A simple black armband became a turning point for student rights. We sit down with Mary Beth Tinker to revisit the 1965 protest that led to Tinker v. Des Moines and the Supreme Court’s declaration that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. Alongside Mary Beth, Pennsylvania civic educator Shannon Salter brings the story into today’s classrooms, where free speech collides with dress codes, book bans, social media, and the daily realities of learning in community.

Across this conversation, we unpack what the First Amendment means for young people right now: the boundary between speech and disruption, the often overlooked right to hear, and the difference between adult comfort and student liberty. Shannon shares field-tested strategies for elevating student voice—protocols that reward listening over winning, projects that connect learning to local impact, and governance roles that let students help shape their schools. Mary Beth ties civic courage to well-being, showing how advocacy builds confidence, connection, and care. Together, we trace how youth voice has moved city services, reoriented policy conversations, and kept democratic values visible in the places where they matter most.

If you’re an educator, student, or parent wondering how to hold space for hard conversations without losing the thread of learning, you’ll find practical tools and real stories here. If you’re curious why Tinker still matters more than five decades later, you’ll hear how every generation keeps rights alive by using them. Listen, share with someone who cares about student voice, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your feedback helps us keep building a community that protects speech, nurtures curiosity, and invites young people to lead.

Illinois Democracy Hub: Current and Societal Issue Discussion Toolkit

Sphere Education: Principles of Civil Discourse Primer

Civil Discourse, by Joe Schmidt and Nichelle Pinkney>

Mercatus Center Pluralist Lab Resources<

Generation Citizen

Bill of Rights Institute: My Impact Challenge?

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

We trace the 15-day showdown over the Pentagon Papers and how the Supreme Court drew a bright line against prior restraint. The story moves from Ellsberg’s leak to the Court’s ruling that the press serves the governed, not the governors.

• Vietnam-era context and collapsing public trust
• Ellsberg’s decision to copy and share the study
• The Times publishes and triggers an emergency court fight
• What prior restraint means and why courts disfavor it
• Near v. Minnesota as the legal foundation
• The Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision and key opinions
• How the ruling guides modern leak coverage
• The difference between embarrassment and immediate harm
• Why transparency is the default in a democracy
• The press as a watchdog serving the public

If you enjoyed this story, share it with someone who loves history, law, or great journalism

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Professor Samantha Barbas traces how New York Times v. Sullivan reshaped libel law, empowered investigative reporting, and protected the civil rights movement, then tests the standard against today’s social media landscape. She unpacks “actual malice,” reputation, and current calls to revisit the ruling.

What you will learn in this episode:

• what libel is and why it matters
• the meaning of actual malice as reckless disregard
• civil rights origins of the Sullivan decision
• how the ruling liberated investigative journalism
• modern critiques from reputation to originalism
• social media’s global scale of harm
• protection for journalists, bloggers, and everyday speakers
• the ongoing balance between speech and reputation

Actual Malice Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan.

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Imagine sharing a district with nine times as many people as the voters next door and getting the same single representative. That stark imbalance was common before Baker v. Carr, and it’s the starting point for our deep dive into how the Supreme Court reshaped representation, why one person, one vote became the baseline, and where the law is drifting now.

We sit down with Professor Stephen Wermiel to unpack the two-step process that changed modern apportionment. First came Baker v. Carr in 1962, which opened the courthouse doors by declaring that extreme population disparities in legislative districts can violate the Equal Protection Clause. Then, in Reynolds v. Sims in 1964, the court set the rule: districts must be drawn with roughly equal populations. That pairing forced states to redraw maps nationwide, bringing urban and rural representation closer to parity and making legislative power track people, not old boundaries.

But equal headcounts didn’t end the fight over power. We explore how partisan gerrymandering flourished within the population rule, as mapmakers learned to pack and crack voters to entrench party control. The Court has largely walled off federal challenges to partisan gerrymanders, holding that these disputes don’t present manageable constitutional standards. At the same time, we dig into the line the Court did draw: racial gerrymandering and vote dilution. For decades, voters could challenge maps that dispersed minority communities to weaken their voice under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Now, a pending case from Louisiana could narrow or even close that pathway, signaling a significant shift in how racial vote dilution claims are treated in federal court.

Across the conversation, we connect doctrine to real-world stakes: school funding, roads, taxes, and who gets heard at the Capitol. You’ll come away with a clear map of how Baker v. Carr changed the game, why Reynolds v. Sims matters every redistricting cycle, and what today’s legal battles could mean for fair representation tomorrow. If conversations about maps, power, and democracy matter to you, press play, share this with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

A nine-page Supreme Court opinion changed the course of American education—and it wasn’t an accident. We walk through the legal strategy that chipped away at Plessy, the political maneuvering that elevated Earl Warren, and the consolidated cases that gave Brown its force. From the NAACP’s focus on the false promise of “equal” to South Carolina’s attempt to preserve segregation by upgrading Black schools, the road to 1954 was crowded with tactics, pressure, and surprising alliances.

