More Perfect

In 1902, a Swedish-American pastor named Henning Jacobson refused to get the smallpox vaccine. This launched a chain of events leading to two landmark Supreme Court cases, in which the Court considered the balancing act between individual liberty over our bodies and the collective good.

A version of this story originally ran on The Experiment on March 21, 2021.

Voices in the episode include:

• Rev. Robin Lutjohann — pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts

• Michael Willrich — Brandeis University history professor

• Wendy Parmet — Northeastern University School of Law professor

Learn more:

• 1905: Jacobson v. Massachusetts

• 1927: Buck v. Bell

• 2022: National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration

• 2022: Biden v. Missouri

• "Pox: An American History" by Michael Willrich

• "Constitutional Contagion: COVID, the Courts, and Public Health" by Wendy Parmet

Music by Ob (“Wold”), Parish Council (“Leaving the TV on at Night,” “Museum Weather,” “P Lachaise”), Alecs Pierce (“Harbour Music, Parts I & II”), Laundry (“Lawn Feeling”), water feature (“richard iii (duke of gloucester)”), Keyboard (“Mu”), and naran ratan (“Forevertime Journeys”), provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Dieterich Buxtehude (“Prelude and Fugue in D Major”), Johannes Brahms (“Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello in B Minor”), and Andrew Eric Halford and Aidan Mark Laverty (“Edge of a Dream”). 

Shadow dockets, term limits, amicus briefs — what puzzles you about the Supreme Court? What stories are you curious about? We want to answer your questions in our next season. Click here to leave us a voice memo.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the most infamous cases in Supreme Court history: in 1857, an enslaved person named Dred Scott filed a suit for his freedom and lost. In his decision, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney wrote that Black men “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” One Civil War and more than a century later, the Taneys and the Scotts reunite at a Hilton in Missouri to figure out what reconciliation looks like in the 21st century.

Voices in the episode include:

• Lynne Jackson — great-great-granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott, and president and founder of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation

• Dred Scott Madison — great-great-grandson of Dred Scott

• Barbara McGregory — great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott

• Charlie Taney — great-great-grandnephew of Roger Brooke Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision

• Richard Josey — Manager of Programs at the Minnesota Historical Society

Learn more:

• 1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford

• The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation

Special thanks to Kate Taney Billingsley, whose play, "A Man of His Time," inspired the episode; and to Soren Shade for production help. Additional music for this episode by Gyan Riley.

Shadow dockets, term limits, amicus briefs — what puzzles you about the Supreme Court? What stories are you curious about? We want to answer your questions in our next season. Click here to leave us a voice memo.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and Twitter @moreperfect.

David Souter is one of the most private, low-profile justices ever to have served on the Supreme Court. He rarely gives interviews or speeches. Yet his tenure was anything but low profile. Deemed a “home run” nominee by Republicans, Souter defied partisan expectations on the bench and ultimately ceded his seat to a Democratic president.

In this episode, the story of how “No More Souters” became a rallying cry for Republicans and inspired a backlash that would change the Court forever.

Voices in the episode include:

• Ashley Lopez — NPR political correspondent

• Anna Sale — host of WNYC Studios' Death, Sex & Money podcast

• Tinsley Yarbrough — author and former political science professor at East Carolina University

• Heather Gerken — Dean of Yale Law School and former Justice Souter clerk

• Kermit Roosevelt III — professor at University of Pennsylvania School of Law and former Justice Souter clerk

• Judge Peter Rubin — Associate Justice on Massachusetts Appeals Court and former Justice Souter clerk

• Governor John H. Sununu — former governor of New Hampshire and President George H.W. Bush’s Chief of Staff

Learn more:

• 1992: Planned Parenthood v. Casey

• 1992: Lee v. Weisman

• 2000: Bush v. Gore

• 2009: Citizens United v. FEC

Shadow dockets, term limits, amicus briefs — what puzzles you about the Supreme Court? What stories are you curious about? We want to answer your questions in our next season. Click here to leave us a voice memo.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and Twitter @moreperfect.

