Articles by John Witt
The Supreme Law of the Land
The Supreme Law of the Land Published October 18, 2026 Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People by Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan Buy this book The Supreme Court’s dismantling of the last vestiges of the 1965 Voting Rights Act this spring in Louisiana v. Callais marked the end of an era—a retreat from the core civil rights commitment to draw electoral-district lines in a way that would ensure representation for racial minorities.
What Role Should the Supreme Court Play in American Politics?
Books & the Arts / October 13, 2026 The Supreme Law of the Land What role should the Supreme Court play in American politics? What Role Should the Supreme Court Play in American Politics? A wide-ranging new book by Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan examines how America’s highest court often gets in the way of democratic politics. Ad Policy The Supreme Court in 1888. (C.M. Bell / Library of Congress) This article appears in the November 2026 issue.
Free Speech Is the Antidote to Political Violence
John Fabian Witt Wed, September 24, 2025 at 10:00 AM UTC 5 min read As the United States veers toward renouncing its free speech commitments, it’s worth once again asking why we have a First Amendment free speech tradition in the first place. The answer, it turns out, has everything to do with managing the problem of political violence in the modern world. And it’s an answer that the federal government today ignores at our peril. At first glance, the question seems to answer itself.
Free Speech Is the Antidote to Political Violence
For two decades and more, anarchists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, had engaged in a wild set of bombings and assassinations, from Haymarket Square in Chicago in 1886 to the assassination of President William McKinley in Buffalo in 1901, to the destruction of the Los Angeles Times building in 1912.
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