Judge Luttig [00:00:00] There is nothing more fundamental to our government and to our democracy than the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. If one attempts to unconstitutionally remain in power, there is no clearer insurrection against the Constitution of the United States.

 

Alex Lovit [00:00:30] Welcome to The Context, a podcast about the past, present, and future of democracy from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. I’m your host, Alex Lovit. My guest today is Judge J. Michael Luttig. Luttig served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. In the structure of the federal court system, this means he was one of the highest-ranking judges in the country outside of the Supreme Court. Today, he’s a board member of the nonprofit Society for the Rule of Law and co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on American Democracy. And he’s also a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation. As you’re about to hear, Luttig played a central role in advising Vice President Mike Pence about the electoral college vote count on January 6, 2021. Pence cited Luttig’s counsel as a reason he did not attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. And there’s a reason Pence sought Luttig’s advice. As a federal judge, Luttig had established a reputation as one of the nation’s deepest and most careful legal thinkers—and also as a consistent conservative. For Pence, a conservative vice president receiving conflicting advice about what he should do on January 6th, Luttig was a voice he could trust. Democracy-loving Americans, regardless of their partisan preferences or ideological beliefs, should be thankful that Pence followed that advice. But as Luttig powerfully argues, the United States is experiencing an ongoing crisis of democracy. January 6th is not yet in the rear-view mirror. How could it be, when this year’s presidential election is shaping up to be a rematch of the same two candidates, with mostly the same coalitions of supporters, and fighting over mostly the same issues? The most important difference between Trump versus Biden 2020 and Trump versus Biden 2024 is that this time, one of the candidates has a demonstrated history of attempting to overturn a democratic election. This is why Luttig has argued that Trump should be excluded from the ballot—and that this should be seen as a way to safeguard democracy rather than to undermine it. The Supreme Court is currently considering a case about exactly this issue. Trump v. Anderson is a case about whether Colorado can exclude Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. The 14th amendment was ratified in 1868, in the aftermath of the civil war, and was primarily aimed at guaranteeing citizenship rights for Black Americans, including access to due process and equal protection of law. During the century and a half since it went into effect, these concepts have become essential principles of constitutional law, and important legal rights for all Americans. But the framers of the 14th amendment were also worried that confederate supporters who had already proven themselves disloyal to the country might attempt to claim elected office, and in section 3 of the amendment, they wrote, “no person shall hold any office under the United States, who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” The Colorado Supreme Court and Judge Luttig argue that this describes Trump, and his actions on January 6th. The case is likely to be decided on somewhat technical grounds, on the question of whether or not this section of the Constitution is self-executing—that is, whether that exclusion takes effect immediately, or requires some additional action by Congress. Luttig has the credibility as a constitutional scholar to argue that Section 3 should apply to Trump. And he also has the moral clarity to point out that accepting election results is the single most important principle of democratic governance. Luttig is a conservative not only in jurisprudence, but also in temperament. He’s careful with his words, and not given to hyperbole. When a jurist this accomplished and cautious is ringing the alarm bell about American democracy, well, it’s time to follow Mike Pence’s example and listen to Judge Luttig. 

 

Judge Luttig, welcome to The Context. 

 

Judge Luttig [00:04:17] Thank you, Alex. It’s a pleasure to be here with you and the Kettering Foundation. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:04:23] January 6th, 2021, was a notable moment in history, and many Americans can recall how they first heard about the assault on the Capitol and where they were when they first saw the images of the violence of that day. But your January 6th story really begins on January 5th, when you were literally called upon to defend the constitutional principle of the orderly transfer of power. Could you tell the story of how you became involved in advising about the proper procedures for counting electoral votes.

 

