Ideas

Law

Laurence H. Tribe

Is the Constitution ‘Dead, Dead, Dead’?

The difficulty of amending the Constitution does not mean that it is a flawed and outdated relic of a distant past.

February 12, 2026 issue

Linda Greenhouse

As Kennedy Went

Justice Anthony Kennedy often confounded Supreme Court observers with his seemingly unpredictable opinions, but during the years when a majority could be achieved only through some measure of compromise, he wielded enormous power over the Constitution’s contemporary meaning.

March 12, 2026 issue

David Cole

Getting Away with Murder

Trump has now ordered the killing of at least seventeen people on the high seas—with no accountability.

October 23, 2025 issue

Robert Sullivan

The Third Sovereign

If there is hope for the earth, it will depend in part on acknowledging indigenous sovereignty in the face of insatiable resource extraction.

December 4, 2025 issue

David Cole

Universities: Know Your Rights!

Most recently in a flimsy report on antisemitism at Harvard, the Trump administration has been weaponizing discrimination claims to remake the country’s universities. How can they fight back?

July 2, 2025

Gal Koplewitz

‘Legal Whack-A-Mole’

Since October 7, Israel’s oldest and most prominent human rights group has faced stiffer opposition than ever before.

May 9, 2025

Samuel Stein

Reshaping the City

What does zoning reform have the power to change?

November 20, 2025 issue

Nicholas Guyatt

The Most Rancorous Line

How did the Mason–Dixon Line—meant to resolve a long-standing colonial border dispute—come to represent the US’s foundational divide between slavery and freedom?

January 15, 2026 issue

David Cole on the Supreme Court

David Cole

The Supreme Court’s Power Grab

In a series of disturbing decisions this term, the Supreme Court drastically weakened the power of the executive agencies that govern financial markets, agriculture, health care, energy, the airwaves, the environment, the workplace, and so much else.

August 15, 2024 issue

David Cole

The Supreme Court Picks Its Battles

June ended with far-reaching upsets for civil rights, but a closer look at the Supreme Court’s decisions across the 2022–2023 term suggests the justices are not immune to public scrutiny.

July 4, 2023

David Cole

Egregiously Wrong

In several of the term’s most controversial cases, the Court’s new majority applied originalism to disastrous effect.

August 18, 2022 issue

David Cole

The Court’s Declarations of Independence

In the end, the Supreme Court’s 2019–2020 term was much less conservative than anyone had expected.

August 20, 2020 issue

The Latest

David Cole

Diversity by Other Means

Progressives may have lost the battle for racial affirmative action, but ironically, Supreme Court decisions should allow colleges to give advantage to groups defined by their income, geography, or heritage.

March 26, 2026 issue

Joyce Carol Oates, in conversation with Jarrett Earnest

Joyce Carol Oates on True Crime, Her Improbable Life, and Joan Didion

Episode 3 of Private Life

February 25, 2026

David Cole, interviewed by Daniel Drake

Contempt of Court

“True accountability lies with the American people. Do we sit by and accept such behavior? Or do we take to the streets to express our disapproval of what the government is doing in our name?”

February 14, 2026

Vanessa Ogle

Rolling with the Economic Tides

Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel follows the lifespan of one barge, from bunkhouse to floating prison to barracks and back, as it traces the shadowy outer limits of the maritime economy.

February 12, 2026 issue

Clair Wills

Blood Work

A rare genetic mutation is best treated the nineteenth-century way, with bloodletting, showing up the strengths and weaknesses of the NHS.

January 15, 2026 issue

Cora Currier

Pervasive Impunity

Richard Beck’s Homeland charts how four presidential administrations managed to evade moral responsibility for the “war on terror” by hiding behind legality and process.

November 6, 2025 issue

Ariel Dorfman

Pinochet and the Vans of Death

In 38 Londres Street Philippe Sands investigates a Nazi war criminal’s collaboration with the Chilean dictatorship’s system of repression, torture, and murder.

October 23, 2025 issue

David Cole

Umpires No More

In several major cases in its 2024–2025 term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority reached its desired results not by overturning precedent but by ignoring it.

August 21, 2025 issue

Linda Greenhouse

How Brown Came North and Failed

The effort to desegregate Detroit’s public schools required not just the courts but a social movement that could speak effectively about the barriers that Black people faced before it could begin to seek redress.

May 29, 2025 issue