Recently, On the Media’s Micah Loewinger was called to testify in court. He had reported on militia groups who’d helped lead the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Now the government was using his work as evidence in a case against them. Micah wanted nothing to do with it — he worried that participating in the trial would signal to sources that he couldn’t be trusted, which would compromise his work.

As he considered his options, he uncovered a 1972 case called Branzburg v. Hayes. It involved New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell, who was approached multiple times by the FBI to testify against sources in the Black Panther Party. His case — and its decision — transformed the relationship between journalists and the government.

Voices in the episode include:

• Micah Loewinger — correspondent for WNYC Studios' On the Media

• Earl Caldwell — former New York Times reporter

• Lee Levine — attorney and media law expert

• Congressman Jamie Raskin — representing Maryland’s 8th District

Learn more:

• 1972: Branzburg v. Hayes

• Listen to On the Media's "Seditious Conspiracy" episode. Subscribe to On the Media here.

Shadow dockets, term limits, amicus briefs — what puzzles you about the Supreme Court? What stories are you curious about? We want to answer your questions in our next season. Click here to leave us a voice memo.

Special thanks to the Maynard Institute For Journalism Education for allowing the use of its Earl Caldwell oral history. 

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act in a case called Haaland v. Brackeen. The decision comes almost exactly 10 years after the Supreme Court ruled in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, which planted the seed for last week’s big ruling. To mark the new landmark decision, More Perfect re-airs the Radiolab episode that tells the story of two families, a painful history, and a young girl caught in the middle.

Voices in the episode include:

• Allison Herrera — KOSU Indigenous Affairs reporter

• Matt and Melanie Capobianco — Veronica's adoptive parents

• Dusten Brown — Veronica's biological father

• Mark Fiddler — attorney for the Capobiancos

• Marcia Zug — University of South Carolina School of Law professor

• Bert Hirsch — attorney formerly of the Association on American Indian Affairs

• Chrissi Nimmo — Deputy Attorney General for Cherokee Nation

• Terry Cross — founding executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association (now serving as senior advisor)

• Lori Alvino McGill — attorney for Christy Maldonado, Veronica’s biological mother

Learn more:

• 2013: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

• 2023: Haaland v. Brackeen

• "Baby Veronica belongs with her adoptive parents" by Christy Maldonado

• "Doing What’s Best for the Tribe" by Marcia Zug

• "The Court Got Baby Veronica Wrong" by Marcia Zug

• "A Wrenching Adoption Case" by The New York Times Editorial Board

• National Indian Child Welfare Association

• In Trust podcast, reported by Allison Herrera

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

Now that the “viability line” in pregnancy — as defined by Roe v. Wade — is no longer federal law, lawmakers and lawyers are coming up with new frameworks for abortion access at a dizzying rate. In this second part of our series, More Perfect asks: what if abortion law wasn’t shaped by men at the Supreme Court, but instead by people who know what it’s like to be pregnant, to have abortions, and to lose pregnancies? We hear from women on the front lines of the next legal battle over abortion in America.

Voices in the episode include:

• Mary J. Browning — pro bono lawyer for The Justice Foundation

• Dr. Shelley Sella — OBGYN (retired)

• Greer Donley — University of Pittsburgh School of Law professor

• Jill Wieber Lens — University of Arkansas School of Law professor

Learn more:

• 1973: Roe v. Wade

• 2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

• Listen to Part 1: The Viability Line

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

When the justices heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark abortion case, one word came up more than any other: viability. The viability line was at the core of Roe v. Wade, and it’s been entrenched in the abortion rights movement ever since. But no one seems to remember how this idea made its way into the abortion debate in the first place. This week on More Perfect, we trace it back to the source and discover how a clerk and a couple of judges turned a fuzzy medical concept into a hard legal line.

Voices in the episode include:

• George Frampton — former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun

• Judge Jon Newman — Second Circuit Court of Appeals

• Khiara Bridges — UC Berkeley School of Law professor

• Alex J. Harris — lawyer, former member of the Joshua Generation

Learn more:

• 1973: Roe v. Wade

• 2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

• Listen to Part 2: If Not Viability, Then What?

