Episode 30: The Suprising Endurance of the U.S. Consitution with Dr. Robinson Woodward-Burns

5:55PM Oct 31, 2022

Speakers:

Dr. Ian Anson

Campus Connections

Alex Andrews

Dr. Robinson Woodward-Burns

Keywords:

state constitutions

constitution

amendment

state

congress

national

states

poll tax

umbc

franchise

constitutional

tax

federal constitution

women

moved

constitutional amendments

federal

supreme court

national level

called

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences we bring the best of UMBC's social science community to you.

Americans revere the United States Constitution. Authored by the legendary founding fathers, our Constitution is more than just a legal document to most Americans, in part because of the civic education many of us have received in school. It's an integral part of the mythos that helps to explain our nation's high levels of patriotism, and of course, our attachment to national symbols like Betsy Ross's Stars and Stripes and George Washington's cherry tree, among others. But despite our reverence for the Constitution, many Americans know very little about its history and its evolution over time. The US Constitution has been amended 27 times over our nation's almost 250 year history. But despite the relative rarity of changes to the Constitution, it has managed to stand the test of time. In fact, the US Constitution is one of the world's oldest democratic documents. Our Constitution is much older than countries like France's, which we normally associate with democratic stability in today's day and age. So what explains the impressive durability of our Constitution, especially when it's been so relatively immune to change over the last century?

On today's episode of Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring you a rebroadcast of the 2022 UMBC Constitution Day lecture sponsored by the Department of Political Science and CS3. This year's lecture was delivered by Dr. Robinson Woodward-Burns, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC.

Dr. Woodward-Burns' recent book is entitled "Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics," and in this acclaimed volume, Dr. Woodward-Burns argues that our Constitution endures in part because of a set of 50 other documents that are perhaps even less well understood than our venerable constitutional text, by most Americans. In his remarks, Dr. Woodward-Burns explains how our state's constitutions and yes, you might be surprised to learn that every state has one, including Maryland, these constitutions have important consequences for democratic stability in times of political turmoil. This is an incredibly topical and insightful argument, and one that we'll enjoy listening to right now.

Good afternoon. I'm really excited to be here. I would like to thank first, the Department of Political Science and the Center for Social Science Scholarship for cohosting this talk. And will contain is trying to start with a puzzle about the Constitution, which hopefully in about 45 minutes I can answer. So we're celebrating the Constitution's 234th birthday. And that's a bit unusual, because if you look at other national constitutions, they don't last nearly this long. The United States Constitution is an extraordinary outlier in that it's really, really old. So my question for this talk is, how has the Constitution survived for almost a quarter of a millennium? How has it survived the Civil War periods of internal crisis, economic collapse? How is the United States per capita world's oldest ranking national constitution? Not only is the US Constitution older than all other national documents, it's also older than the state documents. So when you compare the US Constitution to the state constitution, the stability of the national government really comes into focus. The states, you see a lot more constitutional turnover. There have been at least 411 accounts to ground new state constitutions. 144 of them have ratified, there have been 255 different bodies gathered, measure two random state constitutions. And similarly, you see a lot more amendment happening at the state level. There have been at least some number 1695 amendments to the current 50 state constitutions relative to the 47 amendments ratified at the federal level. And state constitutions have a much shorter lifespan so no more than half the lifespan of the federal constitution. So why is this, why do we have this system where we have a really stable federal constitution and a lot of instability in the state constitutions? So I'm going to try to answer that over the course of this lecture. And I'm going to do it with a special emphasis on voting in the United States, which is something that's becoming more and more important now as we see retensions for the right to vote, increasingly rolled back, especially at the state level. So I'll try to give an answer for why I think we get this sort of federal stability and state constitutional instability. But first, what I'll do is I'll give you a few kind of common stories about why the Constitution has survived for so long. I'll try to kind of walk through the normal stories. And I'll give my own story and give you more probably two case studies that give some evidence. So first, what's the normal story of why we have a constitution that's lasted for so long? One story is that, again, controversy that could press for constitutional change emerging at the national level, and national actors will step up to the plate and either resolved or failed to resolve these national constitutional controversies. The Supreme Court, for example, can step in and act as an arbiter in ways that define constitutional meaning and either create instability or stability at the national level, you either don't have successfully resolved or fails to resolve these national questions. But one point that I want to make is that we have these students the other state constitutions which are addressing these nationally salient issues in the same way, sometimes causing alarm of outcomes that were attributed to the national branches. And if we're going to state constitutionalism, then sometimes we can attribute outcomes to national without national political actors are not actually causing your state constitutions are also not correctly understanding national colleges in the United States don't exist in isolation. So we'll try to kind of unpack the normal stories, then about a Federal Constitution. The stories that don't include the state is one of those stories.