Judge Luttig [00:04:49] On the evening of January 4th, I believe it was, I got a call from one of my best friends in life, Richard Cullen, who happened to be, at that time, Vice President Pence’s outside counsel. My wife and I were in our home in Vail, Colorado. We were, you know, having dinner. And Richard and I had spoken multiple times a day for the previous year and a half, so the call itself was nothing notable. And he just said, judge, do you know John Eastman? And I said, yes, I do. John was a clerk of mine 20-25 years ago. He’s a constitutional scholar, he’s an academic in the sense that he’s a professor of constitutional law, and a good man. Well, why do you ask? And Richard said this afternoon that John Eastman was in the Oval Office, I believe it was that afternoon, and he was telling the president, President Trump and the vice president, Vice President Pence, that the Vice President could overturn the election on January 6th when he was presiding over the joint session of Congress. So, I said to Richard, well, Richard, you can tell the Vice President that I said he has no such power under the Constitution and laws of the United States at all. And Richard said, well, he knows that. And I said, well, okay, there’s nothing else that I can do, but I’d be glad to help the Vice President in any way that I could if there were an opportunity to do so. And we basically hung up at that point, and my wife of 40 plus years had been listening to my side of the conversation and heard essentially what Richard said—the president must be considering overturning the election on January 6th. He had already been demanding that the vice president do so for several days, as my recollection. And then I said to my wife, and I guess John is advising both men that the vice president has that authority on January 6th. And then my wife said something like, oh my god, Mike, do you know what this would mean for America? Do you understand what this would mean for the country? And I said, yes, I do. And she said, you’ve got to stop this. You cannot let this happen. And I said, oh, there’s just nothing at all that I could ever do. I mean, this is literally between the president of the United States and his vice president. And for the rest of the evening, she was pleading with me to do something to stop this. And I was pleading to her, if you will, that I would do anything, but there was simply nothing at all that I could do. And that’s how we went to bed that night, pleading with each other, as it were, about what we knew was likely to occur on the morning of January 6th. So, I get up early in the mornings, usually before 5:00, and I did that day, January 5th, 2021, and I was having breakfast and having my coffee and Richard called again, and he said, look, we have to get your voice out across the country very quickly. And I didn’t have any earthly idea how I could get my voice out across the country. So, you know, I’m retired. I’m out on the holidays in our home in Colorado. I don’t have any platform of any kind at all. I haven’t even been in Washington for almost 20 years. I don’t even have a fax machine or a box of stationery. And most importantly, Richard, there’s not a person in the world who cares what I have to say about this, nor should they. And Richard said, Judge, I’ll call you back in five minutes. So he called back in five minutes. He said, have you thought of anything yet? And I said, not really. I opened a Twitter account just several weeks ago, but I don’t know how to tweet. And Richard said, perfect. You must figure it out and you must tweet quickly. So, during that 15 or 20 minutes there, I had typed out on my iPhone what I would say if I could figure out a way to say it. And I went down to my office and began the process of trying to figure out how to tweet. So, I figured out how to do it and then proofread as carefully as I could, and I pushed the button that says tweet. And I had no earthly idea that any person anywhere would ever read that tweet. That’s the short story of the tweet on January 5th, 2021. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:10:27] So you’re talking there about the couple of days in early January, before January 6th, when you’re concerned about potential machinations within the legal procedures for certifying votes that Pence or maybe other politicians might have blocked Joe Biden from being certified as the winner of the 2020 election, illegally, in your view. And you were saying, you know, you weren’t sure anyone was paying attention, but the Vice President of the United States was paying attention, and he performed his constitutional duty. But then the next day, on January 6th, a riot breaks out at the Capitol and for a few hours, the question isn’t whether politicians are going to follow the law, but whether violence is going to prevent them from doing so. What were you thinking as you watched the events of January 6th? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:11:07] Well, first, let me go back to the days and even a couple of weeks before January 6th. The whole world was riveted on the question of whether the former president would leave the White House voluntarily and that there would be a peaceful transfer of power. And he was saying that he would not. And for the couple of weeks before January 6th, and during those several weeks, my wife kept saying to me, he’s not going to leave the White House. And I said, it’s just not an issue. There’s not a question. I mean, you know, if you lose the election and you’re the incumbent president, then you had to surrender your office and its powers to your successor. I mean, it’s just not even possible that he will not leave the White House. But there came a time, certainly within a week of January 6th, where because of what all that was being said by the president and everyone else, frankly, I said to my wife, I’m beginning to think you’re right. I’m beginning to be very deeply worried that he will not leave. So, from that point on, that was my—and thus when I got the calls from Richard Cullen, that was my mindset. That’s what led me to understand in the moment that when I got the call, the profound gravity of the moment, before January 6th occurred, I believed that it would be one of the most, if not the most, significant moment in all of American history. So, on the morning of January 6th, I was working and I got two emails in rapid succession from two of my former law clerks. Both of them to the effect of the vice president is on his way to the Capitol from the White House, he’s just directed that his letter to the nation or to