More Perfect
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More Perfect
We’re taught the Supreme Court was designed to be above the fray of politics. But at a time when partisanship seeps into every pore of American life, are the nine justices living up to that promise? More Perfect is a guide to the current moment on the Court. We bring the highest court of the land do...
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48 Episoden
No More Souters - Revisited
Justice David Souter has died. Souter was one of the most private, low-profile justices ever to have served on the Supreme Court. He rarely gave inte...
Andy Warhol and the Art of Judging Art
The law protects creators' original work against copycats, but it also leaves the door open for some kinds of copying. When a photographer sues the An...
The Original Anti-Vaxxer
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...
Not Even Past: Dred Scott Reprise
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 f...
No More Souters
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 hi...
Off the Record, On the Stand
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 t...
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl Reprise
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 afte...
Part 2: If Not Viability, Then What?
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 framew...
Part 1: The Viability Line
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 oth...
The Political Thicket Reprise
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...
The Court’s Reporters
Unlike other branches of government, the Supreme Court operates with almost no oversight. No cameras are allowed in the courtroom, no binding code of...
Clarence X
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...
The Supreme Court v. Peyote
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 Su...
The Preamble: Introducing More Perfect Season 4
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 hig...
More Perfect Is Coming Back
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...
The Unfinished Amendments with Kevin Devine
In More Perfect's final episode of the season, listen to liner notes for two amendments that contemplate the still-unfinished status of our Constituti...
The Democracy Amendments with Stef Chura
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 a...
The Power Player Amendments with Devendra Banhart
The 25th and 26th Amendments — ratified in 1967 and 1971, respectively — are some of the newest additions to our founding document. However, they tack...
The Sleeper Amendments with Post Animal
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 Reconstruction Amendments with Kash Doll
Amendments 13, 14, and 15 are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments: they were passed as instructions to rebuild the country after the C...
The 19th Amendment with Dolly Parton
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...
The Eccentric Amendments with The Kominas
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 g...
The Criminal Justice Amendments with Adia Victoria
The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments enshrine some of our most important civil liberties. They tell us about the rights we have whe...
The Gun Show Reprise
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 re...
The First Amendments with They Might Be Giants
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...
We've Got a Surprise For You
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 wi...
American Pendulum Reprise
What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States upheld President Franklin Roosev...
One Nation, Under Money
An unassuming string of 16 words tucked into the Constitution grants Congress extensive power to make laws that impact the entire nation. The Commerce...
Justice, Interrupted
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 ru...
The Architect
On this episode, we revisit Edward Blum, a self-described “legal entrepreneur” and former stockbroker who has become something of a Supreme Court matc...
Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man
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...
Sex Appeal
“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 co...
The Hate Debate
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, f...
Citizens United
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 d...
Enemy of Mankind
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 Ame...
The Heist
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 mane...
The Gun Show
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 an...
Who’s Gerry and Why Is He So Bad at Drawing Maps?
“It is an invidious, undemocratic, and unconstitutional practice,” Justice John Paul Stevens said of gerrymandering in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004). Poli...
American Pendulum II
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...
American Pendulum I
What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States is a case that’s been widely den...