Correction: An earlier version of this episode stated that Justice Blackmun was the first to define pregnancy in terms of trimesters. Upon further review, he seems to have been the first to apply that framework to abortion law specifically, but it appeared in at least one medical text earlier, in 1904. We have updated the episode to address this error.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

This week, we revisit one of the most important Supreme Court cases you’ve probably never heard of: Baker v. Carr, a redistricting case from the 1960s, which challenged the justices to consider what might happen if they stepped into the world of electoral politics. It’s a case so stressful that it pushed one justice to a nervous breakdown, put another justice in the hospital, brought a boiling feud to a head, and changed the course of the Supreme Court — and the nation — forever.

Voices in the episode include:

• Tara Grove — More Perfect legal advisor, University of Texas at Austin law professor

• Guy-Uriel Charles — Harvard Law School professor

• Louis Michael Seidman — Georgetown Law School professor

• Sam Issacharoff — NYU law school professor

• Craig A. Smith — PennWest California humanities professor and Charles Whittaker's biographer

• J. Douglas Smith — author of "On Democracy's Doorstep"

• Alan Kohn — former Supreme Court clerk for Charles Whittaker (1957 term)

• Kent Whittaker — Charles Whittaker's son

• Kate Whittaker — Charles Whittaker's granddaughter

Learn more:

• 1962: Baker v. Carr

• 2000: Bush v. Gore

• 2016: Evenwel v. Abbott

Music in this episode by Gyan Riley, Alex Overington, David Herman, Tobin Low and Jad Abumrad.

Archival interviews with Justice William O. Douglas come from the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library.

Special thanks to Jerry Goldman and to Whittaker's clerks: Heywood Davis, Jerry Libin and James Adler.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

Unlike other branches of government, the Supreme Court operates with almost no oversight. No cameras are allowed in the courtroom, no binding code of ethics, and records of their activities are incredibly hard to get. So how do reporters uncover the activities of the nine most powerful judges in the country?

Live from the Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, host Julia Longoria talks to journalists behind bombshell investigations of the Court and its justices and how Clarence Thomas’ personal relationships intersect with his professional life.

Voices in the episode include:

• Jo Becker — New York Times reporter in the investigative unit

• Justin Elliott — ProPublica reporter

Learn more:

• "The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas" by Danny Hakim and Jo Becker

• "Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire" by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski

• "Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The Justice didn’t disclose the deal" by by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski 

Supreme Court archival audio comes fromOyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

To many Americans, Clarence Thomas makes no sense. For more than 30 years on the Court, he seems to have been on a mission — to take away rights that benefit Black people. As a young man, though, Thomas listened to records of Malcolm X speeches on a loop and strongly identified with the tenets of Black Nationalism. This week on More Perfect, we dig into his writings and lectures, talk to scholars and confidants, and explore his past, all in an attempt to answer: what does Clarence Thomas think Clarence Thomas is doing?

Voices in the episode include:

• Juan Williams — senior political analyst at Fox News

• Corey Robin — professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center

• Angela Onwuachi-Willig — Dean of Boston University School of Law

• Stephen F. Smith — Notre Dame Law School professor

Learn more:

• 1993: Graham v. Collins

• 1994: Holder v. Hall

• 1999: Chicago v. Morales

• 2003: Grutter v. Bollinger

• 2022: Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College

• 2022: Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina

• “The Enigma of Clarence Thomas” by Corey Robin

• “Black Conservatives, Center Stage” by Juan Williams

• “Just Another Brother on the SCT?: What Justice Clarence Thomas Teaches Us About the Influence of Racial Identity” by Angela Onwuachi-Willig

• “Clarence X?: The Black Nationalist Behind Justice Thomas's Constitutionalism” by Stephen F. Smith

• “My Grandfather’s Son” by Justice Clarence Thomas

Supreme Court archival audio comes fromOyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us onInstagramandFacebook@moreperfectpodcast, andTwitter@moreperfect.