the Congress or whomever be released while he’s in transit and he cites to your advice in saying to the country that he’s not going to overturn the election in the next hour or so, when he took to the dais to preside over the joint session. So around then, my wife called me over to have some lunch and she said, oh my God, the Capitol of the United States is under attack. And I was just stunned. Stunned is the only word that comes to mind. And she said they’ve broken into the Capitol, there’s smoke, and they’ve erected gallows on the grounds, and they’re chanting to hang Mike Pence. And then she, you know, all but broke down and she said, and they’re saying that the vice president relied upon your counsel in refusing to overturn the election. And she was very emotional and just said, we have to have 24/7 security immediately for us, the two of us, and also for the children. And we turned it on, and I watched it for about ten minutes. And of course, remember, no one had any idea what was going on or who or why. All that anyone knew is that thousands of people were breaking into the United States Capitol and disrupting the vote count for the presidency of the United States. And after about ten minutes, if that, I just got up and said to my wife, I can’t watch this anymore. This is disgusting and sickening, and I just can’t bear to watch it. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:15:13] So you’ve served as a federal judge at a very high level and obviously command a lot of respect from your peers in the judicial community. But by 2021, when the events we’re talking about are playing out, you’d been working in private industry and out of public office for 15 years. And I know you don’t comment about your political views, but on jurisprudence at least you’re a conservative, so maybe you’re not fully on board with Joe Biden’s policy agenda. And those are a couple of reasons that it would have been easy for you to just keep quiet about these efforts to subvert the 2020 election, instead of speaking out. But obviously, you felt it was important to speak out both before January 6th, as we’ve just discussed, and afterwards, you testified to the House Select Committee. Why has it been so important to you to state your beliefs and be public about this, when it would have been so much easier just to be silent? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:15:57] I believed, beginning on January 6th and to this day, that I had an obligation and a responsibility to the country, to walk the country through every single step of it. I felt that obligation for the overarching reason that I had given that advice to the Vice President. But I was also aware, as was the country, that one of my former law clerks, John Eastman, was the architect of the plan to overturn the election. And then third, I knew that the plan was grounded in their view in the Constitution and laws. It implicated the Constitution and the laws of the United States in many, many ways and respects. And frankly, I’ve never had an opportunity to say this, but it was an extremely complicated and legally complicated effort to overturn the election. And at that point, there would have been very few people in the country and frankly very few lawyers who could even understand on day one what had happened under the Constitution and the laws of the United States, but I just happened to be one of those people. And I knew then that it would take literally years for the country to come to grips with what had happened on January 6th and equal number of years, if not more, to understand all of the legal aspects of it and the enormous constitutional implications of each piece of that plan, which I’ve described as a plan to exploit the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And so, I need not say it, but this is not something that I had ever thought of and no one else had ever thought of, let alone that someone trained in the law would have found himself or herself in the position that I did, for the reasons that I did. But I was there, and I thought it was the—I had the highest responsibility to the country to see it through to this day and through to the end. And I would end by saying it’s been the highest honor of my life to have done this for my country. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:18:51] Well, thank you for what you’ve done to preserve democracy here. Do you think we’ve learned the right lessons from January 6th? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:18:58] We’ve not learned anything at all—yet. As a country, we are in a worse position today than we were on January 6th for obvious reasons. The former president has never expressed one word of remorse for January 6th. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite. He’s denied Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020. He implicitly, if not explicitly, maintaining that the current president is not a legitimate president because he did not win the vote of the American people, but rather he, Donald Trump, did. He has convinced countless millions of Americans that they cannot trust their elections, and they cannot trust the institutions of our democracy and law. And on top of all that, he is the presumptive nominee to be the next president of the United States and could well be. If he is elected, he will assume the presidency on a platform that he was denied the presidency unlawfully in 2020 because of the Constitution, the laws, and the American institutions of democracy and law. I don’t believe that the nation will ever recover from the past four years in those respects and for those reasons. But if he were to be elected on that platform that I just mentioned, in my view there’d be no hope for American democracy in the future. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:21:00] You’re ringing the alarm bell there. I want to ask about Trump v. Anderson, which is one possible solution to this problem. So, this is the case about whether Trump should be barred from the presidency under section 3 of the 14th amendment. And you’ve written an amicus brief about that case. But before we get there, let’s go back to 1868, when the 14th amendment was adopted, you know, so this is immediately after the Civil War, during reconstruction, there were two other reconstruction amendments, the 13th, which banned slavery, and the 15th, which protected African Americans’ right to vote. But the 14th amendment was a bit more complicated. Can you explain what the 14th amendment was intended to do? And I mean, the whole amendment here, not just section 3. 

