On today’s episode, Sarah and David walk us through Monday’s Supreme Court orders and oral arguments before diving back into the mailbag, where they respond to listeners’ questions about expert witnesses, sanctuary cities, vaccine passports, and immunity grants. Plus, David revises and extends his Friday Dispatch Podcast thesis on culture’s distortion of masculinity. Show Notes: -Monday’s Supreme Court orders -Sanchez v. Mayorkas -Hemphill v. New York -Jacobson v. Massachusetts -Friday’s Dispatc...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep 128•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s episode, David and Sarah discuss the ins and outs of Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, including why Chauvin didn’t take the stand and whether he’s likely to be convicted. Plus, our hosts chat about House Democrats’ latest court-packing bill—what Sarah calls “a press release in the form of legislation”—former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter’s fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, and an en banc 6th Circuit case involving abortion. Show Notes: -“Chauvin Defense Expert Destroyed on the...
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep 127•Transcript available on Metacast Fearing that death or disability will remove Justice Stephen Breyer from the Supreme Court when a Republican is in the White House, progressives have begun urging the senior Democratic appointed justice to retire so that Joe Biden can nominate a younger successor while he has a chance. Is Justice Breyer likely to retire anytime soon? David Lat joins today’s show to give us his take. Stick around to hear David Lat and our hosts chat about Biden’s 36-person Supreme Court commission, a new opinion ...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep 126•Transcript available on Metacast Our hosts start today’s episode by diving into the Supreme Court’s 6-2 opinion in Google v. Oracle, a multibillion dollar copyright case involving whether Google unlawfully used Oracle’s programming code when the tech titan created its Android operating system. Also on today’s podcast, Sarah and David chat about Justice Stephen Breyer’s Scalia Lecture, misdemeanor prosecutions, a new study on religious liberty’s winning streak on the Roberts Court, and a Native American adoption law case. Show N...
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 125•Transcript available on Metacast It was a slow day at the Supreme Court today, but our hosts are here to give us a breakdown of the latest orders. In a concurring opinion on Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas tore into the Supreme Court’s order in Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which involves a government official’s control of his own Twitter account. Per Sarah, the purpose of Thomas’ concurring opinion is to determine whether social media platforms are “common carriers, whether they are places o...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 124•Transcript available on Metacast As the Houston Cougars and Baylor Bears prepare for their Final Four faceoff this Saturday, our podcast hosts break down Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments for National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, a case that will determine whether the NCAA’s rules restricting student athlete compensation violate federal antitrust law. Stick around to hear David and Sarah chat about developments in qualified immunity law, how nondisclosure agreements hide sex abuse scandals, and a new civil lawsu...
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 123•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s podcast, our hosts discuss the Supreme Court’s March 25 ruling in Torres v. Madrid, a Fourth Amendment case involving a failed attempt by police officers to restrain suspect Roxanne Torres using physical force. “She’s claiming that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights by unreasonably seizing her,” Sarah explains. “And the question becomes: Can you seize someone if they got away?” After a deep dive into Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, Sarah and David talk about the legal history s...
Mar 29, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep 122•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s pod, Sarah and David give us an update on the goings on at the Supreme Court, with an in-depth look at a union takings case out West. “A California regulation allows union representatives to meet with farm workers at their work sites for up to three hours a day for as many as 120 days a year,” Sarah explains. “And so the question is: Is this a per se taking under the Fifth Amendment?” After Sarah and David discuss oral arguments for the case, they do a deep dive on a 9th Circuit Secon...
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 121•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s action-packed pod, our hosts start with an interesting certiorari grant to U.S. v. Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing case. The appellate court overturned the trial court’s death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the grounds that 1) the trial judge did not ask the jurors about their pretrial media consumption, and 2) that he did not allow evidence about the his brother Tamerlan’s alleged involvement in a previous murder to inform the case. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with ...
Mar 22, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Ep 120•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s podcast, Sarah and David discuss a lawsuit in which a high school student sues his Nevada charter school “for repeatedly compelling his speech involving intimate matters of race, gender, sexuality and religion.” Our hosts explain why the critical race theory curriculum in question is unlikely to be deemed unlawful by the court. Per David: “You don’t have an inherent right, once your kid is in public school, to direct and control the curriculum that they see.” Stay tuned to hear specia...
