“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” And, after 33 days of dead reckoning navigation, he bumped into the Western Hemisphere on October 12. Spain’s colonization began as a military conquista, coupled with the extraction of precious metals. Within fifty years, Spanish colonists had built cathedrals and libraries in Mexico and Peru. A century later, British civilians colonized North America.

Is the 2020 American election destined for a decisive result or a series of legal challenges that will delay the outcome and throw the nation into tumult, possibly sparking a constitutional crisis? With Election Day now less than five weeks away, Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster, and John Cochrane and Hoover visiting fellow John Yoo—a constitutional law expert—discuss the various strains on America’s voting system.

Hoover Institution fellow Jack Goldsmith discusses his book In Hoffa's Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth.

John Yoo is a professor at the University of California–Berkeley School of Law and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Richard Epstein is a professor of law at NYU, a professor of law emeritus at the University of Chicago, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. In this wide-ranging discussion, recorded the day after Amy Coney Barrett accepted President Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court, the professors discuss Barrett’s qualifications and why it was correct and proper to nominate her now—five weeks before an election.