 

Judge Luttig [00:21:41] The 14th amendment is without any question now and forever, the most consequential provision of the Constitution. It was the second beginning, if you will, of the Constitution for the reasons you alluded to, but ratified in post-Civil War. It is that amendment that guarantees the rights and privileges to all citizens of the United States, not just those who are of a certain color. The United States had to fight a war literally against itself, the Civil War, in order that the 14th amendment could be written and ratified. You just simply can’t overstate the importance of the 14th amendment, not just to the Constitution itself, but to the very American ideal. The founders and the framers of the original Constitution spoke about this ideal back in 1789, but they didn’t write that ideal into the Constitution itself. It required the 14th amendment for that. Now, section 3 of the 14th amendment is the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy. It is the ultimate pro-democracy provision in the Constitution of the United States for this reason—that provision says that any person who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution and who thereafter engages in an insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution, shall not thereafter hold high office in the federal government or state governments. There’s instinctively a feature about section 3, instinctively, that leads one to believe that it’s anti-democratic to disqualify a person from high office. But in fact, it’s the Constitution itself that tells us that, no, it’s not the disqualification that is anti-democratic. Rather, it is the insurrection against the Constitution of the United States that gives rise to disqualification that is anti-democratic. And I’ve always thought that, maybe mistakenly, but if you explained it that way to the American people, at the very least, they would no longer think of section 3 as being anti-democratic because it’s anything but. The framers wrote section 3 to disqualify one who engages in the most anti-democratic conduct possible, and therefore it’s the very opposite of anti-democratic to enforce that section 3 of the 14th amendment. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:25:24] And in your view, Trump’s actions on January 6th meets the standard of section 3: he engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. Is that your view? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:25:34] Yes, but it’s more than that. It is as if the framers wrote section 3 in order to disqualify their former president for attempting to remain in office beyond his four-year term, in violation of the Executive Vesting Clause of the Constitution, and denying his lawful successor the powers of the presidency to which he, Joe Biden, was entitled by virtue of having been elected by the American people, preventing the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. That is exactly, precisely what the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to disqualify one for having done. It’s the quintessential insurrection against the Constitution of the United States. There is nothing more fundamental to our government and to our democracy than the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. If one attempts to unconstitutionally to remain in power, there is no clearer insurrection against the Constitution of the United States. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:27:11] Well, let’s talk through some of the defenses that Trump’s lawyers have raised in this Trump v. Anderson case. There’s a lot of them. They claim that the presidency shouldn’t be considered an office under the United States, that the presidential oath that Trump took shouldn’t count as an oath to support the Constitution. They say that section 3 can only be enforced through congressional legislation that is not self-executing. They deny that Trump’s actions on January 6th meet the standard for engaging in an insurrection. And then they question whether the Colorado courts provided sufficient due process for Trump to dispute that charge. They also say that because section 3 only prohibits holding office, it shouldn’t be used to prevent a candidate from running for office. So, that’s obviously a wide range of arguments, and it’s your opinion that the Supreme Court should reject all of them. But do you have thoughts on which of these defenses are the strongest, or which might be most likely to be persuasive for the court? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:27:59] The argument was had last week, and there are very few people in the country if any, frankly, that believe that any of those issues at all, with the possible exception of one, are any longer relevant. It was crystal clear to all that the Supreme Court of the United States is simply not going to decide whether the former president is disqualified under the 14th amendment. Not now. Not ever. The one issue of those that you listed that was arguably discussed, though not so much in terms, is whether the section 3 is self-executing or not. And if it’s not, who is empowered under the Constitution to execute it? And presumably that would be the Congress of the United States. It seems clear that the court—it’s not going to decide the question. And it seems clear that that is the single off-ramp that it is considering taking to deciding the issue. That is holding that only the Congress can implement section 3. It was that clear, Alex. I believe that it’s not legitimate for the court to exit the case by virtue of holding that section 3 is not self-executing, and only Congress can execute it, but that’s what I think almost universally, everyone believes the court’s going to do. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:29:46] Well, let’s focus on that question of self-executing or not for a moment. So, you are suggesting that you think that might be the strongest argument, or anyway, it seems like the court is treating that as the strongest argument on Trump’s side. Why are you on the other side of that issue? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:30:00] There’s literally nothing at all in the text of the Constitution, the structure of the Constitution, the ratification history of section 3 of the 14th Amendment, or the precedential case law of the Supreme Court of the United States that even suggests that the section 3 is non-self-executing. For instance, just textually, the first sentence of section 3 says that no person shall hold any office. That is the language of self-execution, one, but then in the second sentence of section 3, it provides that the Congress of the United States may remove a disqualification by two-thirds vote. The second sentence connotes, clearly, as a textual matter, that the disqualification that can be removed by Congress, but only through a two-thirds vote, existed before Congress removed it. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:31:19] Well, let’s talk about the Supreme Court more generally and its kind of role in the American system. In the last few years, the Supreme Court has often appeared divided along partisan lines, issuing split decisions with Republican appointed justices on one side and Democratic appointed justices on the other. Some of these decisions have been pretty unpopular—the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade being the most famous example. And meanwhile, there have been some scandals about justices receiving gifts and maybe not reporting them appropriately. And perhaps for these reasons, in the last couple of years, polls of public approval of the Supreme Court have been at or near historic lows. Is there a risk of the court losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public, and should the court be considering public opinion? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:32:02] The respect and certainly the popularity of the Supreme Court in the eyes of the public ebbs and flows over time. But as your questions suggest, at this moment, the respect and support for the court is at, if not below, its historic low. I could be remembering this incorrectly, but the last poll of such said that only 40% of the American people viewed the Supreme Court favorably. That’s untenable. It’s untenable, even given that the Supreme Court of the United States should never concern itself with the polls that are taken as to it’s the people’s support of the court. But the Supreme Court must always continue to reexamine itself and ask itself continually whether it is earning the respect and support of the American people. That is a process in which the Supreme Court should engage for the duration of history. There is always a reluctance by any court, especially the Supreme Court, to engage in that constitutional self-examination, but it’s no less necessary and important because, has famously been said, beginning with the founders, the Supreme Court has neither the person or the sword. All it has is its judgments of law. And if ever its judgments of law don’t command that constitutional respect from the American people, then so the syllogism would go, the Supreme Court has nothing. And we’re certainly at a moment in history where the Supreme Court needs to be on high alert to examine itself, to assure itself that it has earned and is deserving of the respect that it’s entitled to if it is performing its role appropriately in the constitutional order. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:34:36] What about the citizens side of that? If I’m, you know, not an expert on constitutional law, but I’m looking at the court and I’m seeing this ideological divide on the court, and maybe it kind of looks like a partisan political institution like any other, and I don’t like some of the decisions it’s handing down, why should I respect the court? Why should I abide by its decisions? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:34:57] If we don’t respect the decisions of the Supreme Court, and if we don’t respect the results of our elections as we do not, as to both today, hopefully for the moment only, then this experience in self-governance and in democracy will fail. It’s just that simple. That’s why there’s so much at stake right now. In my view, there’s more at stake today for American democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law than any previous time in our history. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:35:49] You’ve previously been on record about your concerns that Trump or his allies in the Republican Party might attempt to undermine the 2024 election. You’d been particularly worried about the independent state legislature theory, which is a reading of the Constitution that would give state legislatures exclusive control over elections, meaning that state courts and governors would have no say. Last year in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court ruled against the independent state legislature theory. Does that reduce the risks for this year’s election? Are there other legal avenues you’re worried might be exploited to undermine election results? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:36:19] Well, the so-called independent state legislatures theory of interpretation of the electors clause of the Constitution was the centerpiece of the plan to overturn the 2020 election. The former president and his allies and his lawyers, in particular, they sought to exploit that theory. That was their reading, if you want to say, as to interpretation of the electors clause, specifically that the state legislatures have plenary authority over the choosing of the state electors for who will cast their votes for the presidency. But when that issue was presented in Moore v. Harper—I called Moore v. Harper the most important case ever for American democracy for the reasons that I just stated. But as you said, the Supreme Court did not accept the independent state legislature theory, and therefore it took off the table the exploitation of the electors clause and that theory in 2024. On January 6th, the independent state legislature theory was a centerpiece of the plan, but the plan also involved the exploitation of the 12th Amendment, the 20th amendment, but the Electoral Count Act. And it took yeoman’s work in the Congress of the United States to amend the Electoral Count Act in the aftermath of January 6th. And in the very 11th hour, the Congress did pass the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2023 or 2 that closed the loopholes, if you want to think of that, that allowed for January 6th. So, with the reform of the Electoral Count Act and with the Supreme Court’s rejection of the independent state legislature theory, I have said the nation should never again face another January 6th. But then to your final question, might it yet face another January 6th? The answer—and this is the larger answer for all matters involving certainly public service, but all matters in life. Ultimately, all decisions come down to people, to individuals, to human beings. And human beings are flawed and flawed even in fundamental ways. It’s not possible to design a government prophylactically that can prevent even the greatest constitutional crisis possible in the United States of America. So, could it happen again? Yes, it could happen again. And it could even be worse than it was on January 6th, 2021. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:39:39] You’re a member of an organization called the society for the Rule of Law, which describes itself as a group of conservative pro-democracy lawyers and jurists who are concerned about the authoritarian drift of certain elements within the conservative legal movement. Can you talk a little bit about what this organization is and what it’s hoping to accomplish?