One answer for why we've had this constitution, the same federal constitution for 234 years is that it's really, really hard to you need two thirds of both houses of Congress, which includes a convention call by the states Mental Health Association, ratification by three quarters of the states of my disclosure or convention, sign as part of the amendment of any national constitution. So that might be why we see so little amendment. But the thing about the Constitution, but our argument, at least when you compare them is that the ones that are very hard to sort of band, or they tend to snap and brutal. We want constitutions that advance so they don't break in this as the US Constitution is in that way. It's the hardest national constitutions we landed in the world. That means it should probably have the shortest lifespan so I don't think diseases really compelling. So another answer might be, instead of amendment, we just take issues to the Supreme Court to resolve constitutional meaning or to Congress. Sometimes Congress will pass statutes, not unconstitutional laws that still help us determine constitutional meaning. And I think that's, again, Jesus story. But remember that if we're only looking at national actors, we're still not fully understanding the process. So we don't think we can look only at national actors, right? Federal Judiciary, the federal judiciary, Congress has statutory lawmaking power in order to understand the US Constitution. So there's one other reason and I think this is maybe the best of the three, which is that Republic really, very, it's the US Constitution. So if you go down to the National Archives, and you get shot, by the text, on the baseball in the text of the Constitution, sponsored by gift back and give the Constitution on it, and it's a British ran for me last week that's really unique in our veneration for the constitution. We put on everything. Rarely, we fully understand its meaning. But there is this broad public culture of constitutional veneration, which James Madison says, grants with Geminis in the constitution. So that might explain part of it. I think that, again, sort of helpful and understanding the longevity of the Constitution, but all given different story here. So what I think is that more often, we see that nationally salient political issues, national concept, constitutional controversies are often pushed on the states in ways that bring about a constitutional change and prevent change to the National Constitution, that we see issues could be resolved at national level, instead of being resolved at the state level, preventing change to the national constitution bringing about a constitutional level. So I'm going to try to break that down a little bit, explain what this process looks like. And to give a broad theory and a little bit of evidence, giving an overview of that before I give you short stories on how this process so in the book, I have this four part typology. I'm gonna go through the nuts and bolts. But we can imagine that a national political issues emerge at the national level and result only a national reform and this occurs at the Constitution Center, something that can be resolved at the state levels. States, for example, cannot raise armies and navies are forbidden from doing it. And largely they don't talk to us at 91 State Constitution creates a Kentucky maybe there's no real reason for that. And it's also constitutional for the most part, that kind of thing doesn't actually happen. Instead, you know, we see a lot of issues involving the states, in areas that are kind of subject to overlapping regulation under the 10th. Amendment, these broad powers and it says that powers that are granted to the federal government are reserved to the States. extensors have ever been in the states can be regulated at the state level. And what this means is that the states and the federal government regularly have a lot of issues together. So we can imagine an issue that's nationally salient emerges at the national level, and then it gets pushed down to the state level. In the 1970s 80s and 90s, there was this big gigantic tax balanced budget movement, which trailed largely in Congress but created all these state level reforms restricting a bunch of Indian taxation house.

