Constitutional Law Scholar Stefanie Lindquist
In this episode of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge’s George Washington Slept Here, we are joined by the brilliant Stefanie Lindquist, an ASU professor of law and political sciences, and together, we dive into the fascinating world of political polarization, constitutional conversations, and the power of civil discourse. We discuss the importance of judicial decision-making, the concept of judicial activism, and the complexity of democracy. We also look into the challenges of modern communication and the need for meaningful conversations with those who hold differing viewpoints.
Quotes
“Polarization thrives when we avoid meaningful talks with those who disagree.” -Stefanie Lindquist
“Never underestimate your potential. As I turn 60, I wish I’d been even bolder. So take it from me: Be bold.” -Stefanie Lindquist
“Civic decline and the ‘big sort’ fuel division; civil dialogue is key to progress.” -Stefanie Lindquist
Featured Guest
Stefanie Lindquist
Social Links: https://search.asu.edu/profile/3033197
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:32 – From Lawyer to Teacher: A Legal Passion
09:52 – Emotional Politics: Online Reactions & The Need for Civil Discourse
12:19 – Social Media’s Echo Chambers
19:33 – The Decline of Elegant Communication
25:26 – Judicial Opinions: The Pillars of Democracy
32:28 – The Hurdles of Amending the U.S. Constitution
36:31 – Constitutional Limits in Legislative Writing
40:17 – The Dilemma of Supreme Court Activism
47:44 – Public vs. Private Sector: Flaws and Concerns
50:16 – Tribalism vs. Institution-Building: The Current Struggle Shaping America
54:55 – Democracy as the Governance Gold Standard
59:40 – Lessons from Constitutional Dilemmas
01:01:49 – From Small Town to Big Impact: Overcoming Self-Doubt
01:03:24 – Outro
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Transcript
We the people of the United States. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Jason Raia:
Hello, and welcome to George Washington Slept Here, the civic education podcast from Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, where we explore American histories, civics, and the idea of liberty through conversations with some of our favorite thinkers, writers, and leaders. I’m Jason Raia, chief operating officer at Freedoms Foundation and host of George Washington Slept Here. The format is simple, a long form conversation with a friend of Freedoms Foundation where everyone can learn something new. Before we go any further, a little housekeeping, we encourage everyone to subscribe to George Washington Slept Here wherever you listen to podcasts. And make sure you get every new episode as soon as it is out. We love hearing from listeners, so please email us at gwshpodcast@gmail.com with your comments, questions, or suggestions, and hit us up at Freedoms Foundation’s social media @FFVF on Twitter and on Facebook and Instagram @freedomsfoundation. Today’s interview is with Constitutional Law Professor Stephanie Lindquist. Hello, Stephanie.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Hello, Jason.
Jason Raia:
Our conversation today is going to be structured in a way to keep us on track. We wanna explore your origin story. How did you become the person sitting before us? And your current work, at the law school. And then I wanna talk to you about the state of America today. And finally, we end with a quiz. So, Stephanie, tell us where were you born and raised?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Well, I was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but I was raised in Phoenixville, which is just a hop skip and a jump from here at the Freedoms Foundation.
Jason Raia:
That’s right. So you grew up here in Phoenixville, who are your influences? Who are the people most important in that period of your life?
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s an interesting question. No doubt. I, I went to Ursinus College, which is also right up the street, and I had a political science professor there. Guy named Nick Berry, and he was extremely influential. I always wanted to be a lawyer. But I studied political science undergraduate school, and he was an international relations experty. And he taught me about things like game theory, the history of international relations and theories associated with it. And while I ended up becoming an Americanist, in terms of what I studied to get my PhD, I found him to be such an inspiration in terms of his intellectual engagement that he had. He was always active writing editorials for the Philadelphia Inquirer in thinking as kind of a public intellectual, and I found that very, very inspiring. And I miss him often, I think, about him.
Jason Raia:
People like that are so important in those crucial stages. Sounds like you wanted to be a lawyer fairly young. What was it that intrigued you about, you know, the law?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Well, I always enjoyed the debate, and, of course, as a political science student that was part of my education. And I find the rule of law fascinating in terms of how we as a society determine how we are going to order ourselves. And the balance between liberty and order is so important and obviously something that lawyers think about all the time. I’m fascinated by government, and how government operates and can either promote or repress freedoms. And so, I as a young person decided that a lawyer would be the right profession, being a lawyer would be the right profession for me. And I’m so glad I did. I went right to law school out of undergraduate school, and then I clerked for a federal judge down at 6th and Market. He was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. And then went off to practice law in Washington, D.C. And, so my law practice was fairly short lived because I then went and got a PhD in political science, but I’ve always enjoyed the law. I still obviously teach law students, but often now from the standpoint of social science as well. Law is a combination not only of the legal rules that are on the paper, but also the sources of those rules, which is politics. And the interactions that individuals have within politics that, you know, ultimately determine public policy, as it is embodied in law. So the combination of law and political science has served me well in my career.
Jason Raia:
It’s fascinating how much everything you’re saying aligns with Freedoms Foundation, that balance between liberty and order. We, with our student program, we talk about the balance, in a very particular activity that we call the Freedoms Summit, which ends in a congressional debate. But we talk about how do you balance individual liberty and national security? It’s what is important for the individual, what is important for the community, and, and how to, achieve both of them to the best of our ability
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right. I mean, it’s a perennial question, obviously, in the United States, we think about our system of ordered liberty. That’s a phrase that the Supreme Court coined, and, in terms of the modern era, we see tensions between liberty and order all the time as especially as our technology’s structure and and, you know, like, what would you call it? The meta sphere, the meta sphere of the social media world. We really are facing some significant challenges associated with technology and privacy and order and liberty. And so these are perennial questions. They’ve been with us forever, but they’re becoming, I think, even more acute in the modern era.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely. And it’s one of those technologies and social media are those areas where, and, and this maybe is a good place to start, where there’s no way the founding fathers envisioned technology, the way we experience it, or social media, and yet they created this five page document that still has, and then and then added to it with the amendments, but in the Constitution and then the Bill of Rights that still is able to speak to our situation here in the 21st Century. So I’m curious what it is that you see that the founders accomplished in Philadelphia, 1787?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Well, they accomplished an extraordinary system of government with, just the right in my mind, a balance of checks and balances on each branch to separate them and thus ensure that we’re not subject to tyrannical rule by a single individual within whom all three powers of government are embodied. So I think that that was extraordinarily important. They also, though, I think, contemplated a deliberative democracy. One that was, certainly moderated in its in its in the conversations around public policy issues through these institutions that enable deliberations. So, obviously, the Senate longer terms in the House of Representatives a brilliant plan to ensure that there would be kind of a a slow, thoughtful, methodical process of deliberation that could take place in the in the Senate, and that would temper what might become, sort of a a more, one might say, a quicker conversation and one that might be more responsive to to flashes of of political movements in the United States that might take place in the house. I think what we’re seeing now though, and in fact, I run a Center for Constitutional Design at the Arizona State University. And in the spring, we’re hosting a conference on Madisonian, Madison and Madisonian – Madison’s Vision of Democracy, deliberative democracy. And whether or not in the era of the internet and this incredibly fast, quick dialogue that can take place over the internet and over social media that’s not moderated by the sort of institutions that enable us to slowly think through the implications of our policy choices, that we’re really at risk now because because we, because, because that deliberation is more difficult to achieve. And that, of course, has exacerbated by polarization.
