Sam Issacharoff

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast

This week, we’re joined by dual-wielding complex and aggregate litigation and law of democracy scholar Samuel Issacharoff to discuss his new book Democracy Unmoored: Populism and the Corruption of Popular Sovereignty. Sam Issacharoff, the Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU Law and one of our leading democratic theorists, has written extensively on the role of courts in strengthening and protecting democracy and the democratic process.

Sam and David begin the podcast by poking the bear – isn’t populism a little passe? Professor Issacharoff doesn’t back down, pointing to his Argentine background and global focus, as well as his institutional expertise, as offering a new perspective on the conversation. Professor Issacharoff then talks economics and inequality before defending, championing, and even glamorizing (?!) political parties. This is a legal theory podcast, so we turn to courts and his theory of judicial intercession, but it’s also our legal theory podcast, so we learn some theology lessons along the way. We end the way we started, with Sam being a little cheeky and Sam Issacharoff demonstrating the timeliness of his book.

This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.

Referenced Readings

• “Would You Date a Podcast Bro?” by Gina Cherelus
• Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts by Sam Issacharoff
• The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
• “Revenge of the Centrist Dads” by Janan Ganesh