pardon himself, which I guess was the only way he was going to serve as president. But the reality is that one, he only got like 3% of the vote or something like that anyway. And the other point here is of course that Debs had no realistic shot at the presidents or anything like that. But more generally speaking, the Constitution really is silent about this question of whether or not a prisoner, a criminal can run for office with this one exception of the 14th Amendment here, right? And so people have said, okay, well, what if Donald Trump is convicted in Georgia, for example, for his, you know, participation, the various quote unquote perfect phone calls that he made to try to, you know, find 12,000 votes after the election here in Georgia. And the answer is, well, it really doesn't matter, right? You know, theoretically he could be, you know, sitting down the road and making state prison and be present at the same time. The Constitution is, you know, doesn't say you can't be, you know, you can't be a prisoner and president at the same time. Now, how that work in practice, God knows, you know, again, you know, the courts would probably have to weigh in on that, right? You know, I guess you could argue maybe the supremacy clause says, well, if he's president, you have to lay him out of jail at least to be president. I don't know. Because otherwise you'd be interfering with a federal official and all sorts of things. Who knows how that would play out, right? Hopefully we don't get to find out one way or the other. But they do is worth pointing out, right? That, you know, we're definitely an unexplored territory, right? But again, you know, who... And I guess the other thing worth mentioning here also is that we also have this complicating factor of the Electoral College, just because he's on the ballot or not on the ballot doesn't necessarily stop presidential electors from voting for him, right? I mean, theoretically, you know, even if he's disqualified from the ballot, there's a good chance that Republican presidential electors would defect from whoever they are supposedly going to vote for and vote for Trump if they feel like he's been longer. That's right, right? Faithless electors could be a possibility. And, you know, there's nothing that, you know, again, you know, could the 14th Amendment bind electors not to vote for somebody? That's how would that even work, right? Yeah, the 14th Amendment, you know, it's one of those things where the textual elegance of it perhaps is good. But I think a more modern sort of lawyer probably would say, well, wait a minute, we need to kind of fill in some details here, right? Which I think might be true of the Constitution in general. I think when you look at modern Constitutions in general, they tend to be a bit more detailed than our Constitution. For this very reason that, you know, over the two and a quarter centuries that we've had, you know, constitutional government in the United States, you know, one of the things that people have learned from our Constitution is that a vague and flexible Constitution has its merits, but at the same time specificity is nice too. And I think you look around comparatively, if you look at, say, you know, Constitutions of countries like Japan or Germany or, you know, countries that wrote Constitutions in the last 100 years or so, you'll see they tend to be a lot more detailed and tend to, but also tend to also be loaded up with a lot more exceptions and a lot more caveats and a lot more complexity as well, which may or may not be a benefit, I don't know, but arguably one of the benefits of our Constitution is that it's reasonably short and reasonably readable. You don't want the Alabama Constitution as your national Constitution. Not to pick on Alabama in particular, but, but we always pick on Alabama because Alabama has ridiculous Constitution. In that, you know, if you ever take a step in local government class, you'll learn that, you know, basically it gets into the details of like, you know, the, you know, the tax rates of particular counties and things like that, which was just kind of ridiculous detail for a state Constitution to get into. Let's see. So just a couple of Has President violated the Presidential Records Act. Again, is that really at the level of violating the oath of office to the point that he would be, you know, again, that would be an interpretation thing for the courts, right? Again, kind of going through the questions here real quick to see if there's a fails on Trump. So I think we're going to have to leave that one as kind of a to be determined and maybe hopefully not to be determined. I don't know. Although it's increasingly look like it's going to be determined at least one, at least on the Republican side, if nothing else. No matter what other candidates may want to think about it. Other things have changed before, right? Nobody has ever won a lot of money predicting what's going to happen with Donald Trump. So I would accept him staying out of jail usually. That's usually a safe bet, but in any event. So let's turn a little bit away from the Supreme Court to bring up, I guess, I don't know, the interest of balance is not quite the right way to put it, but certainly we know that Joe Biden has a son that's a bit of a screw up, I think to put it politely. Hunter Biden, who's found himself in some legal difficulties due to among other things. And legally, his immediate difficulty has to do with his application for a firearm and things like that. And then some other things related to that in terms of his interactions with investigators, more broadly questions about his