Mar 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep 119•Transcript available on Metacast Today, our hosts are taking a break from the news cycle to share some fun facts about the Supreme Court and answer a series of questions from their listener mailbox: Are Democratic-appointed Supreme Court justices more ideologically reliable than their Republican-appointed counterparts? What are some cases where you are inclined to agree with the legal reasoning but were bothered by the policy outcome? And perhaps most important, how should one go about hiring an attorney? Sarah and David have t...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep 118•Transcript available on Metacast David took the internet by storm last night when he joined a Clubhouse session called “David French, Based or Cringe?” As David puts it in today’s pod, “There’s kind of a subculture where people really hate me!” Joined by a very special guest on today’s episode, David and Sarah chat about nominal damages, the constitutionality of H.R. 1’s effort to federalize elections, and the increasing number of state laws that are aiming to ban critical race theory from being taught in K-12 classrooms. Show ...
Mar 11, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 117•Transcript available on Metacast Katie Barlow, lawyer and media editor of SCOTUSBlog, sits in for David on today’s episode. Sarah and Katie kick off things by discussing the decision handed down in Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, in which an 8-1 majority ruled that even seeking “nominal damages” can be enough to give a plaintiff standing. Plus, Katie explains how her time working for Nina Tottenberg at NPR helped her prepare for translating SCOTUS decisions into one-minute TikTok videos. And, of course, she weighs in on the “should y...
Mar 08, 2021•53 min•Ep 116•Transcript available on Metacast Is the Equality Act necessary to codify Bostock v. Clayton County? How might the Equality Act affect religious liberty, if at all? How do we definitively differentiate between men and women? Today, our hosts chat about invidious sex discrimination as it relates to the Equality Act, and what this law means for the future of nondiscrimination law if it is passed by the Senate. Stay tuned to hear our hosts recap oral arguments for Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, a Supreme Court case that...
Mar 04, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep 115•Transcript available on Metacast The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week for Lange v. California, a Fourth Amendment case that will determine whether a police officer’s hot pursuit of a person suspected of committing a misdemeanor counts as an exigent circumstance to justify the officer’s warrantless entry onto the suspect’s property. In today’s Supreme Court heavy episode, Sarah and David also talk about two other cases dealing with hostile work environments and whether women should constitutionally be required to reg...
Mar 02, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 114•Transcript available on Metacast Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made headlines last week for his dissent to the majority’s denial of cert in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Veronica Degraffenreid. Even though his dissent mainly focused on the mootness of the case, many media outlets seized on the opportunity to mischaracterize Justice Thomas’ argument by claiming he promoted President Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims. After Sarah and David give us their spiel about how media outlets often botch Supreme Court cover...
Feb 26, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep 113•Transcript available on Metacast Originalists have recently come under fire for trying to reinvigorate an old principle in administrative law called the nondelegation doctrine, which holds that Congress cannot delegate its own legislative power to other entities. Are originalists correct in claiming that the nondelegation doctrine was present at the founding? What does the historical record have to say about it? Why should living constitutionalists even care about this debate? Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University ...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep 112•Transcript available on Metacast On Tuesday, Speech First, Inc. filed a free speech lawsuit alleging that the University of Central Florida and its officials “created a series of rules and regulations that restrain, deter, suppress, and punish speech about the political and social issues of the day.” David and Sarah walk us through the history of campus cat and mouse battles over restrictive speech codes and explain whether this lawsuit will matter in the long run. On today’s episode, our hosts also chat about the nondelegation...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 111•Transcript available on Metacast The Supreme Court on Thursday granted Alabama death row inmate Willie Smith’s request to have his pastor present at his execution, rejecting the state’s claim that having a spiritual adviser present interferes with prison security. Tune in to hear how the Supreme Court’s religious liberty ruling in Dunn v. Smith might affect future death penalty cases. On today’s episode, our hosts also chat about Yuval Levin’s latest piece in National Review on the sorry state of Congress and the New York Times...
Feb 15, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep 110•Transcript available on Metacast During the second day of the impeachment hearings on Wednesday, we got some more video evidence from the House impeachment managers exhibiting just how close the rioters got to lawmakers during the Capitol siege. “A lot of this was more fully fleshing out how dire the situation was on January 6,” David explains. Stick around for an update on the criminal prosecution of Paul Manafort, new developments at the Department of Justice, the super viral Zoom video of the cat lawyer, and a lament on foot...