More than 30 years ago, a Native American man named Al Smith was fired for ingesting peyote at a religious ceremony. When his battle made it to the Supreme Court, the decision set off a thorny debate over when religious people get to sidestep the law — a debate we’re still having today.

Voices in the episode include:

• Garrett Epps — University of Oregon Law School professor

• Ka’ila Farrell-Smith — Al Smith’s daughter, visual artist

• Jane Farrell — Al Smith's widow, retired early childhood specialist

• Galen Black — Al Smith’s former coworker

• Steven C. Moore — senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund

• Craig J. Dorsay — lawyer who argued Al Smith’s case before the Supreme Court

• Dan Mach — director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief

Learn more:

• 1963: Sherbert v. Verner

• 1990: Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith

• 2022: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

• "Peyote vs the State: Religious Freedom On Trial" by Garrett Epps

• Factsheet: Religious Freedom Restoration Act Of 1993, The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University

• Our History, the Klamath Tribes 

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and Twitter @moreperfect.

To kick off the new season, host Julia Longoria returns to high school, where she first fell in love with the Supreme Court. She was a star on her high school’s nationally-ranked “Constitution team” (read: nerd Super Bowl). For Julia, the Court represented a place where two sides of an issue could be discussed and debated. A lot has changed since then — and public perception around the Court is polarized, to say the least. Which is why we’re taking a cue from high schoolers: this season on More Perfect, we’re questioning everything.

Learn more:

• The We the People, The Citizen, and the Constitution Program

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and Twitter @moreperfect.

More Perfect has been dark for four years now. But next year, hosted by Julia Longoria, we're coming back!

The past few weeks have been historic, to say the least, in Supreme Court history. So in the meantime, we want to hear from you. What do you want to know right now about the Supreme Court? What are your questions, your worries, your fears?

Record a voice memo or write us a note and send it to moreperfect@wnyc.org.

In More Perfect's final episode of the season, listen to liner notes for two amendments that contemplate the still-unfinished status of our Constitution. "27" is an album that marks a particular point in our history: this moment when we have 27 Amendments to our Constitution. What will be the 28th?

Maybe it will address our nation's capital. The capital has been a bit of a Constitutional anomaly for much of our nation's history — it's at the heart of the democracy, but because it's not a state, people in Washington D.C. have been disenfranchised almost by accident. The 23rd Amendment solved some of the problem — it gave D.C. the right to vote for president. But it left much of D.C.'s representation questions unanswered. D.C. still does not have voting representation in Congress. Instead, D.C. sends a "non-voting delegate" to Congress. For this liner note, More Perfect profiles that delegate, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, and her unique approach to fighting for power in a virtually powerless role.

The song for the 23rd Amendment is by The Mellow Tones, a group of students from D.C. high school Duke Ellington School of the Arts, along with their teacher Mark G. Meadows. The chorus, "Why won't you count on me?" reflects on the continued disenfranchisement of our nation's capital.  

The final amendment of the album, the 27th Amendment, put limits on Senators' ability to give themselves a pay raise, and it has arguably the most unusual path to ratification of all 27. The first draft for the amendment was written by none other than James Madison in 1789, but back then, it didn't get enough votes from the states for ratification. It wasn't until a college student named Gregory Watson awakened the dormant amendment centuries later that it was finally ratified. The 27th Amendment song is by Kevin Devine and tells Watson's story.

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

This week, More Perfect takes a look at three amendments on the more obscure end of the spectrum. The 12th, 17th, and 20th Amendments made fine-tune adjustments to the way we pick our leaders. More Perfect is here to prove these three are more interesting than you think they are.

For starters, the 12th Amendment is the secret star of the hit musical "Hamilton." The Election of 1800 and the kerfuffle between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson was one of the reasons we passed the 12th Amendment, which made it so that presidential and vice presidential candidates run alongside each other on a single ticket. It was meant to avoid awkward situations where political opponents suddenly had to be partners in government. But Radiolab's Rachael Cusick reflects on the Clinton-Trump race and the ways the 12th Amendment may have polarized politics. Then, listen to Octopus Project's original song about the 12th Amendment.  