involvement with a company that had business with the Ukrainian government that was under investigation and all this other stuff. What are the, what are the, what is the 50,000 foot overview of his legal troubles and how might those actually, you know, from a political perspective, a legal perspective, how might those actually come to affect President Biden, particularly in terms of, you know, first, you know, any sort of, you know, I know there's certainly been discussion of although not actual action on impeachment, but also just kind of more generally speaking politically, you know, we know that scandals have historically been important in terms of presidential elections. And I would imagine this one, even though it might not be as directly related to Biden as say others from, say, you know, the Clinton email scandal or some of the others. Yeah, well, what are the, what are, what is the likely impact of this, if any, on the presidential race. So I think we're back to John's turn, if I'm not mistaken. Well, regarding Hunter Biden, it's important to note he's not running for federal or state office. So there's that. We also have the there was a House oversight committee that has investigated this. There have been no connections identified between Hunter Biden and his father, the President of the United States. The Republicans are currently investigating further. But so far, I think the, the million dollar question is what does this have to do with President Biden? Does President Biden have any relations with any possible allegations of wrongdoing by his son? And the answer is no. So from that perspective, what effect will this have on the Biden administration's run for reelection in 2024? I'm going to argue literally none. I don't think any Republicans will turn around and vote for President Biden because it after the new Republican investigation, nothing turns up if nothing turns up, which nothing's turned up in the past. I don't think any Republicans are going to vote for President Biden because of that. I don't think any Democrats are going to vote for President Trump if anything does surface here. But maybe if the connection to President Biden does, but so far, nothing has surfaced in terms of any connections with all of that being said. Most recently, Hunter Biden's legal woes include an indictment in a federal court in Delaware on gun charges. Now you might wonder what gun charges are these he applied for a gun. I forgot what type. Maybe I don't know if it's a 38 special or non millimeter handgun back in 2018. During a time when he has also admitted to being under not necessarily the influence, but definitely struggling with his addiction to crack cocaine. And if anyone here has filed for a gun permit, your addiction to crack cocaine while applying for your gun permit is frowned upon. So that's what he's looking at immediately in terms of the gun charges. He is basically accused of multiple counts of falsifying documents when he was applying for his gun. If you go back several years, there have also been investigations into Hunter Biden regarding his profits from domestic and particularly overseas investments. And there were questions raised as to whether or not he had paid an appropriate amount of taxes. Now, this all gets lumped into a very complex plea arrangement that fell apart very recently where he had immunity granted to him. Now the question is, does that immunity still apply? At the end of the day, the unless I miss something and I don't think I have all of the questionable taxes that were potentially not paid in full have now been paid in full. As a matter of fact, for quite some time they've been paid in full. The current investigation regarding the gun charges is definitely still very much a serious offense. It is not something to be taken lightly. Hunter Biden, by definition of being indicted on these gun charges, it has a serious problem. President Biden does not. There might be about a million details that can be filled in and I'll turn it over to Dr. Watson or Dr. Lawrence to fill it in. But again, how will this impact the presidential election of 2024? I can't imagine that it will. Obviously, you have the all important independent voter, the undecided voter, undecided between President Biden, President Trump, undecided. That's an interesting group of the electorate right there, but I just don't see this really having a huge impact on the 2024 election. I have to agree. I think you've done a great job covering the sort of details of the matter here and its implications. I think ultimately, if this is going to have any kind of effect, it's basically a distraction, I guess, from the actual issues from the actual politics at play. There are probably some voters in the United States who are undecided between the two. And if they're getting more stories about this and hearing more stories about this, that affects their vote in some way. But I would also be shocked if this was the thing that determined the outcome of the election in any meaningful way. I agree, and I think it's important to note, and again, this is neither here nor there. This is content neutral. But if this Hunter Biden issue were to continue, I'm sure it will continue, will not go away. If I were a Republican strategist, I would never let this go away. I would keep it out there. In 2024, we already have two scheduled one state and one federal criminal court cases that will involve the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald Trump. He will literally be in court. So there's a lot of noise that's going to be coming out in 2024. So whoever it was that asked, recommended that we should