Live Q & A with author Barry Friedman

Starting in just a minute, at 2 p.m. Eastern, I will be moderating a live chat with Supreme Court author and New York University law professor Barry Friedman.   We aim to chat for the next forty-five minutes to an hour.

You can submit questions at the bottom of the chat window below.   We will try to get to as many questions as possible; after you type your question, please allow a few minutes of delay before it appears on the blog.

The thesis of Barry’s 2009 book The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution is that the Court™s decisions on salient issues have tended to come into line over time with popular preferences.  A major implication he draws is that the Court is not the undemocratic institution it is often argued to be.  For more background on the book, see Kevin Russell™s two-part interview with him last month on SCOTUSblog.

UPDATE, 4 p.m.: The transcript of the live chat follows the jump.