What is a constitutional crisis and are we in one right now?

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. Be prepared for more people to the term “constitutional crisis.” Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if the US is currently in a constitutional crisis. “People generally use the term ‘constitutional crisis’ to describe periods when institutions of government are clearly in conflict,” law professors Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas and Jack Balkin of Yale wrote in 2009. “To me, where we get into real trouble is if there is open, willing defiance of a court order,” said CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig, appearing Monday on CNN Max. … Not only do we have these conflicts all the time, but the Framers designed the separation of powers — according to James Madison — to encourage the three branches to fight.” Yoo, currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, sees it differently, and told me claims of a constitutional crisis today “are examples of the hyper-partisan policies of our time than any real assault on the Constitution.” ‘Constitutional hardball’ Levinson, who co-authored a 2009 paper trying to define a constitutional crisis, told me during Trump’s first administration that crisis is built into the Constitution.