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.