live in interesting times. We are, and I'm ready for boring. I tell people all the time that no political scientist worth their salt, let's live in interesting times. We like our politics boring. Exactly. So that's a good point. I think that one thing to bear in mind is, I mean, just kind of thinking to 2024 and what, you know, the politics of it, right? Moving a little bit away from the law of it. When you look at the 2016 campaign, right? You know, if you look back at the campaign, you know that President Trump, then candidate Trump, was his tactic, his frequent tactic was essentially to try to muddy the waters, right? Essentially, to create an appearance of false equivalents or at least to, I guess, the way I would think is to kind of say, OK, well, yeah, I'm corrupt, but they're corrupt too. So, you know, what's the difference? He might as well stay home, right? And that was kind of the implicit message that came out of the Trump campaign a lot of the time. You know, for example, when he decided he was going to invite some of the women that accused former President Clinton of sexual harassment to one of the debates as his guess, right? I mean, just sort of a tawdry sort of exercise, but it was designed to essentially say, well, you know, the Clinton, just to remind you, the Clintons are just corrupt and, you know, yeah, I'm corrupt too. I freely admit I'm corrupt. I'm not really corrupt, but I am corrupt, right? That sort of thing. And I think you, you know, for 2024, I think, you know, this creates an obvious opportunity for him to repeat that playbook, right? Essentially where he can say, well, you know, yeah, you know, my son was off or my son-in-law was off, you know, cutting billion-dollar deals with the Saudis while they were beheading and, you know, doing all these horrible things to American journalists and all this other thing. But, you know, Hunter Biden was doing a bunch of cracks. So really, what's the difference? He might as well just stay home. It's just, you know, it's just Washington insiders getting themselves rich anyways. So why not make me rich? Because I'm rich anyway, right? I mean, you know, there's no logical real argument there, per se, except that, well, you know, I'm an outsider, even though I'm not, even though I've been protected by the political class by an entire adult life. Even though I probably should have been prison back in the 80s for, you know, investment fraud and tax fraud and a bunch of other things. Not me personally, him, obviously. But, you know, housing discrimination. I mean, you name it, he was doing all this stuff in the 80s back in New York and nobody did anything about it, right? Groping women. I'm just going to go ahead and remind us of the assault just. Yes. And treating his current and former wives like garbage and, you know, his children like garbage at times. You know, I think he referred to one of his daughters with a pejorative term at one point. I mean, you know, I mean, the man is a piece of work. Elizabeth, let's be perfectly honest here. Let's lay it on the table and unapologetically a piece of work. And, and frankly, that's, you know, why some people vote for it, which, you know, I can't really wrap my head around at some level. But, you know, at the same time, I've looked at enough politics around the world to say, well, you know, there are there are voters out there just want to burn it all down, right? And they're not just in the United States, right? You see it in, you see it in Italy, you see it in Hungary, you see it in Thailand, you see it in a lot of countries. You know, where the voter, you know, there's this angry, dispossessed, disenfranchised, maybe population that basically just wants to watch it all burn. Germany, France, right? I mean, we see, you know, all these, and not always on the right, but oftentimes on the right. And, and Trump is just the American manifestation of that, right? Which having said all that, you know, with Biden, I think the, you know, with Hunter Biden, I mean, the real question is, is there any fire to the smoke, right? And, you know, the, the one thing that, you know, and this is me speaking from my personal sort of thought process, if nothing else. The question that is inevitably going to be asked is, you know, why are these people paying this guy millions of dollars a year if he's not doing anything for them, right? And at the end of the day, which maybe they're stupid, you know, I mean, there's a lot of dumb money in politics, right? There's a lot of dumb money in corporations, people will pay people money to do really, you know, for no good reason, right? I mean, why did the Texas Rangers hire George W. Bush to be their president? You know, was he really going and getting a lot of favors from Washington for them? Probably not. But was he the best qualified person to run the Texas Rangers? Probably not either, right? Now, Hunter Biden is not George W. Bush, but there are some analogies there. You know, they both have some drug issues. They both were not the, I wouldn't say the black sheep of their family, but they weren't the number one son. In either case, I don't think of the president who we associate them with. Of course, George W. went on to be president himself. So, you know, whereas I don't think Hunter Biden is ever going to be anywhere near public office. But, but nonetheless, right now, I do think there is the question of is there's a lot of smoke, is there fire? I don't think there's a lot of fire, but and I think if people were, you know, I think the Republicans have tried really, really hard to find fire. And haven't found it, which tends to suggest to me