The idea for the 20th Amendment, which shortened the "lame duck" period for outgoing presidents and members of Congress, was first proposed around the same time as the 12th, but it took years to get political momentum to pass it. That momentum came in part from infamous president, Warren G. Harding, whose missteps ignited a movement to pass it. Huey Supreme wrote an original song about the 20th Amendment from the perspective of a lame duck.

Then, More Perfect skips back to the 17th Amendment, which made the election of U.S. senators more democratic. Our state legislatures used to hand-pick Senators, but the 17th made it so the people elect their Senators directly. More Perfect reflects on whether direct democracy is all it's cracked up to be. Listen to original songs about the 17th Amendment by Stef Chura and Donny Dinero (of Mail the Horse).

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

The 25th and 26th Amendments — ratified in 1967 and 1971, respectively — are some of the newest additions to our founding document. However, they tackle some pretty basic questions: who gets to rule, and who gets to vote? If a president dies or is incapacitated, who takes over? And how old do you have to be in order to participate in American democracy?

In recent months, the 25th Amendment has swirled in and out of news cycles as Americans debate what it takes to declare a president unfit for office. But this episode looks back, even before the 25th Amendment was ratified, at a moment in 1919 when President Woodrow Wilson became bedridden by stroke, and his wife, Edith Wilson, became our country’s unofficial first female president.

The 26th Amendment is best encapsulated in a Vietnam-era slogan: “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” Eighteen-year-olds at the time argued that if they were old enough to be drafted to fight in the war, they were old enough to have a voice in our democracy. But what about today, when even younger Americans are becoming victims of gun violence and finding themselves at the center of national political debates? Does it mean we should lower the voting age even further?

When you're done with the episode, check out songs by Devendra Banhart and Suburban Living inspired by Amendments 25 and 26 on "27: The Most Perfect Album."

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album, including this one from Devendra Banhart.

Video illustration by Justin Buschardt.Video animation by The Mighty Coconut.

Special thanks to The White House Historical Association. 

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

On first read the 16th and 22nd Amendments are at best sleepers and at worst, stinkers. In a list of Constitutional hits like the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, and birthright citizenship, the amendments covering taxes and term limits tend to fall by the wayside. But in this episode of More Perfect we take these forgotten gems and make them shine.

The 16th Amendment sets up the income tax, sinking dread into the hearts of millions of Americans every April. But if the income tax is so hated, why did we vote to put it in the Constitution? And why do so many people willingly pay? In this episode we take on those questions and contemplate whether the 16th Amendment might be less about money or law, than is about deciding what it means to belong.

Next we move on to the 22nd Amendment and presidential term limits. If we as U.S. citizens are happy with our leadership, why shouldn't we be able to keep electing the same president for as many terms as we want? The ghost of George Washington comes back to give Franklin Delano Roosevelt some major side-eye as we explore the roots of the rule, and why it matters today.

When you're done with the episode, check out songs by Post Animal and Pavo Pavo inspired by Amendments 16 and 22 on "27: The Most Perfect Album."

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

Amendments 13, 14, and 15 are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments: they were passed as instructions to rebuild the country after the Civil War. They addressed slavery, citizenship, equality, and voting rights for Black people. This week, the More Perfect team explores the legacy of the amendments beyond the Civil War — the ways the promises of these amendments changed the country and the ways they've fallen short.

First, More Perfect Executive Producer Suzie Lechtenberg and Legal Editor Elie Mystal explore the loophole in the 13th Amendment's slavery ban that's being used in a strange context: college football. We share songs about the 13th Amendment from Kash Doll and Bette Smith. Then, producer Julia Longoria shares a conversation with her roommate, Alia Almeida, exploring their relationship to the amendments.