Jason Raia:
Mhmmm.
Stefanie Lindquist:
I think when the internet first came to be a force in politics and society, we thought that this would be a great force for democracy, but it also has considerable power to undermine democracy because people become siloed within their own ideological kind of, you know, little bubbles frankly. And the conversations that take place often are done in real time with very quick reactions and sometimes violent reactions. And so we we do have to think hard about how our democracy is gonna respond to these kind of technological advancements that might ultimately undermine our ability to deliberate and have the kind of constitutional governmental policy conversations we need to have to have a successful democracy.
Jason Raia:
And to that point, our technology has seems to begun to shift our expectations. We expect an answer instantly. The idea of deliberating on something for more than a few minutes is beginning to feel, you know, completely foreign. Whereas, you know, for the founders, that was what they did. They were all staying in the same boarding houses. And so would spend all day in formal debate and then they would go back and have dinner and they’re sitting at the same table and they’re sharing a stein of beer and what have you. And so that deliberation is going on. We know all summer through smallpox and everything else.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And heat.
Jason Raia:
And heat and those closed shuttered windows at Independence Hall. And now with the, the idea is instantaneous, you know, with instant gratification. And that is a function of technology, but I think it has also been coming for years and many other ways, but that change in expectations does make it more challenging to engage in these kinds of debates.
Stefanie Lindquist:
It does. And it and it really, I think in some ways, can think about our political dialogue that we have today over any issue, and can become very characterized by emotions.
Jason Raia:
Yes.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And if you’re communicating by letter and if you read Jefferson’s letters, for example, they’re just so brilliant in the way he’s thinking about the structure of the government that he just assisted in establishing and is running as president, etcetera. And they’re so thoughtful. And of thinking about both sides of an issue, whereas now people respond emotionally to things that you know, in past years, we might not even think of them as emotional issues, but they’ve become very emotional. And I think that emotion is exacerbated by this kind of instantaneous conversations that you can have and quick reactions that can be had over the internet. And I think that’s worrisome. People need to step back and think before they quickly fire something off over the internet over Twitter or whatever they do. And I and that’s and I think that really does, create kind of a real firestorm of conflict within our system, and that disappoints me. And one of the things that we’re doing, at the center that I run at at ASU, is trying to promote Constitutional conversations. That seems to be a lost art in politics where people from different sides of an issue come together. I think that’s what you do with the Freedoms Foundation. We work with the National Constitution Center. They do that as well. Come come together and have a civic conversation, civil pardon me, civil conversation about civic issues. And we’ve been very successful at that. You know, what happens in social media in that social media world and on television even on cable news is this, you know, very quick fire, often very, people become quite angry and vociferous in their opinions yelling at each other, whereas the conversations we’ve had with really, people from with extremely divergent views, once you get them in the same room and ask them to have a civil conversation, it can take place. And we’ve had some of the most fascinating dialogues. There were issues like originalism. And there are people who are very vociferous about their opinions on whether originalism is the proper approach to interpreting the Constitution, but our conversations have been civil and we’ve come away learning from each other.
Jason Raia:
Sure.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s what we’re not doing enough of today.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely. And, you know, you talked about the echo chambers that are created within social media, that allow us to choose who we listen to. And in some ways, this is for as new as it is technologically, it’s not new at all. We know certainly from the late 19th Century, the golden age of political cartoons that you found the newspaper that spoke to you, and that’s the one you subscribed to, and whether that was the first newspaper or whatever, but it was feeding you the politics that you believed in. And in much the same way, social media is doing the same thing, but the conversations that you have with other people is part of what can sort of break that echo chamber. And one of my big concerns is the places where we can meet people who might hold differing views us, people who have differing ex experiences than us seem to be fewer and fewer, particularly in a post COVID world where so many people aren’t going into the office, or they’re going in for a couple of days a week, and they’re doing work from home, which that’s a wonderful opportunity for lots of people, but where are the the times where we get to meet somebody who has a different viewpoint than me and engage in real conversation, not a perfunctory one? It seems like we need to provide those opportunities in much the way that your center is, that the National Constitution Center is, that Freedoms Foundation is that lots of great organizations are trying to do. There’s a new online platform, civic platform, called Unify America. Thank you. And, it’s so wonderful it matches people one to one to have a conversation online who are different, whether, you know, it might be economically different. It might be based on their political views. It might be on their experiences. It might be ethnic or, you know, racial or what have you. And then it has this guided series of questions that they talk about, and they’re doing it through a kind of Zoom platform. And but it is, and most people come away from it, come away from this understanding, the same as they do when they’re here, the same as they do, I’m sure, in your program, that they come away going, that was a good experience. Like, I now better understand this person that for many people, it’s like, well, yeah, I thought was my enemy.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right. I mean, it’s easy to stereotype people when you haven’t had the opportunity to have a conversation with them. You know, a couple of decades ago, Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone about the demise of bowling leagues. These kinds of civic organizations were places where Republicans and Democrats would come together because they both like to bowl.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And in that kind of interaction would learn that, gee, a Democrat is a normal person just like me, Republicans, a normal person just like I am, and we really are suffering from a paucity of those kinds of fora. In which we can have institutional or organizational places where we can have these conversations. And it’s and it’s really troubling also to see that the demise of these civic organizations is accompanied by what political scientists call the Big Sort. Which I’m sure you’ve heard of where people are moving to, neighborhoods in which they can share, living space with like minded people. And this is happening dramatically across the United States. So you move to a state where you think, well, this is a state where I I know we’ll find people who are like mine who have the same ideological predispositions that I do are like minded in terms of policy or politics. And, the Big Sort then creates, also sort of gerrymandered districts if you think about it because people move to live with each other. And I worked in, University of Georgia with a very famous political scientist named Keith Poole who studies polarization. And he was convinced that it wasn’t the legislative gerrymandering, the drawing of district lines that was creating the polarization of American politics, but rather the Big Sort.