 

Judge Luttig [00:39:57] Yes, and thank you for giving me the opportunity. Society for the Rule of Law, it has always been just a group of lawyers and mostly Republican prior administration lawyers who have really their whole lives believed not just in the Constitution, but in the rule of law. And those are two different things. The rule of law is much, much broader, if you will, than the Constitution. It’s much broader than even the laws of the United States. If you believe in the rule of law, it means that you believe in the importance of accepting the decisions rendered by our courts and rendered by the state courts, but also that you believe in accepting the decisions of all of America’s institutions of law and democracy, such as the one that we were talking about earlier, that you accept the results of an election. It’s perfectly fine for all of us to disagree with every one of those decisions and passionately disagree with them. It is not an option in the United States of America to refuse to accept those decisions. And effectively or in fact, take to the streets to protest them and or to overturn those decisions in the way that the former president and his allies did in 2020. So, we’re quite proud of the new Society for the Rule of Law. We believe that it’s exactly what the country needs at this moment in time. It’s the purest form, we believe, of lawyer participation in American democracy. You know, as I say that, what comes to mind is one of the greatest oratory and speech ever given about America’s institutions of law and democracy was given by none other than Abraham Lincoln in 1838, I believe, at the age of 28 at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. Every lawyer should carry the speech around in his or her pocket. But that’s where Abraham Lincoln called for a revival and reverence for the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And quite eloquently, in fact, most eloquently said American democracy needs nothing less than that in that tumultuous time. And if there were not reverence for the Constitution and the laws, the Republic could not long endure. So fast forward to today. Arguably, the times today are far more tumultuous than they were when Abraham Lincoln gave that magnificent speech. And I believe that the only way through and beyond this moment in our history is through a reverence to the Constitution and to the rule of law. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:43:50] So a lot of this conversation has been about lawyers and judges and what they need to do to protect democracy and your own life is an example of how members of the legal community have a responsibility to speak out for democracy, and how that can have an impact. But do you have any advice for citizens, for the listeners of this show, about what they should be doing to preserve American democracy? 

 

Judge Luttig [00:44:10] Yes. None of us ever thought that the day would come when we would be called to stand and affirm our belief in the Constitution and the rule of law. But we are. This is the moment, arguably in all of American history, when we are being called, each and every one of us to stand and attest to our belief in and support the Constitution, the rule of law, and American democracy. If we don’t rise to this moment, then we should not be surprised if we find ourselves very, very soon without that American democracy. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:45:08] Well, that’s a sobering thought. Judge Luttig, I want to thank you for your service to this country. And thank you for joining us here on The Context. 

 

Judge Luttig [00:45:14] Thank you. And thank you, Kettering Foundation. 

 

Alex Lovit [00:45:22] The Context is a production of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. The opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the Kettering Foundation, its directors, or its officers. I’m Alex Lovit, a senior program officer and historian with the Foundation. Research assistance provided by Isabel Pergande. Episode production by George Drake Jr. Kettering’s Director of Communications is Melinda Gilmore. For more information about the Kettering Foundation, or to subscribe to our e-newsletter, visit kettering.org. If you have comments about this podcast, email thecontext@kettering.org. If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, and leave a rating or review, or tell a friend about the show. We’ll be back in this feed with more conversations about democracy in a couple of weeks. 

 

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a Kettering Foundation contractor and may contain small errors. The authoritative record is the audio recording.