Inspired by the 14th Amendment's grant of equal protection and citizenship rights, Sarah Kay's poem tells the story of her grandmother, a U.S. citizen who was interned during World War II in a Japanese American Internment camp. Despite the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, the Supreme Court upheld the internment of U.S. citizens based solely on their Japanese heritage in a case called Korematsu v. United States. In 2018, the Supreme Court said Korematsu was "wrong the day it was decided." The Court went on to uphold President Trump's controversial travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii. "Korematsu has nothing to do with this case," wrote the majority. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor accused the majority of "redeploying the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu" when they upheld the ban.

Finally, hear songs inspired by the 15th Amendment by Aisha Burns and Nnamidi Ogbonnaya.

In Season three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

Episode Four begins as all episodes should: with Dolly Parton. Parton wrote a song for us (!) about the 19th Amendment and women (finally) getting the right to vote.Also in this episode: Our siblings at Radiolab share a story with us that they did about how the 19th Amendment almost died on a hot summer night in Tennessee. The 19th Amendment was obviously a huge milestone for women in the United States. But it was pretty well-understood that this wasn’t a victory for all women; it was a victory for white women. People of color have faced all sorts of barriers to voting throughout our nation's history. This includes poll taxes, which were fees people had to pay in order to vote. The 24th Amendment eliminated federal poll taxes in 1964. We hear a song inspired by the 24th Amendment, created for us by Caroline Shaw. Kevin Morby made an excellent song for us about the 24th, too. Check it out here.

Finally, Simon Tam, from the band The Slants tells the story of the Supreme Court case about their name, and talks about the song they wrote about the 18th and 21st Amendments for our album. (It’s a jam!)

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album, including this one.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

The first eight amendments to the U.S. Constitution are literal, straightforward, and direct. But when we get to Amendments Nine, 10, and 11, things get hazy. These are some of the least literal amendments in the Constitution: they mean more than they say, and what they say is often extremely confusing. So in the third episode of the new More Perfect season, we take these three blurry amendments and bring them into focus, embarking on a metaphorical, metaphysical, and somewhat astronomical journey to find the perfect analogies to truly understand each one.

Episode Three reaches for lofty metaphors of moon shadows, legal penumbras, and romantic relationships — as well as more guttural, frankly gross ones, like the human appendix, to describe the three amendments that define the nature of our union and the powers of the government and the people.

And when you're done with the episode, listen to the songs by The Kominas, Lean Year, and Field Medic inspired by Amendments Nine, 10 and 11 on "27: The Most Perfect Album."

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments enshrine some of our most important civil liberties. They tell us about the rights we have when the government knocks on our door, including protections from "unreasonable searches and seizures," self-incrimination, "cruel and unusual punishments," and the right to "a speedy and public trial" — among others.

Episode Two looks at these amendments through the story of one man, Christopher Scott, who finds himself face-to-face with Dallas police officers as they investigate a violent crime. The role that these amendments play — and fail to play — in Christopher’s encounter tells a profound story about the presence of the Constitution in our everyday lives.

And when you're done with the episode, listen to the songs by Briana Marela, Torres, Sons of an Illustrious Father, Adia Victoria, Nana Grizol, and High Waisted inspired by Amendments Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight on "27: The Most Perfect Album."

Special thanks to Gloria Browne-Marshall and David Gray.

In Season three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

Last year in the wake of the attack in Las Vegas, reporter Sean Rameswaram took a deep dive into America's twisty, thorny, seemingly irreconcilable relationship with guns. It's a story about the Second Amendment, the Black Panthers, the NRA, and a guy named Dick Heller, who in 2008 brought the Second Amendment to the Supreme Court for the very first time.

Let's get started. If we're talking about the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, it only feels right to start at the beginning. The First and Second Amendments are arguably the most ferociously contentious amendments of them all, and the Third Amendment is the underdog that everyone underestimates but (maybe) shouldn’t.

With that in mind, we dive into the poetic dream behind the First Amendment. This is the amendment that reflects the kind of country the Founding Fathers hoped we would be. Next, we examine the fiercely debated words of the Second Amendment, words that often feel like they divide our nation in two. And finally, we question whether the seemingly irrelevant Third Amendment might actually be the key to figuring out where our country is going.