Jason Raia:
Mhmm.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And I often tell people about another interesting study, a series of studies that have been done by political scientists that show that ideal ideology actually has, is a product of its in significant ways, a product of one’s genetics. Some political scientists have done some twin studies. Looking at regular siblings, fraternal twins, and identical twins, and tested how much of one’s ideology, one’s policy preferences are driven by, nurture or nature. And there is a significant component of what they found was that identical twins do share ideology in a way that studies can only be explained with reference to genetics.
Jason Raia:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And so if you think about it, there was a time when Republicans would marry Democrats —
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That was common, and happened in all of our families. Now Pew Charitable Research or the Pew Foundation’s Research has shown that Democrats don’t want their kids to marry Republicans. Republicans don’t want their kids to marry Democrats. And if you add in the genetic component which I always tell people is so fascinating. We’ve got the Big Sort. We have people who don’t want, you know, the opposite party to marry into their families. And then when two, you know, when two ideologically like minded people marry and produce children, that genetic component is there as well, which could be, you know, strengthening our polarization ascents there too. So there’s many factors at play and, and and the loss of what you referred to, I think, so intelligently is the loss of these civic organizations is making this problem all the worse.
Jason Raia:
Yeah. To me, the great challenge is, that I’m not sure what the solution is, but we need to face it head on. And I think part of the solution is getting people young.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Mhmm.
Jason Raia:
And helping them to recognize that engaging with people who think differently than you is. It’s not just a high priority, but it is in fact the ideal.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Absolutely.
Jason Raia:
That is because of that. And this is one of the things that I, I when I was still teaching in the classroom, helping my students understand that the founders were not a monolith, but in fact, they had various ideas that it’s why compromise is at the heart of so much of of our teaching about the Constitution is they they compromise and they compromised and they compromised. Some of them are compromises that we don’t love, that we look back on and say, how could they have made that compromise? And then you go, well, the priority was the Union. That was to create this nation rooted in we, the people, and then solve all the other problems afterwards.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right.
Jason Raia:
And, you know, but they did not come in there agreeing on a whole lot and yet they managed to get there. Now part of that, this is, to my mind, one of the greatest generational gatherings of individuals in a single place that has not been seen in the throughout much of human history, full stop.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right. And we’ve really lost the elegance that they brought to their deliberations and to their thinking. I feel that we have lost, even if you read letters from Civil War soldiers, back and forth to their families and the elegance with which they express themselves and the thoughtfulness that they had in those letters. Perhaps it’s the loss of the written communication that we have, you know, certainly lost in the modern era. But, you know, what you say reminds me of something, in terms of understanding legislative intent, there’s a very famous article written by an excellent political scientist, and it’s entitled “Congress Is a They, Not An It.” And the point of that title is that it’s very hard to determine exactly what Congressional intent is behind any particular statute that a court might be interpreting. And the same is true with the founders. I mean, they were a they, not an it. The Convention was a combination of not necessarily like minded individuals. And in fact, you can see, when Jefferson took over the presidency from John Adams, and the case of Marbury v. Madison came to be decided and was in the courts, you can see the conflict that existed between Jefferson and Adams, and if if my understanding of history is right, Adam’s got out of town, he wouldn’t even go to the inauguration for Thomas Jefferson.
Jason Raia:
Yepp.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And so, there was great conflict back then. So we don’t wanna overestimate the kinds of, polarized conflict that we see in, in the U.S. right now in terms of, the viewpoint of history because as I tell my students, there were some pretty, pretty nasty fights that were going on even in the early days of the republic. And then, you know, think about Aaron Burr, for example, and how hard Jefferson rode to ensure that or how hard Jefferson worked to ensure that he would be prosecuted for treason. So there’s lots of conflict. I just think the difference is now we are a vast nation so much more difficult to govern, an incredibly complex economy, incredibly complex technology that the farmers could never have anticipated. And that’s why, in some ways, I appreciate the value of originalism because it’s useful to know what the framers thought about things, but sometimes that understanding sort of runs out in the face of modern problems.
Jason Raia:
Right. And I’ve always looked at originalism as certainly one of the tools that you want the Supreme Court to have.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Absolutely.
Jason Raia:
You know, that you wanna start with what was the original intent of anything? Whether it’s a law–
Stefanie Lindquist:
A novel.
Jason Raia:
A novel. In order to figure out what decision they are going to come to. They need to understand the context in which a law came to be. But there may be more than that, just understanding that. And I always found it fascinating when you talk about originalism. We’re talking about Antonin Scalia, great associate, Chief Justice, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. What always fascinated me is his relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg —
Stefanie Lindquist:
Mhmm.
Jason Raia:
— who was anything but an originalist. And yet the two of them were best friends by all accounts. Now at the heart of that is opera, and so that makes sense.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Mhmm.