that there probably isn't a lot of fire. But, but again, you know, that's goes back to the bigger question of Trump and campaign tactics and muttering the waters and that sort of thing. Let's see. So we do have a kind of interesting follow up question. It's not really a legal question, but I think it's an important question from Autumn in the chat. And that is, do you think the Republican Party will ever be like it was before the Trump campaign or presidency? I've noticed a distinct shift towards polarization, both between the Republican and Democratic parties within the Republican Party itself. Do you ever think we were regaining more moderate across the aisle attitude in our political parties moving forward? It's a very good, insightful question that I think, unfortunately, we're not going to have a good answer for you. I would argue, no, you have to go back to 2010. In 2008, President Barack Obama was elected president or Senator Barack Obama was elected president. The first midterm election after that and first midterms after a presidential election are always going to see losses to that political party's control of the House of the Senate. But something unique happened. It was called the Tea Party. The Tea Party was an aggressive, almost militant fringe element of the Republican Party that emerged in 2010. There was a visceral reaction to President Obama from the Republican Party. I'm not entirely sure what variables it played, what it was about President Obama. But something about President Obama stirred something deep inside the Republican Party. That's where it began. And you see an enormous number of freshmen representatives in particular coming into Congress. Fast forward to 2016, what was birthed with the Tea Party came to fruition with the Trump administration's presidency. It was a changed election. It was an election where the status quo candidates not necessarily as attractive and surprising to everyone, President Trump won. And this created a new reality in the Republican Party. This is neither good nor bad content neutral, I guess. However, the Republican Party is currently evolving. They are in an evolutionary period and something is going to come from this, possibly this decade. It's not necessarily what we call a critical election because this is occurring over multiple years. But the Republican Party is morphing into something different. I would expect, possibly, what we consider traditional Republicans from, I don't know, the 90s, the 80s might emerge in a new party or what is the Trump slash Tea Party section of the current Republican Party might branch off into some third party. Or it might take over the Republican Party and this is what the Republican Party is. That's the best way I can answer that in terms of will we have a Republican Party with the elephant back to free Trump? I would argue you have to say pre Tea Party days. I don't see that. I think we're in a transition that's taking more than a decade and we don't necessarily know what's going to come out on the other end. I definitely don't predict the third party with any real power because third parties don't have any real power in a single-member plurality voting system. But I would answer quickly. I failed to answer this quickly because I'm still talking. No, I don't see the traditional Republican Party emerging from this except for something like that. The change is just too deep. It's a different party. All of that's opinion. Dr. Watson, do you want to add anything to that? The other thing I might add is I would almost argue that you can predate this back even further. You could arguably say this is really Clinton. 1992, 1994, the contract with America. I mean, sometimes I kind of think of that as almost the proto Tea Party, right? New Gingrich and who very much was a firebrand, kind of the wrestling away control of the Republican Party from the Rockefeller Republican wing that essentially kind of run things off and on for the last 40 years. Now, of course, run by run things, I mean, been in the minority in Congress because that was a Republican Party that was for better, for worse, always kind of on the back foot in Congress and particularly in the House and had kind of accommodated itself to that. And basically, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, you know, I mean, Goldwater's critique that the Republicans were kind of were an echo and not a choice sort of applied to them in that they were kind of Democrats light or the slightly more conservative version of the Democrats. So that was some of that's time bound. Some of that is because the Democrats themselves were a much bigger tent back in before the 1990s, right, because of the delayed effects of realignment in the south because of, you know, the fact you still have a lot of southern conservative Democrats that did not transition over particularly congressional and state politics to the more, you know, nationally conservative Republican Party. And, you know, and I think, you know, but but there was still kind of those moderate elements and they have, you know, but but in the 1990s, they kind of got more sidelined. And then, of course, the Tea Party came in. But they'd be more sidelined to the point that, you know, you know, Newt Gingrich, you know, at least the Newt Gingrich of 1994 would probably be seen as kind of a rhino today by probably a lot of Republicans, even though at the time he was certainly not. You know, he was more on the center right of his party or maybe even the right right of his party. So, and I think the other thing is, you know, I don't know if we're necessary. I think there was kind of an imagined