And when you're done with the episode, take a listen to the songs by Joey Stylez, Cherry Glazerr, Sateen, Flor de Toloache, Michael Richard Klics, Palehound, and They Might be Giants inspired by Amendments One, Two and Three on "27: The Most Perfect Album."

In Season three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

This fall, More Perfect is doing something brand new: We’re making an album!

It’s called 27: The Most Perfect Album. We’ve partnered with some of the best musicians in the world— artists like Dolly Parton, Kevin Morby, Devendra Banhart, Aisha Burns, and more — to create songs inspired by the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 

Alongside the album, we’ll be launching SEASON THREE of our podcast, deep-diving into the history and resonance of the constitutional amendments with off-beat stories and lush sound.The album and podcast drop September 18, 2018. Get ready!

What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens during World War II based solely on their Japanese heritage, for the sake of national security. In this episode, we follow Fred Korematsu’s path to the Supreme Court, and we ask the question: if you can’t get justice in the Supreme Court, can you find it someplace else?

An unassuming string of 16 words tucked into the Constitution grants Congress extensive power to make laws that impact the entire nation. The Commerce Clause has allowed Congress to intervene in all kinds of situations — from penalizing one man for growing too much wheat on his farm, to enforcing the end of racial segregation nationwide. That is, if the federal government can make an economic case for it. This seemingly all-powerful tool has the potential to unite the 50 states into one nation and protect the civil liberties of all. But it also challenges us to consider: when we make everything about money, what does it cost us?

The rules of oral argument at the Supreme Court are strict: when a justice speaks, the advocate has to shut up.  But a law student noticed that the rules were getting broken again and again — by men.  He and his professor set out to chart an epidemic of interruptions.  If women can’t catch a break in the boardroom or the legislature (or at the MTV VMA’s), what’s it going to take to let them speak from the bench of the highest court in the land?

On this episode, we revisit Edward Blum, a self-described “legal entrepreneur” and former stockbroker who has become something of a Supreme Court matchmaker: he takes an issue, finds the perfect plaintiff, matches them with lawyers, and helps the case work its way to the highest court in the land. His target: laws that differentiate between people based on race — including ones that empower minorities. More Perfect profiled Edward Blum in season one of the show. We catch up with him to hear about his latest effort to end affirmative action at Harvard. 

On a fall afternoon in 1984, Dethorne Graham ran into a convenience store for a bottle of orange juice. Minutes later he was unconscious, injured, and in police handcuffs. In this episode, we explore a case that sent two Charlotte lawyers on a quest for true objectivity, and changed the face of policing in the US.

“Equal protection of the laws” was granted to all persons by the 14th Amendment in 1868. But for nearly a century after that, women had a hard time convincing the courts that they should be allowed to be jurors, lawyers, and bartenders, just the same as men. A then-lawyer at the ACLU named Ruth Bader Ginsburg set out to convince an all-male Supreme Court to take sex discrimination seriously with an unconventional strategy. She didn’t just bring cases where women were the victims of discrimination; she also brought cases where men were the victims. In this episode, we look at how a key battle for gender equality was won with frat boys and beer.

Should you be able to say and do whatever you want online? And if not, who should police this? More Perfect hosts a debate about online hate speech, fake news and whether the First Amendment needs an update for the digital age.

Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission is one of the most polarizing Supreme Court cases of all time. So what is it actually about, and why did the Justices decide the way they did? Justice Anthony Kennedy, often called the “most powerful man in America,” wrote the majority opinion in the case. In this episode, we examine Kennedy’s singular devotion to the First Amendment and look at how it may have influenced his decision in the case. 

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th century, two feuding Frenchmen inspired a one-sentence law that helped launch American human rights litigation into the 20th century. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to find justice for a terrible crime committed in her homeland. But as America reached further and further out into the world, the court was forced to confront the contradictions in our country’s ideology: sympathy vs. sovereignty. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case that could reshape the way America responds to human rights abuses abroad. Does the A.T.S. secure human rights or is it a dangerous overreach?