We can also imagine a nationally salient the national incoordination emerging in the states and then kind of filtering process I call elevation that results in change at the national level stage can converge on a policy, for example, and I'll give two examples of that today, around moving rights in ways that we see members of the Supreme Court or Congress imitating trying to entrench a national platform that is more or less already emerged at the sea level. Finally, we can imagine the state's entirely off eating or preventing federal level action, national state leadership burgers at the state level, and he's only ever addressed at the state level, a lot of voting rights reform, nationally salient, was really only addressed at the state level prior to the Civil War. So those are even kind of the overall trades of things that could happen. Importantly, most paths will change at some point involved at level three. And then lastly, category, those final three categories. So most paths to change will go through the states. So we're hoping I was trying to give you a sense of why that might be. For one again, it's really hard to remember US Constitution, the proposed amendment, two thirds of both houses of Congress. So rarely do you actually get these really big congressional supermajorities necessary to propose an amendment very hard to do for most of American political history. They're kind of stuck between those two boundaries, so amended, largely not viable if you go to the National Archives, which is surrounding myself, we go there a lot. You can see there's an exhibit with proposed amendments before Congress, there have been 11,970 proposed amendments up to 2020 33 of them passed Congress Center goes to verification. Police are the federal ratified 0.02% success rate so nominally much easier to pass amendments at the state level. In nearly all states, an amendment can be passed with a simple majority in the legislature. In most states, it also needs approval by the voters. In addition to amending state constitutions, which, by way of amendments at the state constitutional level, a much higher success rate of the current 50 state constitutions, we've had a weapon 7695 amendments ratified as a 2020, out of just over 11,000 of those. So on average state constitutions, you can also entirely replace state constitutions, they're easy to do, just under the bommies assembled to entirely rewrite state constitutions have succeeded in passing the documents. So there's an active culture of the writing state constitutions, state constitutions as a result are really really big documents. They are 10s of 1000s, or hundreds of 1000s of words. So the US Constitution version that's in the record, the Alabama constitution 388,000 words. This is the original Alabama 1901 constitution. There are a lot of problems in this document, which we're going to talk about later. Really long documents. So they're they're full of all of these provisions, which over time to get outdated and need replacement. And so it's a constitution gets stuck in this churn of constant amendment, they're always being rewritten. And usually, there are amendments added on top level domains, which is very good. As a result, there's no culture of veneration around state constitutions while the public is aware of US Constitution and sometimes meet the Constitution. And those things don't exist at the state level, right, only 52% of American state state constitutions exist a new that's the one thing that you should take away from this lecture. The public though not being aware that state constitutions exist, generally has fewer reservations with a constitutional amendment, there's less of a culture around Frobisher state constitution. What this means is that a lot of change gets pushed down at the state level, state constitutions are so much easier to change, that if you're trying to make constitutional changes in the US, you're probably not going to succeed at the national level. You certainly can see somewhere at the state level and that's one of the story is offering. So I'll give you for just a second a little bit back. We're good evidence and how it can just might be happening. I look at all of the proposed federal constitutional amendments 70 mediated it 2020 11,970. And I also look at the proposed state constitutions, as well as amendments to the state constitutions from 1942, up to 20. And when we look at, what you see when we look at these is that generally the two moves together in tandem, when they're more federal and state proposed are more state constitutional amendments, proposed one increases, the other increases. And similarly, between federal amendment and wholesale state replacement, you see the Q increase together, especially in periods of crisis, civil wars,

