Captain James T. Kirk and the Constitution

John Yoo is back this week, but Lucretia is away for once, but in her place we have special giest Michael Stokes Paulson of the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota, who is the author of, among many other significant legal articles, "Captain Kirk and the Enterprise of Constitutional Interpretation: Some Modest Proposals from the 23rd Century."

It turned out to be very timely as we received the sad news of the passing of Patrick Stewart, which started off a fresh round of the SciFi equivalent of the debate between the ancients and the moderns, that is, Star Trek: The Original Series, or Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Captain Kirk versus Captain Piccard. (I'll merely note that Shatner Lives!)

Prof. Paulson has some excellent and serious consitutional reflections from an Original Series episode called "The Omega Glory," and all three of us indulge our best Shatner imitations. But we also get a recollections of Paulson's role in the nomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court in 1990.

So as Piccard might say, now that this episode has been posted, Make it so! to be on the top of your podcast queue.