Jason Raia:
Because they found something they shared in common, and then they built on that as a foundation rooted in this shared love of opera to engage one another. And then they went on the road and spoke and and did things together even though I think there are those who, if they just read their opinions, would say, oh, these two people are famously at odds on everything.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes. He was a fascinating person, and he called himself a faint hearted originalist because he wasn’t sure it could work in all situations. Of course, he was right about that. But the idea of the two of them being friends, I call it kind of a strange bedfellow effect on the Supreme Court. I I, did a study a number of years ago about situations in which you see Thomas and Ginsburg dissenting together. What circumstances give rise to a case in which there is not an obvious division on the Supreme Court in terms of the justice’s ideology. It’s a fascinating situation when that arises. And we’ve seen it a couple places, in recent, in the recent term where Kagan and Thomas have, you know, have been in the decision or a dissent or concurrence together. And I’m always so pleased to see that. This reminds me, just because it means that the law has some meaning, has some structure.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely! I mean, the most recent one where you had Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, join the “Liberals,” and I’m making air quotes for those who can’t see that. Because I never like applying Liberal and Conservative to the Supreme Court because it, you know, I love those cases that make the strangest combinations, but, you know, here’s Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch and and Brett Kavanaugh, all everybody, but it seems Thomas and Alito, ruling in favor of Native American families and adoptive law. And so that always speaks to something that I think is always important to remember about the Supreme Court is they are individuals who are deciding this. They are not politicians. They are legal scholars. I’ve had the chance to get to know a little bit, Midge Rendell, who has served with Alito on the 3rd Circuit here. And she talks about how when you’re at the appellate level and we had her out talking to teachers, but when you’re at the appellate level or when you’re at the Supreme Court level, it’s about untying the knot. It is not. And it’s not necessarily about policy at all. It’s about there is this legal knot that has to be undone for the good of the country, for the good of the law. And that those are the cases that rise. I don’t need to speak about this. You’re the expert.
Stefanie Lindquist:
No. No. I agree with you. There’s a legal note that needs to be untied, and the beauty of the judicial decision making process is that it has to be untied. In a and be accompanied by an opinion explaining that result. And we take that for granted when we think about judicial opinions, but it is so meaningful that the opinion must write. That’s often the way that lawyers and judges describe it. And as you are reaching a particular result, for example, maybe you reached a conclusion at oral argument that party A should win over party B, but then as you write the opinion, you realize, my goodness, this was the wrong conclusion. Party B must win because in untying that knot, I see that the law doesn’t square or can’t square around the particular outcome that I thought was the right one. And so it’s really remarkable saying that we have such a record of the decision making process in the form of the opinions. Now that that happens around the world, but again, it’s something I think we take for granted. The other thing about the Supreme Court that I think people forget is that, of course, they have a completely discretionary, almost completely discretionary docket. They get to choose the cases that they want to hear. And even though they are able to do that, you might think that would lead to every decision being divided ideologically. Of course, they’re only gonna take the cases they think are important. If they’re important, then they must probably have some kind of policy or ideological agenda that the justices care about. And one would think that they would all fall out 5, 4, 6, 3 along ideological lines. But in fact, that’s not the case. The Supreme Court decides many of its cases unanimously. And I –
Jason Raia:
Many more than we know.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Absolutely –
Jason Raia:
Because that does not get covered.
Stefanie Lindquist:
It does not.
Jason Raia:
The ones that get covered tend to be either the big issues that are important for another reason. Or the 5-4 where somebody is, you know, wanting to grind an ax against the Supreme Court.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right. Well, when I think about it, you know, the Supreme Court is suffering right now from a decline in its public approval rating, as we all know. And I think getting this kind of information out into the public would be helpful to help, you know, people understand that the Supreme Court is not a purely political body. I don’t think it is. I mean, certainly once some cases get to the Supreme Court, they have dimensions, policy dimensions, within them. That are, that are susceptible to the justices sort of ideological predispositions, but law is itself. The product of a policy making, and the justices because they take these cases on a discretionary docket are gonna run into cases that do have ideological dimensions to them. But that is not the entire docket of the Supreme Court. And, it’s not that the work product is not 100% ideological. So I think that’s important for citizens to understand.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely. So you wrote if I got this correct, you wrote a law review piece over a decade ago now, called “Congress, the Supreme Court, and Judicial Review.”
Stefanie Lindquist:
Mhmm.
Jason Raia:
And so I’m curious if that’s, talk us through that relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court and what to play. You mentioned Marbury v. Madison and that sort of establishes the precedent that the Supreme Court can review everything and make the final and be the final arbiter. Much to Thomas Jefferson’s, you know, chagrin, because even though he won the case, he understood that he had lost the, you know, the battle. But it so, so because that’s been a big complaint in modern lawmaking is that so much of it is left to the executive department to fill in the gaps.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And the Judiciary.
Jason Raia:
And the Judiciary.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And in part, let me just step back and a lot of my research has focused on Judicial activism and restraint. Those terms are that terminology activism and restraint is often viewed as a kind of political epithet without a lot of content, but what I tried to do in articles and books is to actually measure what is activism and what is restraint in terms of judicial behaviors. And one of the key elements, of course, to conversations about activism and restraint is the power of judicial review. And that’s, of course, the power whereby the justices and all judges in the federal system can render a decision that strikes down a piece of Congressional legislation because it’s inconsistent with the Constitution. And as you mentioned, that’s a power that was confirmed in Marbury v. Madison. I would say it was not established in Marbury v. Madison as it actually pre-existed.