we'll talk about later. So similarly, strong correlation between federal and state constitutional replacement 0.67. Which suggests, again, the two are moving together. But really what I'm interested in showing is that you are seeing federal amendment and state constitutional change happening on the same kinds of topics. When there's attempts to revise the federal constitution on one topic, you'll also see a chance to revise the state constitutions, all these topics. So we break down the federal amendments by issue area. There's a whole lot of myths here, a lot of different things have been proposed over time, a lot of these amendments are not serious or viable. There's an AP 94 amendments, renamed the United States of America, the United States of the world, which I think kind of speaks to America's colonial ambitions at the time also was not really a serious proposal. There are, however, in this, if you put them all together, you'll kind of get a sense of what people are thinking about constitutionally at a given time. So these are amendments relating to structures and powers of the federal government. And you can also see amendments relating to civil rights and civil liberties over time, and we're going to do through the book as I take a specific area in this case about school regulation that piques just after the grounders board decision, we're Congress, conservatives in Congress, the strong backlash to them when they do in the book is is actually specific issue areas. And I see, I asked if this is happening at the national level, our state successfully carried on this issue. So I'll give you two stories now, which kind of I think casts and hopefully demonstrates the story that I'm trying to get in which state constitutions to resolve national political issues, and they both deal with voting rights. The first story has to do with the law of fight for the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution forbids discrimination in the right to vote on basis of sexual disenfranchisement on the basis. The second thing I'll talk about the use of the poll tax report taxes on race based disenfranchisement, that required that people put down $1 to one coming to the polls, it was used predominantly in ex Confederate southern states in the Jim Crow era. So we'll talk first about the 90s. And then we'll go from like the 1860s, up to the 1920s. I'll talk about the poll tax kind of going from the turn of the 20th century up to the 1960s. That's Tuesday, this very last point about contemporary. So the 19 famous and then that took a very long time to get ratified, and tried to tell a story that just shows how suffragettes people would favor gratifications and actually the amendment strategically moved between the national and state level in 1866, Congress is considering extending the right to vote to not only black men, as it will in section two, the 14th amendment to seventh grade, certainly in Section 115. But also, the proposed amendment by James brooks of New York, also is considering expanding the vote to women. So it looks like there might be this moment after the Civil War ends in 1865, where you get this extension to the franchise, Susan B. Anthony Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass and forming the American Civil Rights Association in the 1960s 1867. Trying to get a free house for blind men and for women generally, they largely fail. The bladder 14 to 15 amendments, address every space disenfranchisement and 14th Amendment search issue refers to disenfranchisement of men on the basis of race. And so someone just continue to push Congress for an amendment like this. They continue to have these congressional hearings in 1884. Senator George Best that was the reason we don't have enough and franchising of women happening in this far west in the West, which is just getting incorporated into the United States. You see a little bit of suffering happening at the municipal level, but there's not a lot of enfranchisement. And so, the Chicago Daily Tribune, in 1887 says changing the constitution for four years with a female suffrage amendment. Teddy Roosevelt was a little more direct a little more directly. 20 years later, he says.