Feb 11, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 109•Transcript available on Metacast After duking it out over their Super Bowl disagreement, David and Sarah get into the meat of today’s episode: The ongoing saga of religious liberty in the age of pandemic law. On Friday, the Supreme Court partly sided with a California church’s First Amendment challenge to religious service restrictions enacted by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Per David: “Pandemic law—while not entirely gone—is mostly dead.” Stay tuned to hear about technology company Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News, Trump...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Ep 108•Transcript available on Metacast On Wednesday, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney survived an intra-party effort to oust her from her GOP leadership position, meanwhile Republican Party Leader Kevin McCarthy decided he will not strip firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. When it comes to all the latest intra-GOP squabbles, Sarah and David have the scoop. On today’s episode, our hosts also break down the Supreme Court’s latest orders and the good, the bad, and the ugly of the impeachment briefs. Show Notes: -“...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep 107•Transcript available on Metacast Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris ruffled West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s feathers when she sat down with local television stations in his state to chat about Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill without first giving him a heads up. On today’s episode, our hosts break down why these sorts of intra-party kerfuffles matter and how they might shape the Biden administration’s relationship with the Senate moving forward. Also in the hopper for today, Sarah and David put ...
Feb 01, 2021•1 hr 26 min•Ep 106•Transcript available on Metacast A federal judge on Tuesday granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request for a nationwide temporary restraining order blocking the Biden administration’s halt of a 100-day pause in deportations of noncitizens for 14 days. It’s safe to say our podcast hosts have some thoughts! Stick around to hear David and Sarah chat about an indictment against pro-Trump Twitter troll Ricky Vaughn in response to his voter disinformation campaign, a wonky First Amendment case, and what’s behind this week’s ...
Jan 28, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep 105•Transcript available on Metacast The Supreme Court “munsingweared” several cases in its Monday orders, including two Trump emoluments cases. After a deep dive into the legal history of munsingwear precedent—a modern mootness doctrine—David and Sarah discuss a Texas deportation case filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pretrial release conditions for those who were arrested during the January 6 Capitol siege, and a Supreme Court original jurisdiction case. A special guest also joins the show to chat about Wendy’s chicken ...
Jan 25, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep 104•Transcript available on Metacast Can Joe Biden heal the rampant degree of polarization that’s currently plaguing our nation’s politics? “There is an element on the left side of the aisle that is every bit as hostile to their fellow citizens as there are on the right edges,” David tells Sarah on today’s episode. “But the thing is, Biden won the primary by specifically shunning that part of the Democratic base.” After their post-Inauguration Day reflections on Biden’s swearing in ceremony and the state of polarization in America,...
Jan 21, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 103•Transcript available on Metacast Who will preside over soon-to-be-former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial after he leaves office? Will it be the Senate’s president pro tempore? The chief justice of the Supreme Court? None of the above? On today’s episode of Advisory Opinions, our hosts also dive into the nitty gritty details of Trump’s forthcoming—and second—impeachment trial before they discuss the latest updates in social media regulation, David’s take on the South’s honor culture, and Sarah’s review of the five bes...
Jan 20, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep 102•Transcript available on Metacast This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, a free speech case that will determine whether former Georgia Gwinnett College student Chike Uzuegbunam is entitled to nominal damages from an unconstitutional government policy when that policy has since been changed. “Arguably there is no more important constitutional law case that has come up before the court in the last several years from a philosophical standpoint,” Sarah says on today’s podcast. After our hosts...
Jan 14, 2021•2 hr 30 min•Ep 101•Transcript available on Metacast In a break from our current news cycle, Advisory Opinions tackles “the more mundane issue of teenage girls complaining” in a discussion about Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L, one of the Supreme Court’s latest cert grants addressing the issue of off-campus student speech. Not to worry, our hosts also dig into the more pressing issues of the day. In an examination of the term “incitement,” David and Sarah ask: Were the president or other individuals guilty—in a criminal sense—of provoking tang...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep 100•Transcript available on Metacast During a press conference on Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for President Trump’s removal from office. “Yesterday, the president of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America,” Pelosi said, shortly before demanding the invocation of the 25th Amendment. On today’s podcast, our hosts talk about the possibility of impeaching President Trump, the legal machinations surrounding the 25th Amendment, and the social media crackdown against President Trump. Stick a...
Jan 08, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep 99•Transcript available on Metacast 