Jason Raia:
Yes. You’re absolutely right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
But, most people don’t think of it that way, but that’s true. So that’s an incredibly important power that our judiciary exercises. And it exercises it now more or less in a kind of vacuum, a power vacuum. And by that, I mean, that, traditionally, or typically one thing. So the Supreme Court can render a decision interpreting the Constitution and indeed striking down a piece of Congressional translation, but there’s recourse as a check, a political power that can balance the Supreme Court in that exercise of judicial review. Because Congress can propose a Constitutional Amendment or the states can call a Constitutional Convention to override the Supreme Court’s decision. That has happened a couple times in U.S. history, but we haven’t had a Constitutional Amendment since 1992.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
An amendment that I’m sure you’ve, you know, or where was an Amendment that was resurrected by a University of Texas undergraduate student in a paper that he wrote because it was one of the first twelve Amendments that Madison had proposed. But it was one of, I think, two that were not actually ratified and had to do with Congressional pay raises.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
So we’ve gone more than 30 years without a Constitutional Amendment. And some, scholars observers think that the Constitution has become completely ossified in that respect, that Constitutional Amendments are now a thing of the past, and that’s a great disappointment to those of us who believe that if you don’t have the power to amend the Constitution through the Article 5 procedures, then that’s simply further empowers the Justices.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely. And if I remember correctly and say that I’m doing this purely from memory, George Washington wrote a really wonderful letter. I think it was to Bushrod, Washington. And he specifically says the reason I am supporting this Constitution is because it can be amended, you know, that that was central for him because he recognized that there’s no way we can get everything right for all time. But if we’ve created a government that can change itself in the future, as needed, not to make it easy, not to make it particularly impossible, but that there is that mechanism there. And yet, I wonder, have we reached a point where that mechanism really for, you know, for all practical purposes in a nation of nearly 350 million maybe doesn’t exist anymore.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s a great disappointment. And some people say that the U.S. institution is the most difficult Constitution to amend in the world. I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s certainly one of the most difficult. And so the fact that it is the the these, threshold to amend the Constitution, the vote in Congress, and in the state legislatures is so high, and because of the polarization that we’re facing in the U.S. today, it it it is very worrisome that we can’t amend because the Amendment process is a safety valve. To ensure that the Constitution is not so you know, it’s, I think it was, Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But it becomes a suicide pact in some sense if you can’t amend it to allow for, new generations to to place their imprint on on the process. And in fact, this will interest you, I think. The Center that I’m heading at ASU where we propose and are seeking funding, and we just got some significant funding to host a Constitutional Convention at ASU. It’s gonna be called a Convention of States. So it’s modeled after the, sort of, second way that the Constitution can be amended in Article 5 where the states call a convention. And we’re gonna get two students from each state, law students, or senior undergraduate students, who are divergent ideologically if we can figure that out and bring them to ASU and hold a Constitutional Convention. The committees will be ceded by five Amendments that the National Constitution Center has proposed, through a process of scholars coming together to think about what would be good government amendments that everyone could agree on. And so we’re, we have those five Amendments in hand. We’re gonna see the convention with those amendments. But also allow the students to think through what they think the constitution needs now in terms of Amendments. Because young people are so different than we are. They’re so innovative. They’re so thoughtful, and they deserve the opportunity to think about what the Constitution would be and what changes need to be made to the Constitution to make it suitable for their generation. So I’m very excited about this because I think it could be a model for the nation, to show how divergent, politically actors with divergent ideologies can come together and have reasonable conversations about Constitutional Amendments. And that I hope will spur dialogue and conversation among actual policy makers. Gee, if the students can do it, maybe we need to start thinking about it.
Jason Raia:
Right. And one of the things that we get, fairly regularly, when we talk about our programs here particularly our student programs, is why aren’t you doing this for Congress? But I do wonder is there something more we ought to be doing as far as Constitutional training for legislators who are making all of these incredibly important decisions, whether it’s at the state level or at the federal level, that we know for the last 40 years, at least, we have not been teaching the Constitution very well. And yet here are these people who are making all these decisions. To my knowledge, they’re not getting a real crash course from someone like you or the National Constitution Center on what these documents mean, what their history is, how do we do that?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Oh my gosh. I think that this is incredibly important. I just recently in exactly this vein, I recently proposed at ASU something I’ve called a Certificate in Constitutional Design. Now it’s not for legislators, although certainly we could push the content out to legislators, but the idea is to create a series of courses with a capstone sort of internship, which would help students understand the Constitutional framework within which legislation is proposed and can operate. So for example, let’s say you’re on Capitol Hill and you’re working for a congressman and a congresswoman and you have before you a piece of legislation that they wanna enact to address some nationwide problem. Well, you have to think about what source of power does Congress have to actually enact this legislation?
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And, are you, if you write the legislation in particular ways, to be struck down by the Supreme Court? Is it a valid exercise of, say, power under the commerce clause, etc.? And I do think that that knowledge is critical for legislators, both on Capitol Hill, but the same can be said for state Constitutions, and legislators operating within state legislatures. And so I am thinking exactly the same way you are. We need a training program so that legislators, policy makers, members of the executive branch can understand, hey, writing an executive order is not something I can just whip out and give to the President to sign. There are limitations on what the Executive Branch can do constitutionally, and course, there are good lawyers at the White House and there are great lawyers on Capitol Hill that can help with this, but situating legislators who may not be lawyers within, you know, sort of helping them situate their work within the Constitutional framework, I think, is incredibly important and love to see more of that. Now the University of Georgia, I know this takes place at other universities I’ve worked at, there are public policy centers, institutes that actually train state legislators. I don’t know if there’s anything similar to that, in Congress. In the Judiciary, the Federal Judicial Center has courses for new judges.
Jason Raia:
Okay. Right!
Stefanie Lindquist:
So why not?
Jason Raia:
And why wouldn’t you?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes.
Jason Raia:
Because even a well trained lawyer being a judge is different. And, but I can imagine that something like this would help prevent the expectation that everything’s gonna wind up in court anyway, which seems to be where we are, that no matter what law is passed by Congress, someone is already writing their brief to sue.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes. Looking for their plaintiff.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
To bring a test case. To get that thing struck down. Absolutely. And that’s probably been true for quite a long time, but, but the lack of bipartisan support for legislation means that that is just you know, that’s that that approach has become even more profoundly important for the losing, so the losing side on a piece of legislation. It’s interesting in other democracies, and I’m teaching a course in comparative Constitutional law, this fall to law students. And in other democracies, of course, the Supreme Court doesn’t, the Supreme Court can actually weigh in immediately after a piece of legislation is adopted, through their power of abstract review. And in the U.S., that doesn’t happen. A real case has to arise. A real plaintiff has to have standing to sue –
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
– has to have a personal injury associated with their complaint and it has to be something that can be remedied by a court. Whereas in many other democracies, the Constitutional courts, the Constitutional Supreme courts, and those democracies, can weigh in immediately and evaluate the Constitution, Constitutionality of a piece of legislation. I’m not saying that’s the best approach, but that is an alternative approach. It seems to work very well in other places. So the issue is immediately resolved. If there is a, you know, if there’s a question about the Constitutionality we don’t have to wait for the piece of legislation to be implemented and then ultimately challenged after years have gone by. Again, There’s pros and cons to that approach, but that’s not the approach we take in the U.S.