We've got a few states in the West, he says when it comes to petitions, and he says go back to Western they'll get another state. And so that's what happens is female suffrage has moved state by state through the West and there are states coming in for the first time like Utah, which rights in 1896. At first they constitute here for a dozen women. Montana, which says the first female member of Congress didn't read. Wyoming was the first stage of franchise women. These western states, which are new progressive states are trying to attract female settlers are a lot more willing to franchise women under their state laws, because franchises regulated at the state level under their state constitutions. And so, increasingly, after the successes, separatists realized this is a viable strategy and at value that you may suffer dissociations, the Arab Woman Suffrage Association, the National Women's Suffrage Association, burns it up National American Woman Suffrage Association wsa. Anytime you three, they have another convention and one of the delegates to fire quickly, Murphy points out that members of Congress in these western states have more and more women in their constituency that is to get elected or to get reelected, they're relying on women who form their electoral coalition in their home districts and states. In order to get more members of Congress like that were sympathetic to the suffrage amendment to rely on women for reelection. You need to flip more states, especially in the West. So the idea is to build this national campaign moving from west to east and dramatizing women's state by state including conflict Congress to get more states which have like Fort Collins delegations selected by women. So they go state by state, and you can kind of see the story evolving. So I want to tell you two stories about this. This is a braid in 1913. It's a national suffered great suffragettes marched in the White House Down to the United States Capitol famous parade and on the reach of the Capitol, it presented a petition for an amendment to the Constitution, and government a few things. One is that they marched by the state delegation, they carry state planners here, you'll see one in Colorado, Utah and Idaho, displayed in California in 1911. First enfranchise, women and women are canvassing by car for the first time in the state. One kind of outcome of this, though, is that when you would franchise state by state, you move from west to east, Western states are predominantly white. And so you have a movement led by white women, in which most of the constituents are white women. This is a Harvard University Delta Sigma Theta chapter, which is formed about two years before this, which is forced to merge with the bank of break. And you see similar similar pattern happening where southern states will most likely live are the ones that are least likely to have female suffrage. reform. We will talk about that a bit more in a second. Similarly, you see suffragettes, this is their Alice Paul, petitioning the President Woodrow Wilson for a female franchise and then and they make this point, which is that why 1960 in our elections wanting these presidential elections stage that'll allow females suffering from increasing numbers of the Electoral College delegation in the states also increasing presidential candidates, however, reasons for female suffered. So Carrie Chapman Catt, she's a strategist who is also president of the NA wsa, the main female suffrage organization. And in 1960s, you had this national convention, she brings together a state level heads of na wsa into that room, she puts a map on the wall, and she says we're gonna go state by state, and now we're going to capture the West, we're going to now try to get the Midwest and Northeast South against the larger ward. She is trying to replicate Illinois 1913 Sanford's law in other states in order to push the right to vote nationally, but there are sort of holes in that 519 20 You'll see that a number of states have shifted to partial or full enfranchisement. And what this does is it changes the national political geography. So you'll see here the dashed line is number of states, the school township municipal franchise and also got a presidential franchise, full franchise, solid lines, number of female franchise attendants and there are female franchise amendments being proposed by a handful of members of Congress for decades. But it's not really until the number of states in franchising women in one pass here it does. It's not really that picks up afterwards, as you see a shift in the congressional willingness to propose amendments partly because our shift there's a shift in the composition of Congress, presidents increasingly reliant women for their reelection by the 2020 election season franchising women heading into the 2020 election state that certain

states and franchising women therefore move majority of the electoral college sort of an argue that that prior state before I'm at the National Council of States converge on a platform of policy and franchising women, as Western states are a franchise and when did the Republican Party now as a bunch of constituents in western states, and while the Republican Party, especially after the Civil War had relied on franchising black people in the south, into this new Western electorate, and it gradually kind of rolls back, it's difficult to get this cascading situation where after 1890, a number of state constitutions, a number of state constitutional conventions assembled in the city plan, which includes a whole national literacy test, a character test that went local registrar as a few names arbitrary, with that closed out. And also full text which was required to put down one or $2 Nowadays in the House did you keep in order to fill hardest on things working for predominantly again, the blind working for it seems like Mississippi is called the Mississippi plant, and it spreads like wildfire. But 1902 Every southern state was rewritten their state constitution, partly because in 18 8018, IBM, the US Supreme Court in a case called Mississippi first Williams says that these sorts of tax clauses are legal. Now how could they be legally no the 14th and 15th amendment so you can't have race based discrimination. But Mississippi in this case of Gilson says, tax does not mention race is facially race. There's no language racing certain Supreme Court acceptance or not racial discrimination, something that we know is wrong, Constitutional Court upholds it. And so it kind of culminates Alabama or racism, the current constitution in 1901 as the god Beenox This is the conversion. You can imagine what kind of documents Johnny Knox, we're about what kind of data the graphic uses. And what is it that we want to do, why it is within the limits imposed by the federal constitution to establish white supremacy. This has happened between 1887 Ford has had the very early mover of every X Confederacy was drafted in the Constitution. Court largely uninterested through this period and intervening I think 37 case called Green buffer settled here, the RE iterates reiterates its commitment that a full tax specialty race neutral and does not discriminate on the basis of race. So there's a really high bar getting the federal federal government to actually reverse the now as a result, and our full tax reformers like the Southern Conference on human welfare and the National Committee for polishable. Instead, they look to Congress in the following year at 1938. The southern committee on Malta and then the NCAA. Following your appeal to Congress, Fernando fulltext. Amendment, the Congress has all the Southern Democrats who realized that if they expand the franchise, black voters in their state, the executive branch, the Department of Justice realizes they're kind of cornered here. And if you've already wandered over us brown lower federal court upholds the poll tax. The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case. We're sitting over the burden of Justice and the federal judiciary is okay with the poll tax. After that. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Attorney General Francis bill says this is not something that we're going to win. And although we are still getting on the phone making calls to members of Congress senators, as you're trying to get them to support and Nicole effects bill, there's just not a lot of traction at the national level enough areas through the 1945 says that the multiphysics coding matter for southern states. And southern seems to work this out, in fact, southern states were killed. So again, national government not interested in repeal even a coalition of progressives at the state, the 1930s and 40s. To successfully repeal the poll tax at the state level. You see a lot of the labor union organizations working together with civil rights organizations. Louisiana is the first one I've moved in 1934. The Depression spreads a lot of people get ailable tax and increasingly in Louisiana poor white workers as long as Huey Long was a populist in Louisiana relies on poor white folks to get reelected moves in 1934 for more national support from the American Federation of Labor, the two parts labor unions 1936, Florida follows our club member. state lawmaker, again moves through via a call to action in order to read franchise and states working for this is a big emphasis to the New Deal in which more and more Americans are formed. And so they're kind of coalescing around pushing against these discriminatory old tax issues. Also in Miami, the mom was just paying a lot of people school taxes to get them some

