Originalism, Executive Power, and the Roberts Court

Originalism, Executive Power, and the Roberts Court

May 27, 2026 · 1h 0m

About this episode

Mike discusses the Supreme Court's approach to originalism and executive power with Thomas Berry.

Mike talks with Thomas Berry, director of the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, about how to understand the Supreme Court beyond simple liberal/conservative scorekeeping. They discuss originalism, precedent, executive power, independent agencies, and the emergency docket. Berry defends a text-and-history approach to judging, criticizes presidents of both parties for stretching old statutes to justify new policies, and argues that Congress’s weakness has pushed too much power into the executive branch. The Cato Institute on X Check out the Future of Our Former Democracy podcast The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Host: Mike

Guest: Thomas Berry

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Organizations: Cato Institute, Cato Supreme Court Review, The Democracy Group

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