Once Warren took the helm, the Court aimed for clarity over casebook citations. Brown I is short by design, rejecting the idea that state-enforced separation could ever be equal because it stamps children with a badge of inferiority. The harder part came next: Brown II’s mandate to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” That phrase left lower courts to navigate politics and logistics without a strict timetable. We explore how Southern federal judges became quiet heroes, why some states chose massive resistance, and how President Eisenhower’s intervention in Little Rock signaled federal resolve.

We also connect the dots with Bolling v. Sharpe, where the Court used the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to apply equal protection principles to federal schools in Washington, D.C., and we trace the aftermath through Cooper v. Aaron, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Along the way, we spotlight the advocates who shaped the moment—John Davis for the defenders of segregation and Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP—showing how courtroom craft and constitutional vision converged. Brown did not finish the work, but it reset the law’s moral compass and gave the country a common language for equality. If this journey through law, politics, and principle resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review telling us what part of Brown’s story you think matters most today.

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Free speech law didn’t spring fully formed; it was hammered out case by case, crisis by crisis. We unpack how Schenck v. United States, a 1919 wartime case that actually upheld a conviction, planted the “clear and present danger” idea and nudged the Court away from the sweeping “bad tendency” rule. From there, we follow the thread through Holmes and Brandeis, whose dissents helped build a sturdier shield for political dissent, all the way to Brandenburg v. Ohio and its demanding standard: only speech intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action can be punished.

Along the way, we make sense of the narrow carve-outs—fighting words, obscenity, libel—and why courts resist expanding them to swallow political speech. We dive into equality-era pressures, campus speech codes, and the enduring myth of a “hate speech” exception. Matal v. Tam takes center stage as a modern proof that offensive speech is still protected, even when it stings, because pluralism requires resilience, not censorship.

Then we turn to the digital battleground. Social media, Section 230, algorithmic amplification, and the specter of real-world harm complicate the old doctrines. We explore what government can and cannot do, what platforms may choose to moderate, and how transparency and user control might reduce harm without trampling the First Amendment. If you’re a student, educator, or curious citizen, you’ll leave with a clearer map: where the lines are, why intent and imminence matter, and how to defend open debate while pushing back against true threats and incitement.

If this conversation helped clarify the free speech landscape, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves civics, and leave a quick review telling us where you’d draw the line.

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

A Supreme Court tried to settle the slavery question and instead set the country ablaze. We unpack Dred Scott v. Sandford with Dr. Beinberg, tracing how a case about one man’s claim to freedom morphed into a sweeping judgment that denied Black citizenship, stripped Congress of authority over the territories, and elevated slaveholding to a protected property right. Rather than take a narrow path, the Court chose a maximal ruling that collided with text, history, and public sentiment—and pushed a polarized nation closer to war.

We walk through the three pillars of the decision and why they mattered far beyond the courtroom. You’ll hear how Justice Nelson’s technical route could have ended the case quietly, and how Chief Justice Taney’s opinion reached for a national answer that rested on brittle historical claims. The dissents by Justices McLean and Curtis provide the corrective: evidence that free Black Americans were citizens and voters in multiple founding-era states, and that Congress’s power over the territories was broad and longstanding. That clash between original public meaning and speculative intent reveals how bad history can become bad law.

The political stakes were enormous. With James Buchanan signaling deference to a decision he seemed to expect, the North saw a “slave power” at work as the ruling effectively declared the Republican platform unconstitutional. Yet within a decade, the 13th and 14th Amendments erased the decision’s core, establishing birthright citizenship and ending slavery’s legal foundation. We connect those dots to show how constitutional failure can prompt constitutional repair, and why the case still shapes debates about judicial overreach, historical method, and national power.

If you found this deep dive useful, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review telling us which part changed how you see the Constitution.

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

A steamboat monopoly, a federal license, and a constitutional power that still shapes our economy—this is the story of Gibbons v. Ogden told through clear facts and sharp reasoning. We dig into how a seemingly straightforward dispute over navigation between New York and New Jersey became a landmark on the meaning of the Commerce Clause and the reach of federal supremacy.

We walk through the clash of dueling licenses and explain why navigation counts as commerce when routes cross state lines. From there, we unpack Chief Justice Marshall’s move away from “strict construction,” his broader definition of commerce as traffic and intercourse, and his pivotal reading of “among the several states” as intermingled activity that does not stop at border lines. Those words solved the case, but they also set the stage for future fights over railroads, highways, and modern markets that span supply chains far beyond any one state’s boundary.

Then we tackle the language that launched a thousand citations: Marshall’s distinction between national “external” concerns and “completely internal” state commerce. That neat line sounds clear until you ask how often commerce is truly sealed within one state. We show why this dicta mattered, how it influenced twentieth‑century expansions and modern limits, and why the facts here—major rivers, multi‑state routes, and Congress’s explicit licensing law—drive a clean holding of federal preemption. We also mark the boundary between this case and the dormant Commerce Clause, where courts police state burdens on interstate trade when Congress has not acted.

If you care about how federal power keeps a national market from fracturing—whether on rivers, rails, or digital platforms—this conversation gives you a usable map. Enjoy the deep dive, and if it helped clarify a classic case, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to support more clear‑eyed civics.

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics