For your reading and listening education

Some reading and listening on things we have covered earlier in the course.

• Recall our discussion of Heart of Atlanta Motel and McClung and using the Commerce Clause to prohibit discrimination in places of public accommodation. Both opinions mentioned The Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans identifying places through the South where it was safe to stop and get services (food, room, gas), as well as places to avoid. This podcast features a journalist and an activist driving from Detroit to New Orleans, visiting the spaces described in the travel guide and interviewing people in the communities. (Note: contains explicit language, including racial epithets, by people telling their lives stories).

• Since the President's COVID diagnosis, there has been talk about the 25th Amendment, specifically § 4's provision for an involuntary transfer of executive power where the President is unable to discharge the powers of office (note: It does not provide for removal of the President from office; it transfers the executive power temporarily). Section 4 provides for a transfer when the "Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide" notifies the Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore of the Senate of that disability. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former constitutional law professor, has introduced legislation establishing the "Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office" as a "such other body." The Committee would consist of 17 members; 16 would be chosen by legislative leaders (Speaker, majority leader, minority leader), half from each party, and the 17th member would be chosen by the 16 appointees. The President could be required to submit to a physical, mental, or other examination on a concurrent resolution of both houses.

Brian Kalt, a professor at Michigan State, wrote a book about § 4 and spoke on this podcast (begin around 47:45, unless you want to hear a non-nuanced partisan take on the Barrett nomination) about the amendment, its purpose and operation, and the proposed legislation. For our purposes, Kalt identifies two potential separation-of-powers defects in the proposal: 1) Legislative appointment of officials who seem to be performing executive functions and 2) Congress unilaterally compelling the Commission to act, which may be an executive function.