kind of an anti corruption measure as well. 1941 The Congress of Industrial Organizations and they and all together, organized against them. All that says the NAACP is a Philip Randolph, labor and civil rights organizer, prominent opponent, and states began slowly dominantly between 1943 and 46. A couple of things change one get inflation and all of a sudden that cost is usually fixed. $1 was a lot easier to pay, and so Staples has loosened. Also, Fletcher was an under recruiting home after the Second World War, and it becomes increasingly unpopular for a franchise planning service to disenfranchise them using the poll tax. So in Georgia, for example, I was governor leads Dynegy 40 Finalizer to renewable tax within Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi also repealed and so London ex Confederate states by 1951 both actually exist in Alabama, Texas and Virginia, increasingly get lighter in some places registrar's law enforcement in some places. Well, that's fine. But it's still another 10 years before the federal government is willing to actually recognize the need for full tax repeal in 1960. This our Gilman, Senate 1962, what becomes the 24th Amendment repealing the whole tax passes the Senate but only through this very clever procedural measure? It's actually the amendment is passed as part of the bills recognize the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton. He has it further because it says that Ford is Senator stuff at all it says so many of the southern states recently eliminated all tax reporting, and Congress is just trying to lie on what's happening at the state level. And it is important because this line Fourth Amendment prevents the reinstitution of all tax. It also is followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, section 10. Also, I love the Supreme Court in Harper West Virginia Board of Elections reaffirms the next year. So 1964 6567 amendment, congressional statutes have been put action, important work in progress repeal of the Voltaire. But it's not why we get is really only at this period here at federal actually gets a full pass. Once found in line number one phone numbers, the federal government is only willing to reaffirm what has happened as a result of labor and civil rights organizing at the state and constitutional level. And so we wouldn't be wrong to say that vra with an agenda for the Harvard is why we so want to give you a couple of lessons in February race based. One is that if we're going to state constitutions, we're not actually understanding national politics. So we have this story. Rational controversy creates federal action that creates federal outcomes. We're also using health care law state constitution for four causes a lot of the same outcome. If we only told the story about pressure to reform the poll tax, repeal the poll tax, and once we get to the 24th Amendment and the VRA Carter compassionate be incorrectly decided what the amendments did and how it came around the state constitution for for state constitutions that were not actually correctly explaining national politics, the VRA Parker 24th amendment are important for presenting your valuable back if you're not what actually called. As a result, state constitution, state constitutional reforms have the power to channel reform away from our national branches and national branches. We've read the poll tax occasion at state level reform created consensus in favor of full tax repeal, at the national level. So hopefully, I've convinced y'all that the US Constitution has survived for so long, we're able to push the pressure for reform down to the state level, usually, usually defensive mechanism, which in ways that prevent change to the National Constitution by resolving the constitution 34 years after it was first time. I want to conclude though, with a story about where we're going now, and this is very short. We're seeing a lot of gridlock and polarization at the state level and increasingly competitive states, purple states, we're seeing the repeal of the right to vote we're seeing suppression of the right to vote. We're seeing some version of normal election laws and we're also seeing skewing increases or over represents one party.

