I’ve spent my entire career, first as a religious liberty litigator, then an author and public speaker, and now as a law professor, inside one question: Who counts as an American, and what do we owe each other once we’ve decided?
I didn’t choose the question. It chose me. As a young adult, I saw the question answered in its ugliest form when a mosque in my hometown – designed by my late father – was vandalized. More than 50 bullets in its golden dome, sending the message: You do not belong.
I interpreted the lesson differently: We ALL belong, but our rights won’t protect themselves. As a lawyer, I defended people of every faith, evangelical Christians, Sikhs, Native Americans, Jews, Muslims.
Even in the court room, though, I saw the hypocrisy, the hatred. I watched opposing counsel stand up and argue that my client’s faith wasn’t a religion and should not be protected by the U.S. Constitution. It might have sounded like a legal argument, but in fact, it was an argument about belonging — and exclusion.
That’s true of most of our biggest fights. Religion and speech. Equal protection and bodily autonomy. On the surface, they’re disputes about legal rules. Underneath, they’re disputes about who belongs here and on what terms.
Of course, the rules matter. They’re where the real decisions get made, quietly, in language designed to keep most people out of the conversation. But years of engaging public audiences across the nation have taught me that the human factor underneath these fights is almost always anxiety. People feel their place in this country slipping. Most of us just feel the ground moving and don’t know what to trust.
The public conversation gives us two ways to cope. We can pick a team and treat every Supreme Court term like a sporting event. Or we can tune out because it all feels so … jargony. Picking a team leaves us whipped up but uninformed. Tuning out leaves the most important decisions about our lives to people counting on our inattention.
I think there’s a third way, and it starts by seeing rights the way I do.
Rights are structures, not slogans. They have weight-bearing parts and ornamental ones. Foundations that hold, and joints that give way under pressure. I called this publication The Architecture of Rights because you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer to see how the building stands up, or where the cracks are forming.
What This Is About
My goal is to give you the structural view, delivered through a deeply personal lens. When a ruling comes down or a controversy erupts, I want you to understand what actually changed and why it matters to you.
You don’t need to follow every Supreme Court case to care about constitutional law. You just need a place that takes the subject seriously enough to explain it clearly and honestly.
What You’ll Find Here
Essays on the constitutional questions shaping American life: religion, speech, equality, belonging. Plain language, with the nuance the headlines leave out.
Current events analysis when the Court rules or a controversy breaks, so you understand what actually happened before the takes harden.
Office Hours, where I walk you through the rules because, again, the rules matter.
No jargon. No ideological cheerleading.
A Different Register
Some of this work doesn’t fit inside a legal argument. The same question, who belongs and what we owe each other, also plays out in a marriage, in raising three kids, in the accidents of hospitality and grief and luck that make up a family and a community. Losing my dad to terminal cancer taught me something about belonging that no court opinion ever has. So did caregiving for my husband through his own battle with cancer.
That’s what you’ll find in The Architecture of Care, a section of this publication where I write about the people and communities that hold us up.
I hope you’ll join me.
With gratitude,
Asma
I love the premise for your writing here!