past that there was this comedy. But I think it was a time bound past. It was a time it was a it was a period when, again, we were in that transition period between a dominant Democratic Party that was a very big tent and incorporated basically everybody from strong government to Adam Clarke and Clayton Powell, which are two things that probably mean nothing to anybody in this room, including my fellow panelists. But, you know, for essentially, you know, a segregationist through and through to, you know, a black congressman from Detroit, right, or New York, in the case of Adam Clayton Powell was from New York. And, you know, that was the Democratic Party in 1960 something, right? Maybe I think Strom was gone by then, but Jesse Helms was still there and a bunch of other ex Dixie Krantz were still there, right? And, you know, you saw that cross part of across aisle sort of moderation in part because the parties were that distinct. Ideologically, they were more distinct in terms of support bases and geography and things like that. That, you know, I mean, then, you know, I don't want to get over simplify things, but and this was before the rise of social issues in particular as a major distinguishing factor between the two parties. So is it possible that a more moderate party Republican Party can reemerge? I suspect not under the party system that we currently have constituted. At the same time, we know the party system is going through a very big upheaval. I was reading on the platform for women's Twitter today or yesterday, you know that the when you look at white voters, the economic foundations of the two parties have essentially reversed that the Democratic Party's base among white voters is now the relatively well off and the Republicans party base among white voters is the relatively less well off, which portends for a very different sort of politics than a left right politics of economics where the Republicans are the party of business and wealth and the Democrats of the party of populism and labor and that sort of thing, right, which I think you're starting to see right with Donald Trump, for example, going to Detroit to try to, you know, kind of steal some of Joe's thunder with the W. Some people are going to argue he's probably not going to have a lot of success with that. But then again, you know, there were the Reagan Democrats, right? There were, you know, union people that certainly went and became, you know, Reaganites at least for a little while. So I don't know if I got an answer for that. That's gonna make anybody happy. But I do think we're kind of an unusual sort of coalitional rearrangement of the parties. I don't know if it's a realignment or what. But there is something odd going on. And until the dust settles from that, I don't know what what is going to be the outcome of that. That said, the other the other point I kind of think is Trump is almost to be generous. I mean, but that's a Latin term, which basically means, you know, in of himself, right? There is only one Donald Trump, right? And everybody that's tried to be Donald Trump has not really succeeded being Donald Trump so far. The people that tried and, you know, apes some of the stuff either gave up on it at some point, right? You know, thinking somebody like Brian Kemp, for example, who kind of apes some of Donald Trump stuff and then realize that it wasn't really working for him. And, you know, even Ron DeSantis, right, has had to sort of move away from some of his Trumpist sort of things, although arguably to appeal to the right of Trump's new supporters that are now a bit more populist and that sort of thing. And, you know, is this, you know, once Trump passes from the state, which is inevitable because it happens to everybody. Is there anybody to pick up that mantle and carry it forward? And, you know, who is that person, right? There's a lot of people auditioning for that role. But it doesn't seem like anybody has captured that appeal. And if there's no appeal, if this is just a kind of, you know, in Italy, Berlusconi had a successor, right? More or less, right? The current leader of Italy is essentially a Berlusconi, a younger Berlusconi, a female younger Berlusconi, but that sort of figure has not emerged here in the United States. And I don't see an obvious one that is. The counter question, can the Democrats become more moderate? You know, I guess the question is not so much can the Democrats become more moderate. The question is, can the Democrats go back to being a big tent? Right? A bigger tent, right? A tent that includes people that are pro-life. A tent that includes people that are socially conservative to some degree, right? If they can do that, right, then they can go back to being electorally dominant, right? But how do you keep them all on side in a system where there is an opposition party? I don't know, right? The one thing about the Democrats' big tent of the 60s was there probably was not a viable opposition party in much of the country, right? Now they are, right? I mean, they're not a viable opposition party in California, but that's not really the same problem. So I think that's awfully speculative, but oh, I've got, basically. Let's see. So I know we're running a little short of time, but I also know that we wanted to talk about one more case. I do want to make sure we have time to talk about it, and that is the Court's decision in Dawes v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which, of course, radically reshaped the constitutional interpretation of abortion rights. So I always were running short of time, but I do want to give everybody on the panel at