One, we see something like a modern poll tax where in 2018, Florida voters passed amendment four which mean franchise formerly incarcerated people but the state legislature required that before those people vote may pay on saving for something like a modern Colfax you got to pay for your second gerrymandered. This is Wisconsin's lower house of their state legislature in 2018. The state legislature the Republican Party lost the popular vote for the state legislature but they won a majority of seats because they were so carefully gearing entered the democratic specifying voters in Madison. And then in the lobby, They funneled away some of those voters surrounding register. June we got 45% of the popular vote, but they want 63% of the seats. It made it possible that you lose an election and still were wild. So last thing I want to talk about is constantly also due to state legislatures are bound by the Constitution to allow or to allocate the Presidential electors to whoever wins the pie. Almost all states have done this for almost all American history. All states, again, currently are where their electors on some pages to whoever wins in their state, by state constitutions, you can actually break that connection, you can allow state legislatures to go room so that there's a bill in Wisconsin that was proposed last year that would allow let's say Donald Trump runs, he would imagine he loses the popular vote in Wisconsin, the state legislature did not molest give him all of the Electoral College votes and allow him to win that state. He lost it and that would be constitutionally valid. This is called an independent state legislature. four justices on the Supreme Court have already pelvis AQa parents opinion on the fourth kind of case, this morning is going to go on. Importantly, this kind of outcome, we can imagine a situation where a Republican candidate loses the election, but nonetheless, that could have a constitutional amendments. And that's something I'm happy to talk about more questions as well as bortion was inheritance and sea level decision. So with that, I thank you and I look forward to questions. Campus Connections, computers, clinic campus,

Campus connections, campus connections, campus connections, campus connections, campus connections.

Now it's time for Campus Connections, the part of the podcast where we connect today's featured content to the work of other scholars at UMBC. Today, our intrepid production assistant, Alex Andrews, is back to tell us a bit about the research of Dr. William Blake, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. What's Dr. Blake been up to Alex?

Thanks, Dr. Anson. This week on Campus Connections, we'll be taking a look at the work of Dr. William Blake, Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair of Political Science at UMBC. The title of this work is "Social Capital, Institutional Rules, and Constitutional Amendment Rates," and it discusses why some constitutions are amended more frequently than others, due to the lack of agreement on what shapes constitutional amendments. This paper examines how social capital plays into amendment rules and thus constitutional amendment rates. The results of this study showed that amendment frequency is a product of amendment rules, group membership, civic activism, and levels of social and political trust. Naturally, the context we find ourselves in also plays a key role. And social capital was found to positively impact social movements looking to make constitutional amendments. If you get a chance, this study is a great read. That's all for Campus Connections this week. Back to you, Dr. Anson.

Thanks again, Alex. I always appreciate learning more about constitutions and I hope that you enjoyed today's discussion as well. Join us next time for more from the fascinating world of social science at UMBC. And, as always, keep questioning.

Retrieving the Social Sciences is a production of the UMBC Center for Social Science Scholarship. Our director is Dr. Christine Mallinson, our Associate Director is Dr. Felipe Filomeno, and our production intern is Alex Andrews. Our theme music was composed and recorded by D'Juan Moreland. Find out more about CS3 at socialscience.umbc.edu and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, where you can find full video recordings of recent CS3 events. Until next time, keep questioning.