Jason Raia:
Right. Absolutely. And so talk to us about judicial activism. You’ve written on it. It is certainly that we’re probably at an ebb at the moment where we’re not hearing about it all the time, but it comes and goes. It’s this idea. We also hear about legislating from the bench. But what’s the issue? What’s the con, the concern? And what’s the reality? Because I never feel like I know whether what someone is saying is actually in fact true, or is it just a polemical argument?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes. And it’s a convenient polemical argument when the Supreme Court renders a decision that, you know, that you disagree with. You can say, well, that’s an activist decision, but there actually is content to those phrases as I argued in a book I wrote about a decade ago. And the content is that the court is an unelected body. So we always have to understand that in the context of our democracy, we are dealing with an incredibly powerful institution that can second guess the decision making and the outputs of the democratic process. So that means that the process of striking down legislation, for example, must be very carefully undertaken because it is a short circuiting of democracy. And, of course, we understand that to protect minority rights the Supreme Court needs to be what we call countermajoritarian. And often is if it strikes down legislation in furtherance of the protection of minority rights. But the way I characterized activism in the book is you can think about a series of different specific actions the Supreme Court can take that are institutionally activist, for example, striking down a piece of federal or state legislation, overturning pre-existing precedent. Right? That looks more like policy making than it looks like a decision that’s constrained by law, simply because the court decided something previously different in a different way, and now they’re changing their mind, invalidating administrative agency action can be viewed as counter majoritarian to the extent that administrative agencies also unelected, but controlled by an elected by by an elected official in the in the presidency, in the President. So there’s certain activities that look more activist because they are, countering either they’re they they look like policy making because you’re rendering a new decision for example, under the Constitution that reverses a pre-existing precedent, or they’re actually short circuiting the democratic process. And that action itself is more activist than if they took an action upholding a piece of Congressional legislation, for example. So there’s that. But the way I thought about it is, okay, that happens and has happened throughout history. That is not in and of itself a bad thing. Congress sometimes passes unconstitutional legislation. Sometimes, a decision like Plessy v. Ferguson needs to be over overturned by a case like Brown v. Board of Education. So what I look to then is do the justices vote to support these more activist actions? Do they do so in a way that is ideologically predictable? So for example, does Justice Thomas vote to strike down Congressional legislation or state legislation is unconstitutional only when he disagrees with that piece of legislation? In other words, only when he’s doing so to further a conservative outcome? Does Justice Brennan, the liberal, vote to strike Congressional legislation or overturn precedent only when it furthers his ideological interests? And so there’s both an institutional dimension to my measure of activism and institutional dimension and an ideological one. And that’s what I think distinguishes my study from other studies of activism where a justice does and my favorite justice in this that came out of the book was Justice Byron White. Byron White, the SC voted to strike down legislation sometimes, much less than his colleagues, but he did it every once in a while. When he did it, it was unpredictable ideologically. He would strike down liberal legislation. He would strike on conservative legislation. There was no pattern to his activities. Whereas William O. Douglas, the most liberal justice the Supreme Court probably has ever seen, always almost always acted when he acted in an activist fashion, when he voted to strike legislation that overturned precedent, he did it to advance a liberal result almost every single time. And so that looks more activist to me –
Jason Raia:
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Stefanie Lindquist:
– than the simple act of striking legislation. And that’s where I think the book is distinguished from other studies. Because I was able to create a kind of a measure of activism across the justices in the 20th Century, that evaluated both their actions to, you know, validate legislation, etc., but how they did it in terms of the ideological drivers of those decisions, was important too. So I am that’s what I’m and I’m proud of that because I think that’s a unique contribution.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely. And it it totally makes sense that, you know, judging, the activism of of a particular justice by the, the, a greater body of their work as opposed to an individual–
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right.
Jason Raia:
–decision because, you know, an individual decision can look like one thing, but when you zoom out, and look at 30 decisions, maybe that doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t apply.
Stefanie Lindquist:
I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I’m basically a statistician at heart. I’m going to have a PhD in political science. And I studied judicial voting behavior, and I looked at the votes of many, many votes across many cases. Because it’s the patterns, not the anecdotal individual cases that are, you know, Dobbs, for example.
Jason Raia:
Sure.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Sure. Super interesting. You know, we need to study extensively and all that. But it’s what the justices or other judges and other courts do in many cases that’s most significant to me and most interesting. And so that’s what I did in the book is look at all the across all these numerous different categories of potentially activist, actions, decisions, and then evaluate them in terms of how consistent they were ideologically.
Jason Raia:
So I think it’s great work. I think it’s important. But, again, this moment now where they’re all at least that phrase isn’t being used. Certainly–
Stefanie Lindquist:
It is not. It was Edwin, it was Edwin Meese, and it was really the Reagan Administration where it came, I think, to be most commonly used. It’s been used a little bit in the most recent term. There was Dobb’s decision, West Virginia v. EPA cases like that, where it’s always 6-3.
Jason Raia:
Yes.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And so that’s, you know, I hate to see that. Love it if we could just have, in this particular court, even 5-4 is better than 6-3 because that’s the such the obvious division–
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
–among the conservatives and the liberals. So it is used a little bit, but I still think it’s a relevant thing to study, and I’m continuing in my evaluation of the court’s activism writing a paper on that right now.
Jason Raia:
That’s I’ll be I’ll be curious to see what you conclude. So, I think that this idea of judicial activism connects to what, I guess, I guess is gonna be my near final question which is, trust in government institutions. It seems that we are at an incredible low point on trusting the government. And that’s on both sides that —
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes.
Jason Raia:
— you know, it seems like no one trusts government, the idea of government that, well, reasons you have small limited government folks, but that’s not that used to be sort of exclusively on the right, it no longer is. You have a big government that used to be exclusively on the left. It no longer is. But nobody seems to be happy either with the job government institutions are doing. So, and that seems to be at the core of a lot of our disagreement right now, it’s between those who think government is the solution and those who think that government just needs to stay out of it. But the one thing they might all agree on is that the government’s gonna do a terrible job anyway.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yeah. It’s amazing to me. This is obviously a very prevalent perception, by, as you say, people on both the right and the left. And my reaction when people complain to me about the government. Of course, I’ve worked in the government. I worked for a federal judge. I worked for the Federal Judicial Center. I’ve worked for State institutions, University of Georgia, University of Texas, and they’re obviously, you know, governmental institutions too. And I always say, okay. Yes, the government’s not perfect. But neither is, neither is the private sector, CEG Enron for example. You wanna look at a corporation that was purported to be the most extraordinary and exceptional instin– you know, a private corporation in the world, and they’ve imploded. So, private entities are not perfect either, but my most common reaction to this is I say, have you been to a third world country? And I know you’re not supposed to use that terminology anymore. I think there’s different ways to talk about less developed countries, but go to a place like, Egypt, for example, and the infrastructure’s crumbling. The roads are abysmal. The traffic is terrible. You have to pay a bribe to get anything you need or want, driver’s license, or what have you. This is true in so many, unfortunately, in so many countries around the world, rampant corruption. And we just aren’t used to that. We don’t pay bribes in the United States. I mean, there’s an occasional case, you know, ads, scams, and things like that where you find money in people’s refrigerators and the legislators get arrested. But for the most part, we run a pretty clean ship here. Right. You know? And it’s only from the comparison only by way of comparison that one can understand what we’ve been able to achieve. Now having said that, we are we we we we have developed such a complex government and in reaction, of course, to a very complex economy. But it is I’m I am I am worried that it is excessively complex. Regulations are excessively complex. My brother and sister-in-law right now are in Prague. And they’re there. They tell me how freeing it feels over there because there’s not a warning label on everything. And, you know, lawyers have a lot to do with this, by the way.
