Podcast appearances and mentions of Paul Clement

Real Madrid are the most successful team in the history of the Champions League/European Cup with 15 titles. But how have they achieved this? Steve Crossman and Guillem Balague explore Real's relationship with the competition, looking at their early dominance in the late 1950s, through to their six triumphs since 2014. We hear from former players Clarence Seedorf and Sami Khedira on what makes Real Madrid so special. And former coach Paul Clement joins the pod to give us insight into Carlo Ancelotti and their "La Decima" win in 2014 against Atletico Madrid. To watch the TV documentary, it is available on BBC iPlayer: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m00276py/how-to-win-the-champions-league[this is re-versioned episode from the Football Daily's archive. It was first published on the 18th January 2025]

Short-term rentals—popularized by Airbnb and Vrbo—have been given modern platforms for the customary alternative to hotels: in-home stays. Yet their rapid growth has prompted a wave of local and state regulations at odds with the practice, driven by lobbying from the hotel industry, concerns about housing affordability, neighborhood character, and other regulatory assertions. While some critics, including city officials and interest groups, support increased oversight, others—including advocates of limited government and individual rights—contend that these services represent an exercise of property rights, expand consumer choice, and note that there is limited evidence of significant impact on the housing market.This panel will explore the constitutional, statutory, historical, and policy implications of short-term rental regulation. Are local governments properly protecting community interests, or are they infringing on fundamental property rights? What legal frameworks govern this space—and what should they be?Join us for a lively discussion featuring the Hon. Paul Clement, Tony Francois, and Ron Klain, moderated by Prof. Donald Kochan, that will examine the intersection of private property, regulatory authority, and economic liberty.

Christina Martin of the Pacific Legal Foundation joins to discuss litigating Hennepin County to the Supreme Court. Christina shares some stories about moot arguments ahead of oral arguments with Paul Clement, and compares the tax foreclosure sale in Hennepin to traditional bank foreclosures.  After discussing the case, Christina talks about her current work in follow up, including other property taxation issues and blight designations.    Links: Tyler v. Hennepin Co. Decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-166_8n59.pdf Christina Martin at Pacific Legal: https://pacificlegal.org/staff/christina-martin/ 

And then there were three. Two more big law firms have sued the Trump administration for issuing executive orders punishing firms that Donald Trump doesn't like for one reasons or another. Paul Clement, former United States Solicitor General in the George W. Bush administration, is representing WilmerHale, one the the punished law firms. Attorney Clement wrote: " The President's sweeping attack on WilmerHale (and other firms) is unprecedented and unconstitutional." Glenn discusses these new legal developments and the implications for the rule of law if Trump is allowed to abuse his power by bullying law firms of his choice.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

And then there were three. Two more big law firms have sued the Trump administration for issuing executive orders punishing firms that Donald Trump doesn't like for one reasons or another. Paul Clement, former United States Solicitor General in the George W. Bush administration, is representing WilmerHale, one the the punished law firms. Attorney Clement wrote: " The President's sweeping attack on WilmerHale (and other firms) is unprecedented and unconstitutional." Glenn discusses these new legal developments and the implications for the rule of law if Trump is allowed to abuse his power by bullying law firms of his choice.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's episode of the Baldwin Bruins Sports Podcast, Blaine and Robert bring Frantz Byron & Nahkin Stevens from the Wrestling team into the studio after their successful season on the mats!  They talk about how they love the changes that Coach Horton brought to the program, how great it is working with Baldwin wrestling alumni, Paul Clement, what got them started in wrestling and to be honest, they had a very impressive showing in the Bearspot questions about wrestling.  Tune in!  

OA1138 - Is a federal judge really about to sign off on dismissing the federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams even in the face of everything that we now know about the corrupt deal which led to DOJ's request? Why did appointed attorney Paul Clement recommend dismissing the case with prejudice, and what might it mean for future prosecutions by Trump's DOJ if Judge Ho agrees? Superstar NYC public defender Liz Skeen returns to go beyond the headlines with some local perspective on the current state of one of the most important federal criminal cases in our lifetimes.  Paul Clement's brief in support of dismissing charges with prejudice Rinaldi v. United States | 434 U.S. 22 (1977)  Rule 48. Dismissal | Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure  Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

