SMC Town Hall begs the question: “Will America's judicial system uphold the Constitution?”

Dr. Tahvildaran-Jesswein (CQ) listens along to fellow Professor in Philosophy and Social Sciences Dr. Eric Oifer, on May 15th 2025 in Santa Monica California. (Phillip Friedlander | The Corsair)

On the night of Thursday, May 15, people of all ages and diverse backgrounds filled the rooms of the Santa Monica College (SMC) orientation hall. An audience and panel gathered there to try to answer the pressing question: will America’s judicial system uphold the Constitution?

The seats were peppered with students, community members and SMC faculty. Despite the location, they weren’t there to receive an orientation for the coming semester. 

The Public Policy Institute (PPI) of SMC held the Town Hall as the last of four meetings for its 2025 Spring Symposium. The Town Hall, which lasted about an hour and a half, spanned a range of topics. From LGBTQ rights and advocacy, to the fight to preserve due process, anything that could be affected by the judicial system was up for discussion.

This final meeting was an opportunity for the audience to share their thoughts and ask questions to the panel of speakers.

Shari Davis, PPI co-director, served as the moderator for the event and took in questions from the crowd. The panel consisted of Associated Students (AS) president David Duncan; Director of Basic Needs-elect and PPI student worker Martin Orea; SMC philosophy and political science professor Dr. Eric Oifer; and PPI co-director and Santa Monica school district Board of Education member Dr. Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein.

One of the first topics at hand was the idea of birthright citizenship and the recent attempts by the Trump administration to restrict its definition. “It’s just nutty. That’s a nutty interpretation,” said Oifer, speaking about President Donald Trump’s recent Truth Social posts claiming that “birthright citizenship is about babies of slaves.” 

“The two ways countries do citizenship is through birthright or lineage, but I don’t know what lineage means in the United States… It doesn’t make sense in a country built the way ours is,” said Oifer. 

During the conversation, the issue of whether the judicial courts are upholding the Constitution was overshadowed with the concern of whether these judicial decisions can be enforced at all. 

“All of the rights we have, they don’t ultimately really matter if you have an executive branch who is refusing to respect due process or afford people basic civil liberties,” said Duncan. “It’s difficult, especially at this time, to look to someone else to save us from this, and I think our priorities should be community organizing and resisting all of the crap the current administration is throwing at us.”

At one point in the meeting, an audience member asked, “When do we turn conventional protest into unconventional?” Another audience member responded, “When they take away habeas corpus, brothers; when we can’t defend ourselves in court anymore.” 

Tahvildaran-Jesswein chimed into the conversation. He believes that we are far from seeing fascism take place, especially in places like California. 

“Let’s remind ourselves that we live in the Republic of California, and as far as I can tell there seems to be no inching or creeping towards fascism in Sacramento. In fact, Sacramento and our elected state-wide leaders have been working to be a counterweight to the administration,” said Tahvildaran-Jesswein. 

Tahvildaran-Jesswein said, “I hear your calling, saying, at what point, at what time? I personally don’t think we are there yet, but I think if due process goes for one, it goes for all.”

Davis brought up the issue of Trump accepting gifts from other countries, and whether the emoluments clause of Article I of the Constitution should be enforced. However, Oifer believes that while this is a real issue, it is much lower in priority to some of the other issues at hand. 

“I wish our worst concern was taking personal financial benefits,” said Oifer. “It’s a problem, but it’s so far down the list… It's gross and repulsive and in normal times it would be enough to get someone removed from office, but we’re not in normal times… Due process and habeas corpus are further up the list.”

One of the last conversations of the night was about how those in opposition to the current administration's actions can best galvanize their peers to care about habeas corpus and due process, and instill the grave importance of these issues. 

“I don’t know if any of you have the experience of canvassing in a red district. Very often, the people there, even if they might agree with us in theory, their media ecosystem, it's almost like they are living in a completely different world… I think that in order to forge a path forward for the nation we need to find a way to reconcile those different realities,” said Duncan.

The town hall ended with a call by Davis for the audience to not give up on political campaigns, and to look forward to the congressional elections coming up in 2026. 

“Don’t forget, it does matter. Even if you don’t live in one of those districts where things could change, you could go to a district or make phone calls to voters in another district. You can follow the groups that are looking at the key seats for the House of Representative election in 2026, and get involved there, and that's when you’re really focused on an action that could make a difference.” Said Davis.