least an opportunity to talk a little bit about it. So how would you summarize what the outcome of that decision has been and where does that seem to be, where does policy and, I guess, future kind of legal running wing in that area seem to be going in the future to really paraphrase my original question. And I know Annie wanted to talk about this in particular, so I'll let her start if she wants to. So a little bit of background in the case for anyone trying to catch up. In 2018, Mississippi passed a law that banned pretty much all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Only exceptions allowed were to save the life of the pregnant individuals, so no exceptions for rape, no exceptions for incest. The Jackson Women's Health Organization, which was the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, sued. And so based on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, previous cases that established the sort of national level approach to abortion, lower courts prevented the enforcement of this law, but the Supreme Court struck down Roe and Casey instead and ruled that the Mississippi's band could stand. So what this, the effect this had was that it removed national level regulations for abortion and reverted to either anything the states already have on books pre-Roe, anything they had put on since or the things that they have made since the decision. And so today, I went and checked today for the New York Times live tracker, the abortions banned in almost all circumstances in 14 states. It's banned after two weeks in two states, 12 weeks in two states, 15 weeks in two states and 18 weeks in two states, sort of separately from the full bans. Their bans currently being blocked or disputed in another five states, and then it remains legal in some cases with new protections in 25 states. And so right now, that is how abortion is regulated in the United States is on a state by state basis. We've seen some grumblings in Congress, we've seen some moves, but they have not yet passed a national federal level regulation to the United States. When it comes to legal consequences of this, there are a lot. And so there's certainly been arguments made that the same ruling, the same logic that was used here could be applied to other issue areas as well. And so in his concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Thomas suggested the protections for contraception access for same sex marriage, and even same sex sexual intimacy could potentially be reconsidered. Even though the majority opinion and Dobbs sort of explicitly said that they weren't calling those things into question. Palma said that perhaps we should, based on the legal recognition here. When it comes to the actual sort of lived experience effects, what we see internationally even is that abortion bans don't decrease abortion rates. Instead, you increase health problems, you increase maternal mortality rates, you increase the number of individuals who have been pregnant and children who are living in poverty. You increase illegal abortions and unsafe abortions. And so what you see are not kind of the outcomes that these bans are intended to make. What you see are that abortions continue and they're just unsafe and deadly instead. And so that is, in four minutes, how abortion stands in the United States at this moment. Dr. Hall. Great summary. The only thing I would add would be something we're covering in class right now. Everything about abortion rights established in 1973 where it was predicated on the substantive due process right of privacy established in the 1965 Griswold versus Connecticut case involving Connecticut condoms. So what we just covered was accurate. Justice Alito's opinion does say this does not apply. This is not to be construed to possibly attack any other liberties that have been guaranteed under privacy. Having said that, he and all the other six justices when they were before the Senate subcommittee going up for confirmation also said that Roe was settled law. So you have to take that with a grain of salt. Now regarding Justice Thomas's dissent, that was bonkers almost. I didn't mean to say bonkers. Justice Thomas's dissent was a direct attack on privacy on substantive due process. He would get rid of all of it. And then he said that we could then come back with legislation to guarantee these things or constitutional amendments. So will the dismantling of the constitutionally protected right to an abortion predicated on privacy? Will that expand into other liberties that might one day have landmark court opinions that we're talking about in years to come? Possibly. Despite Justice Alito's assurances to the contrary. With that being said, I noticed that 633 and I'm going to force myself to stop talking there and turn it back to Dr. Lawrence to see where we're going to go. But yes, the current affairs in abortion rights, we've gone literally back to 1973 and it's a state issue. With 14 states banning it at contraception, meaning 14 states that have banned it completely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I did want to make sure we got that in there. There is one thing I would add and this actually ties in with the previous question about, you know, can the Republicans, I don't know, moderate is quite the right word. From a political perspective, I think Dobbs has increasingly obviously become an electoral liability for Republicans, something that, you know, former President Trump acknowledged an interview earlier this week that did not endear him much to the conservative base of his party. Essentially, you attacked, among other people, Ron DeSantis. I don't know