Constitutional Law

The court's super majority of conservative judges has already passed down rulings about abortion and the 2nd Amendment. New York Times journalist Adam Liptak says more legal upheavals are likely.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Fahrenthold says in the past, an honor system helped keep presidents from using the office to benefit themselves. Not Trump: "He exploits honor systems."

Law professor Adam Winkler says that in the past 200 years, businesses have gone to court claiming constitutional rights that were originally intended for people. His new book is We the Corporations.

Legal expert Jeffrey Rosen says of the Supreme Court nominee: "If he thought that individual liberty was threatened by presidential or congressional overreaching, then he would step in."

Technologies like GPS and social media are posing new challenges to interpreting the Constitution's guarantees of privacy and free speech. Law professor and journalist Jeffrey Rosen says we're now in an era the Founding Fathers could never have imagined, in which private companies are determining the rules for what can be shared.

Stevens, who died Tuesday, was appointed by President Ford and served on the court for 35 years before retiring in 2010. He spoke to Fresh Air in 2011 about his memoir, Five Chiefs.

Charlie Savage is based in Washington for the Boston Globe and recently wrote an investigative piece about the civil rights section of the Department of Justice, where he found that staffers with legal expertise are being replaced by conservatives with little experience but who promote right wing Christian values.

Reporter Jane Mayer's recent article in The New Yorker examines the role of David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and longtime legal adviser. Mayer says current and former Bush administration officials credit him with helping form the administration's legal strategy in the war on terrorism.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has written about his interpretation of the constitution in the new book Active Liberty.

Law Professor CASS SUNSTEIN on the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. President Bush has nominated Miers, White House Counsel, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School at the University of Chicago. Early in his career, Sunstein clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He has also been a visiting professor of law at Columbia and Harvard universities.

Constitutional lawyer Douglas Kmiec supports the new security measures instituted since the September 11th attacks. He is Dean and St. Thomas More professor, at the Catholic University of America. He also was head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan administration. He can often be seen on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer. His most recent book is "Individual Rights and the American Constitution."

First amendment lawyer Matin Garbus He recently defended Peter Matthiessen's controversial book, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," against two separate libel suits. Garbus is currently helping to draft a new constitution for Czechoslovakia. He talks with Terry about that.

Attorney David Cole. Cole is a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, and has recently taken part in court cases involving flag burning and controversial art exhibits.