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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

A State-Federal Standoff over the Death Penalty

Garrett EppsMay 16, 2012
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

A principled governor invoking “state’s rights” to defy federal policy. Aggressive local officials overriding state decisions. A federal court angrily affirming its own power. An anguished dissent attacking a power-hungry Congress. 

“Inspired” But Not Read

Garrett EppsMay 11, 2012
(Flickr / Rhubarble)

“I happen to believe that the Constitution was not just brilliant, but probably inspired,” Mitt Romney told a town-hall meeting in Euclid, Ohio, on Monday. It may be that, like many who like to thump sacred texts, he has simply never read it.

Bring On Less Democracy

Garrett EppsMay 10, 2012
(Flickr / afagen)

Is anybody else as depressed as I am about the next four years? 

No matter who wins, we face the prospect of bitterly divided government, savage partisanship in Congress, and increasing executive desperation. Even if Republicans win the Senate and retain the House, they will not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate; even if Obama holds on to the White House, he will face filibusters in the Senate and outright defiance in the House. A Congress that cannot deal with the tiny student-debt problem in orderly fashion is unlikely to be able to tackle big problems at all.

Face It: SB 1070 Is about Race

Garrett EppsApr 25, 2012

“Before you get into what the case is about,” Chief Justice John Roberts told Solicitor General Donald Verilli at the beginning of the government’s argument in United States v. Arizona, “I’d like to clear up at the outset what it’s not about. No part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling, does it? I saw none of that in your brief.”

A non-lawyer might be puzzled. The case, argued Wednesday, is testing the constitutionality of part of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, a statute that seeks to drive undocumented immigrants out of the state by rigid law enforcement. 

Arizona Asks the Court Not to Trust the Feds

Garrett EppsApr 19, 2012
(Krista Kennell/Sipa Press)

This term’s last oral argument ends next week with yet another blockbuster case—Arizona v. United States, the challenge to Arizona’s harshly anti-immigrant S.B. 1070. This case poses vitally important questions about individual rights, racial profiling, and the future of individual equality in the United States.

But don’t expect to hear them argued openly next week.

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