The Supreme Court may not have been conceptualized as a co-equal branch of the federal government, but it became one as a result of the political maneuvering of Chief Justice John Marshall. The fourth (and longest-serving) chief justice was "a great lover of power," according to historian Jill Lepore, but he was also a great lover of secrecy. Marshall believed, in order for the justices to confer with each other candidly, their papers needed to remain secret in perpetuity. It was under this veil of secrecy that the biggest heist in the history of the Supreme Court took place. 

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Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by The Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. 

For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn’t happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case.

“It is an invidious, undemocratic, and unconstitutional practice,” Justice John Paul Stevens said of gerrymandering in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004). Politicians have been manipulating district lines to favor one party over another since the founding of our nation. But with a case starting today, Gill v. Whitford, the Supreme Court may be in a position to crack this historical nut once and for all.

Up until this point, the court didn’t have a standard measure or test of how much one side had unfairly drawn district lines. But “the efficiency gap” could be it. The mathematical formula measures how many votes Democrats and Republicans waste in elections; if either side is way outside the norm, there may be some foul play at hand. According to Loyola law professor Justin Levitt, both the case and the formula arrive at a critical time. “After the census in 2020, all sorts of different bodies will redraw all sorts of different lines and this case will help decide how and where.”

In this episode of More Perfect, how two families grapple with one terrible Supreme Court decision. Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the most infamous cases in Supreme Court history: in 1857, a slave named Dred Scott filed a suit for his freedom and lost. In his decision, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney wrote that black men “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”  One civil war and more than a century later, the Taneys and the Scotts reunite at a Hilton in Missouri to figure out what reconciliation looks like in the 21st century.

What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United Statesis a case that’s been widely denounced and discredited, but it still remains on the books. This is the case that upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens during World War II based solely on their Japanese heritage, for the sake of national security. In this episode, we follow Fred Korematsu’s path to the Supreme Court, and we ask the question: if you can’t get justice in the Supreme Court, can you find it someplace else?

More Perfect, the show that takes you inside the United States Supreme Court, is back on October 2, 2017. 

Sex, race, guns, executive orders: Season two has it all.

We'll see you in court. 

At the trial of James Batson in 1983, the prosecution eliminated all the black jurors from the jury pool. Batson objected, setting off a complicated discussion about jury selection that would make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. On this episode of More Perfect, the Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to prevent race-based jury selection, but may have only made the problem worse.

With the recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there's been a lot of debate about how much power the Supreme Court should really have.

We think of the Supreme Court justices as all-powerful beings, issuing momentous rulings from on high. But they haven’t always been so, you know, supreme. On this episode, we go all the way back to the case that, in a lot of ways, started it all. 

On this episode, we visit Edward Blum, a 64-year-old “legal entrepreneur” and former stockbroker who has become something of a Supreme Court matchmaker. He’s had remarkable success, with 6 cases heard before the Supreme Court, including that of Abigail Fisher. We also head to Houston, Texas, where in 1998, an unusual 911 call led to one of the most important LGBTQ rights decisions in the Supreme Court’s history.

On this episode, a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. From the Radiolab archives, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is the story that inspired More Perfect's creation.

The question of how much power the Supreme Court should possess has divided justices over time. But the issue was perhaps never more hotly debated than in Baker v. Carr. On this episode of More Perfect, we talk about the case that pushed one Supreme Court justice to a nervous breakdown, brought a boiling feud to a head, put one justice in the hospital, and changed the course of the Supreme Court – and the nation – forever.

On the inaugural episode of More Perfect, we explore three little words embedded in the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “cruel and unusual.” The Supreme Court has continually grappled with what these words mean, especially as they pertain to one of our most hot button issues as a country: the death penalty.

How does an elite group of nine people shape everything from marriage and money, to safety and sex for an entire nation? From the producers of Radiolab, More Perfect dives into the rarefied world of the Supreme Court to explain how cases deliberated inside hallowed halls affect lives far away from the bench.