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Garrett Epps

Garrett Epps is a contributing editor at The American Prospect. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and a professor of law at the University of Baltimore. His most recent book is Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America.

Recent Articles

Space is the Place

Garrett EppsSep 27, 2002

Joss Whedon is the Hazel Motes of American television. Motes, a hill-country preacher created by Flannery O'Connor, toured the back roads of the American South to win souls for the "Church Without Christ." Having annihilated God, Motes was helplessly possessed nonetheless by the religious instinct -- and, O'Connor later wrote, his peculiar stubborn integrity lay in his absolute inability to rid himself of the yearning to know what he could not believe in.

The Case Against Jed Bartlet:

Garrett EppsAug 07, 2002

"There's nothing good on TV anymore," a friend recently said. He is a Democrat and a University of North Carolina basketball fan. "I don't watch anything but that ESPN Classic," which shows videotapes of old Tar Heel victories.

For those nostalgic for the days of elected government, there really is little news programming worth watching. Many of my liberal friends have turned for consolation to the alternate universe of The West Wing, a kind of CNN Classic in which a Democratic president holds office, having won it the old-fashioned way.

Civilization and its Discontents

Garrett EppsMay 13, 2002

Cultural novelties are many, but genuinely new art forms don't come along very often. The computer game may be to our time what film was to the early twentieth century. There's a cultural divide about this -- literate young people in their twenties routinely spend leisure hours hunting aliens on their PCs; gaffers like me tend to regard this as a waste of time. But my link to the world of the young is a game called Civilization III, invented by master designer Sid Meier.

Book Review: Inventing America

Garrett EppsMay 07, 2002

What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States. By James F. Simon. Simon and Schuster, 348 pages, $27.50.



Ten years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Shockoe Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, where John Marshall is buried. Our little party -- two law clerks and a federal judge -- had to fight its way to the grave site through weeds and brambles. In a city that prides itself on its monuments, this one had been only fitfully tended. I was not entirely surprised: Many Richmonders cannot forgive Marshall for his rudeness to Thomas Jefferson.


Can Buffy's Brilliance Last?

Garrett EppsJan 09, 2002

When future critics ask whether turn-of-the-century American TV produced any works of genius, the verdict on the entire medium--all 128 channels of it--is likely to depend on their assessment of a cult teen hit currently airing on UPN, with syndicated reruns on FX.


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