if he attacked him by name, but he certainly attacked his actions to essentially put in place abortion restrictions in Florida. Ironically, DeSantis himself reportedly is not all that much of an abortion fanatic one way or the other, but apparently feels the political need to be a very hardcore pro-life politician or anti-choice politician. Whatever terminology you want to use there, which is near here nor there, but the point is that, you know, there are these countervailing pressures within the Republican Party on the one hand for electability. On the other hand, there is an element of the base that is very, very heavily committed to abortion restrictions beyond what's even on the books in most states. And this is the sort of thing that could, I would necessarily say, moderate the Republican Party, but put them in a position where they would find it difficult to win for many elections outside of very solid red states. And in that case, being put in the political wilderness might eventually lead to some moderation, just simply because they would want, you know, at the end of the day, as one famous political scientist put it, you know, at the end of the day, politicians want to be in power, right? And the entire purpose of political parties is to gain political power, and it doesn't do you any good to gain political power if you've got a political position that two-thirds of the public thinks is ridiculous, right? And Republicans in the past have always kind of banked on this idea that they could kind of convince people that the hardcore pro-life position was what they really wanted. They just couldn't articulate it. And I think the reality of post-dobs is they're finding it much harder to make that argument than they thought it was going to be. Of course, there was also a more pragmatic part of the Republican Party that never thought they were going to catch the bus, right? From, you know, the old dog catching the bus sort of argument, you know, you don't want to catch the bus because then you got to deal with the bus. So, but yeah, as both Dr. Watson and Dr. Hall pointed out, right, you know, definitely this is a decision that fundamentally reshaped the law in this area and probably fundamentally reshaped the politics in this area as well. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, depending on how long you've been up to that, I guess, I think that probably means that we're kind of out of time or actually well beyond out of time. And I'd like to thank first our audience for coming and participating. And I apologize, we weren't able to get to all of your questions. My friend, we didn't get to anywhere close to all the questions we had. I think I had originally down nine questions and we got to six of them. And that's actually kind of a record for us usually get through at least like eight or nine, plus a couple audience questions too. But I think that, you know, was reflective of just how much there is to talk about when it comes to the Constitution and constitutional rights in the Supreme Court and what them and arguably, you know, how dramatic some of the Supreme Court's decisions have been in terms of their effects on the law and that sort of thing. So if you are interested in future discussion events, we've got another one coming up in a couple weeks that we'll be saying also announced us for in the next couple days. This one will be on global politics, international politics, international events. So we're going to be talking about a lot of things are going on in the world, some of which you may have heard of some which are maybe a bit more obscure. So we'll probably talk a little bit about the Russo Ukrainian conflict, although we got another event that's probably going to come up later on this semester is going to focus specifically on that. You know, some of the issues that are going on with in in Africa, we've had a series of coups in Africa that have been pretty dramatic and maybe endangering the stability of the region there. Develop an Argentinian presidential election coming up that's going to be very interesting in terms of its effects. A very a right wing populist candidate there is looking like he may gain the presidency and has talked about things like getting rid of the Argentinian currency and replacing it with the dollar and all sorts of things. So lots of interesting topics that we may talk about there. So look out for that. Like I said, we're probably doing that in about two weeks and we'll probably have at least a couple more discussion events this semester as well. Also, I'd like to thank, of course, Dr. Watson and Dr. Hall for taking time out of their busy schedules to join us today and for contributing their expertise. Our Dean was unable to make it. He's out of town on business, but he wanted me to pass on his regards to you as well. If you do want to watch this recording for some reason, it will be posted on YouTube sometime tomorrow. We'll get that posted for you guys. And that one last reminder, if you did join us and are here for some sort of credit in the class or through, I think there may be an area B credit. I don't know if there's some sort of credit for attending events or something like that that's out there and you're not logged into your MG account. Do post your full name somewhere in the chat. If you're logged into your MG account, you're fine, but if you're not, if you got guests next to your name and the guest name is not you, make sure it's you. Make sure we know who you are so you get credit and we make sure you get your credit you deserve. So thank you all again and have a good evening and I guess we'll see you all soon.