Jason Raia:
Yes they do.
Stefanie Lindquist:
But we are an extra, we are an extremely regulated society. And, and so I understand the frustrations with that. And I do Francis Fukuyama has written about this very, very interesting article in Foreign Affairs Magazine about, I think it was about 7 or 8 years ago, where he analyzed the National Forest Service and how the National Forest Service was, you know, born with a very simple objective, and that was to protect our forest from forest natural forest from forest fires, but then it’s just all this additional obligation and and, duties were imposed upon the National Forest Service such that it’s become this sort of cumbersome, administrative agency that’s just not very effective anymore. And I think that’s what or not effective, but it’s core functions anyway. And I think that’s what, what people see. And it is very concerning to me. You know, the empires rise and fall, usually around a 250 year cycle. Really interesting theorist, a guy named Sir John Glubb. He was a British military officer, writing in the thirties. I think he was writing about how he looked at the trajectory of most empires that had pre-existed, you know, the British empire. He concluded that about 250 years is as long as they can last effectively before they start to corrode from inside. And once they start to corrode from inside within fighting, it’s become very wealthy, of course. The British empire became very wealthy, the Spanish empire, the Portuguese, very wealthy, and then you’re fighting over, you’re no longer sort of building institutions and building an economy. You’re fighting over identity. And that’s what we’re fighting over today. Our battles are about identity, about tribalism instead of about fundamentals, how we’re gonna build our country to work.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Right? And, and so I worry. You know, we’re coming up on 250 years.
Jason Raia:
We are.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Our internal conflicts invite, sort of, interference by foreign powers. That’s the pattern that is typical of Empires as they rise in the fall. As at the end of their, at the end of their trajectory as the curve of their power is reduced, the internal conflicts open the door for, you know, for foreign interference and foreign powers to have, an, you know, undue effect on what happens in that particular empire. And that’s worrisome to me. We already see in the Chinese, the Russians, etc., they do come in. They want to influence our politics. They want to exacerbate conflict in the U.S. and, and we’re just letting it happen.
Jason Raia:
Well, and we’re so disunited that we don’t, we can’t even agree if any of them are actually an enemy.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right.
Jason Raia:
Whether, you know, whether we need to worry about Russia or China. And that internal conflict married to this lack of an external enemy, thing that held us together post World War II, is Cold War.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Absolutely.
Jason Raia:
You know, it is knowing that that or at least the thinking we know, knowing that the Soviet Union is this implacable foe that, you know, we have to be concerned about. And of course, they’re both nuclear armed nations.
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right.
Jason Raia:
And therefore, we could disagree about things but it was the water’s edge. It was that old idea that once we reach the water’s edge, we are united, you know, in how we face the world. And that’s gone.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yeah. I mean, you know, I I what we’re seeing is the consequences of democracy being a messy business.
Jason Raia:
Yes.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And it is a messy business, and it’s and it’s slow to respond to the kind of global crises that we see today, the immigration, crisis that is global in nature.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
The financial crisis that rocked the world so substantially, and we’re still feeling some of the after effects of. These massive problems. I think the democracies actually did quite well, in the face of the financial crisis. But nevertheless, if you are, if you’re looking at a multidimensional series of major global problems and issues. And you think, gee, do I really wanna wait around for the
House and the Senate to try to come together to figure out what to do about this, or would it just be better to have a dictator? Wouldn’t it–
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
– be so much easier?
Jason Raia:
We see this in polling fairly regularly. And particularly as you go down the generations from older generations to younger generations, that you see this inverse of the younger the generation, the more likely they are to support the idea of a strong man, a dictator, some, you know, this idea that, oh, well, they can make the right decision, whether it’s on environment, on the environment and environmental policy or, on immigration or the what seem the nuance that seems to be lost there is the idea that yes but they can just as quickly make a decision that you don’t like.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And they’re likely to.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Look, I mean, there, you know, the idea of a benevolent dictator my brother was telling me about King Wenceslaus and and and and Czechoslovakia. He was apparently quite a benevolent king. I I I assume, but they’re very few and far between.
Jason Raia:
Right.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And, you know, Lord Acton was right. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely just cannot trust a dictating to do the right thing. And in fact, the whole point of democracy, and it just takes my breath away when I see the polls that you’re referring to. The whole point of democracy is that we and individually, only we as individuals understand what’s in our best self in our best self interest. And the only way to advance that to the extent, you know, that we can within government is through democracy where we convince others our particular point of view is the valid one and the right one, and we have to form coalitions. We have to form and compromise around solutions to the policy problems that we see. And that is that kind of self actualization, per you know, popular sovereignty call it what it is, is the only way to govern a society, period. And I hate to be so adamant about it, but I am. I mean, the and I tell my students, look, you might think it’s great that someone else is gonna make a decision for you, and it’ll be quick and fast and easy, but, boy, the consequences are profound.
Jason Raia:
Yes.
Stefanie Lindquist:
And you do not wanna go down that path. We do not wanna go down paths. I am an adamant defender of democracy. And, you know, you can debate whether pure majoritarianism is the right thing. What kind of checks and balances do we need? How do we need to divide governmental power effectively? Where should, you know, should it be Congress that’s the most powerful or the president? Okay. We can have these debates. Should we change how we amend the Constitution, but we cannot, I think, ever open the door to believing that history has told us. It’s not a good path to take to start thinking that dictatorship is the best solution to our current problems.
Jason Raia:
This is in some ways at the, you know, the core of, of what we’ve been doing for almost 75 years.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Congratulations on that by the way.
