Northwestern University enters The Bob Zadek Show not as a subject of discussion but through the faculty affiliated with it. Across three episodes, guests and hosts refer to Northwestern law professors, an economist, and a constitutional law professor, each cited for a specific piece of work or expertise rather than for the university’s own positions. The excerpts contain no account of the university’s founding, governance, curriculum, or institutional stance on any question.
Law professors and Supreme Court term limits
In a February 2016 episode on the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Gail Heriot invoked Northwestern while responding to Bob Zadek’s proposal to limit federal judges to ten-year terms subject to reappointment and reconfirmation. Heriot countered with an article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy by two Northwestern University law professors, Jim Lindgren and Steven Calabresi, which she said suggested 18-year terms not subject to reappointment. She told Zadek she liked that approach better than his ten-year renewable term, because the last thing one wants in a Supreme Court justice is someone playing to Congress to be reappointed, which she described as the opposite of what is wanted in Supreme Court independence Gail Heriot on the Significance of Justice Scalia’s Passing (2016).
Heriot’s preference for the Northwestern proposal rested on a structural argument: staggered terms would mean each president might get one or two appointments. She also identified a downside — that justices told their careers would end at 68, 70, or 75 might seek future employment, and she did not want justices playing to likely future employers such as major universities. She nonetheless called the idea basically sound, and suggested that justices who know they will not serve for life may be more careful to limit the power of the court, doing what Scalia tried to do.
Zadek’s own proposal in the same exchange was a statute limiting all federal justices and judges to ten-year terms, subject to reappointment and reconfirmation, which he said would prevent a president from reaching thirty years into the future. He noted that a constitutional amendment would be required for his alternative, and argued that the founders’ reason for life tenure — removing judges from the politics of the day — was already undermined because judicial appointments are highly politicized.
Lynne Kiesling and the commissioned chapter
Northwestern appears again in a January 2017 episode with Tom Palmer, discussing his edited collection Self-Control or State-Control?. Palmer said he commissioned a chapter from Lynne Kiesling of Northwestern University, focused on environmental policy and regulation. Palmer described her argument as showing that institutions of human life — including government institutions such as the rules of property and contract — enable people to be more responsible for their behavior. His framing was that the choice is not between regulated and unregulated markets, since all markets are regulated by the rule of law, property rights, tort law, and so on; the question is whether to use those institutions or instead give unaccountable or barely accountable bureaucrats discretionary power to change the rules Dr. Tom Palmer on Self Control vs. State Control (2017).
In the same episode, Palmer listed Kiesling among the contributors to the volume alongside Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University’s economics faculty, and said the book was available free in several electronic formats or by mail through the Atlas Network. Zadek added that Lisa Conyers wrote a chapter on the nanny state, which Palmer called one of the more powerful ones, based on interviews with people trapped in the welfare state. Palmer described the system as set up to make it difficult to leave welfare once in it, giving the example of a person on rental assistance and food stamps who inherits an automobile and is then disqualified for exceeding an asset threshold, with welfare workers advising them to get rid of it quickly to requalify.
John McGinnis and classical liberalism
The most sustained Northwestern presence comes in a February 2019 episode with John McGinnis, introduced by Zadek as a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a teacher of constitutional law at Northwestern University. Zadek used the introduction to raise the composition of the academy, citing informal calculations that about 75% or 80% of it is registered Democratic or Democratic-leaning, and arguing that teaching at the college level gives students a biased view of American history, politics, and economics Here Comes the Storm (2019).
McGinnis was on the program to discuss his blog “The Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism.” On socialism, he agreed with Zadek that Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris might better be called extreme redistributionists, but argued that their healthcare proposals involve government control of the means of producing healthcare — the government deciding what will be paid for — which he called a genuinely socialist idea and likely to lead to less innovation and lower quality. He contrasted this with Obamacare, which he characterized as largely redistributionist, and noted that Harris was flummoxed by a question about keeping private insurance because the bill she sponsored would eliminate it.
On criminal justice reform, Zadek raised the bipartisan cooperation of Rand Paul and Cory Booker and the First Step Act, which he said Donald Trump signed. McGinnis granted some credit but said most presidents would have signed it, and cautioned that criminal penalties are a core function of government, with harsh sentences having responded to crime increases in the 1970s and 1980s. He argued the most important thing is certainty of punishment rather than sentences that put criminals into old-age homes, and said he gave Trump more credit for tax reform than for the crime bill.
McGinnis also compared Trump unfavorably to Reagan on principle, calling Trump transactional by background as a New York real estate operator, but identified two sources of hope: Trump’s commitment to appointing originalist judges, including Gorsuch, and his State of the Union address, which McGinnis said captured principles by talking about the danger of socialism and the importance of freedom. A clip of Trump’s address was played in which Trump said socialism had bankrupted an oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty, and that virtually everywhere socialism or communism has been tried it has produced suffering, corruption, and decay. Zadek called the passage right out of Hayek and said it gave him encouragement.
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in how Northwestern is treated: in 2016 it is the home of two law professors whose term-limits proposal Heriot prefers to Zadek’s; in 2017 it is the home of an economist who wrote a commissioned chapter on environmental regulation; in 2019 it is the home of a constitutional law professor discussing classical liberalism. The university is a credential and an address in each case, and the three episodes do not engage one another’s claims about it.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when Northwestern University was founded, where it is located, how it is governed, or what its official policies are. They do not say whether Lindgren, Calabresi, Kiesling, or McGinnis spoke for the university or only for themselves, and they do not report any institutional response to the term-limits article, the commissioned chapter, or the blog on classical liberalism. No excerpt describes a Northwestern course, program, or publication beyond the individual works named.