Hearing the People, Part 2 (LAW-CONST2)

Why does the Constitution single out the home for special protection, and why did privacy replace property as the guiding idea? Akhil Reed Amar traces the shift.

Continuing the lived Constitution, this lecture follows the move from property to privacy through Justice Harlan's reading of the Third and Fourth Amendments, the home-life cases from Stanley v. Georgia to gun rights and the Kelo takings dispute, and the egalitarian logic behind Gideon's right to counsel. Amar then returns to the Eighth Amendment, where the word "unusual" invites courts to count evolving practice on juvenile and diminished-capacity death sentences, and argues for grounding these rights in privileges and immunities rather than substantive due process.