Jason Raia:
Thank you we’re excited to celebrate.
Stefanie Lindquist:
You should be.
Jason Raia:
In 2024, our 75th anniversary, but It’s, you know, it’s about helping each rising generation understand, where they come from or our history as a nation, and our that the system of government, and and, that we have been bequeathed. And the liberty that we have–
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s right. I should have mentioned that. I mean, democracy is the best way to protect our liberties. So I’m sorry to interrupt you –
Jason Raia:
No no –
Stefanie Lindquist:
– but I just wanted to emphasize that point.
Jason Raia:
–but every generation has to defend it. Every generation has to take responsibility for passing it along. Otherwise, it is fleeting. And the consequences, of losing our liberty, are quite frankly unimaginable. I think that those who think that, oh, things would be better if, forget that whatever human frailties affect our government institutions that leave us frustrated, and all of us are frustrated with government at some point.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Of course.
Jason Raia:
The fact of the matter is that frustration amplified by a single ruling party the way you have in China, or a single dictator the way you have in Putin, shows that our frustrations are unimaginable in those circumstances.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Oh, I couldn’t agree more, you know, just to sort of harken back to Anton and Scalia. We think about the liberties that are protected in our government through the Bill of Bights. We often think of the first 10 Amendments, but he was very adamant that the separation of powers must also be very specifically expressed as a mechanism for protecting democracy or not democracy. I’m sorry. Liberty. And that is so true. The division of the executive judicial and legislative powers across three institutions. So it was a genius move by the framers and it is very much and perhaps the most fundamental protection we have for our individual liberties.
Jason Raia:
Absolutely. It’s been a delight chatting with you. We always end with the quiz.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Okay.
Jason Raia:
It’s fairly easy. No studying required. So we’ll just run through a few of these questions. Excluding Washington and Lincoln, who’s your favorite president?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Jason Raia:
I love it. Yes. What one thing would you want every American to learn more about?
Stefanie Lindquist:
That’s an excellent question. I think I would love to have them learn more about the Constitutional conflicts that have taken place across our history. For example, when Truman tried to seize the steel mills, right, during the Korean War. Wow. What an amazing event that was that he wrote an executive order to seize private property and it gave rise to an incredibly important Supreme Court case called Youngstown. But, to learn more about how those conflicts were resolved, because I think it’s that wind that provides us with a window to understand how the constitution should operate today.
Jason Raia:
Oh, that’s brilliant. I love it. If you’d not chosen a career in the law, what do you think you would be doing now?
Stefanie Lindquist:
I have no question. I’d be a journalist.
Jason Raia:
I love it. Yeah. What pet peeve annoys you the most?
Stefanie Lindquist:
Split infinitives.
Jason Raia:
Oh, I love it. So you’re not a fan of Star Trek, to boldly go.
Stefanie Lindquist:
I know that most, you know, grammar gramaticians, whatever, experts in grammar, think that a split infinitive every once in a while is okay, but I’m still not a huge fan.
Jason Raia:
I love it. I love it. My grammatical ones I’ve got just lists and lists of grammatical pet peeves.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Its’ bothers me. Sometimes I see it in my students writing too, and that makes my head explode
Jason Raia:
I just mourned the loss of the Oxford comma in regular.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Me too. Me too.
Jason Raia:
Okay. Favorite movie.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Apocalypse Now.
Jason Raia:
Oh, okay.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes.
Jason Raia:
What’s one thing about you that would surprise most people?
Stefanie Lindquist:
I jumped out of an airplane by myself and didn’t pull my parachute.
Jason Raia:
Oh.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Yes.
Jason Raia:
Well how does that happen?
Stefanie Lindquist:
That happens when you jump out with two marines who can swoop down and pull it for you. So I’m here today. Thanks to them.
Jason Raia:
Well, there’s a mark in the Marines column.
Stefanie Lindquiest:
Oh, yes.
Jason Raia:
Let’s see. What one lesson from your life would you share with young people?
Stefanie Lindquist:
So I’m just a kid from Pennsylvania from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Small steel town, Southeastern, Pennsylvania. My parents are school teachers, wonderful, wonderful parents, but my dad, my biological dad, died when I was five. So that disrupted our lives considerably. I, I, I often thought of myself through life as just a kid from Phoenixville. Right? And by that, I mean, I allowed my own conception of the scope that I or the impact I could have in the world to be somewhat limited by where I was from. I wasn’t born to a bunch of Harvard educated people. I wasn’t, you know, I went to sign it in the Temple. Who am I? And so my lesson to young people would be, don’t underestimate yourself. You know, there’s just I, I’m so now that I’m 60, I just turned 60 yesterday, looking over the 6 years of my life. Certainly, the most profound impact I’ve had has been on my students, but I wish I’d been just a little bit more bolder. And I’ve been pretty darn bold. But just a little more bold, please.
Jason Raia:
Well, that’s a great lesson and happy birthday.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Well, thank you so much.
Jason Raia:
Let’s see. If you can meet just one historic person, who would it be?
Stefanie Lindquist:
You have to say Abraham Lincoln. I mean, George Washington, for sure, but you have to say Abraham Lincoln. I mean, just an oh, my, his writings make me cry.
Jason Raia:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stefanie Lindquist:
The beauty of them.
Jason Raia:
And our final question, bourbon or scotch
Stefanie Lindquist:
Bourbon.
Jason Raia:
Love it.
Stefanie Lindquist:
No question about it.
Jason Raia:
Stephanie Lindquist. Thank you so much.
Stefanie Lindquist:
Thank you, Jason. It’s been a pleasure. So much fun. Really appreciate it.
Jason Raia:
We definitely have to do this again. I also wanna thank our producers, Lara Kennedy and Sarah Rasmussen, a special shout out to friend of the pod, Bill Franz for his art design. Special thanks to longtime Freedoms Foundation historic interpreter, Bob Gleason, for his contributions to the intro. And most of all, I wanna thank you, our listeners. Please subscribe, follow, rate, and review George Washington Slept Here. Wherever you listen to podcasts and tell your friends If you wanna learn more about Freedoms Foundation and how you can support us, you can go to www.freedomsfoundation.org and follow us on social media at Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, or you can email us at gwshpodcast@gmail.com with your comments, questions, and suggestions. Thanks. Talk to you soon.