The Trump Administration is gutting the Justice Department's unit that oversees prosecutions of public officials accused of corruption.Emil Bove has fired the Chief of the Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Task Force, and Todd Blanche has fired the Justice Department Pardon Attorney.Judge Beryl Howell has blocked sections of Donald Trump's executive order punishing the Perkins Coie law firm.The top ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee calls for the Department of Justice Inspector General to open an investigation into Ed Martin, interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia.Judge Dale Ho has canceled the hearing in the Eric Adams dismissal case after amicus Paul Clement recommended he dismiss the bribery charges with prejudice.Plus listener questions.Questions for the pod? Questions from Listeners Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn't on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showFor all subscribers: we have a discussion of President Trump's jihad against Perkins Coie, and Long-Suffering Federal Judge Beryl Howell's lack of patience for it. And we talk about the arrest of green card-holder Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University — and the efforts of the Trump Administration to expel him using little-used but very broad powers for the Secretary of State to expel aliens on the grounds that their presence would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”For paying subscribers:* The Trump administration's effort to revoke hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to Columbia, on the grounds that the university has violated Title VI.* Ed Martin's vague-yet-menacing letter to Georgetown Law School, saying he is conducting an “inquiry” into the school's alleged teaching of DEI. * Updates on multiple cases where government lawyers say something in court and Trump administration officials say something else online that undermines their case.* The advice Paul Clement gave Dale Ho about Eric Adams, how Sam Bankman-Fried got himself thrown into solitary confinement by giving a jailhouse interview to Tucker Carlson, and some tips on best practices for distributing a podcast from federal prison, whether or not you are George Santos.

Donald Trump's Department of Justice officials have been trying to dismiss the criminal prosecution against New York City Mayor Eric Adams without prejudice, meaning they could continue holding the prosecution over his head as leverage. Judge Dale Ho appointed an outside attorney to brief and argue the issue, given that the DOJ prosecutors and defendant Adams are lockstep in their positions and no one is truly representing the interests of the American people. The outside lawyer, Paul Clement, has filed a 33-page brief arguing that the DOJ should not be permitted to dismiss the case without prejudice - meaning they could indict Adams again on the same charges any time they wanted. Clements said this is like DOJ "hanging the sword of Damocles over Adams' head."Glenn takes a look at this new court filing in the Eric Adams case.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Donald Trump's Department of Justice officials have been trying to dismiss the criminal prosecution against New York City Mayor Eric Adams without prejudice, meaning they could continue holding the prosecution over his head as leverage. Judge Dale Ho appointed an outside attorney to brief and argue the issue, given that the DOJ prosecutors and defendant Adams are lockstep in their positions and no one is truly representing the interests of the American people. The outside lawyer, Paul Clement, has filed a 33-page brief arguing that the DOJ should not be permitted to dismiss the case without prejudice - meaning they could indict Adams again on the same charges any time they wanted. Clements said this is like DOJ "hanging the sword of Damocles over Adams' head."Glenn takes a look at this new court filing in the Eric Adams case.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

After news this weekend that Columbia student and permanent legal resident Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE agents, hosts Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord explain the petition filed from his lawyer and the significance of his case as a harbinger of things to come, as a hearing is set over the effort to deport him. Then, they shift focus to the Trump administration's continued attacks on law firms and universities themselves, after the president cut federal funding to Columbia, and Georgetown was rebuked by the DC US Attorney for teaching principles related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Last up, Andrew and Mary review the latest in the Eric Adams case, with a shocking court filing containing texts from prosecutors, and they break down a few cases making their way through the courts right now: some of which have been touched by SCOTUS, others likely on their way to the High Court.Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.

In a news cycle that keeps on churning, Main Justice hosts Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord wade through the nonstop dispatches to set some focal points for this episode. They begin with the hearing held by Judge Dale Ho last week over the Eric Adams dismissal and the Judge's appointment of Paul Clement as amicus, a.k.a. a friend of the court. Andrew details the important decisions Judge Ho has before him as Mary drives home why this case will reverberate beyond the embattled New York Mayor. Then, they touch on the latest resignation- this one, from Denise Cheung, the chief of the criminal division in the DC US Attorney's office, after being asked to do something by the administration she believed was unsupportable.  And last up, Andrew and Mary look at the Supreme Court denial of a stay in the case involving Trump's firing of Hampton Dellinger, and the disconnect between DOJ representations about Elon Musk's role in court versus what Musk is saying and doing in practice.Further reading: Here is Andrew's piece on Just Security: Why the Rule of Law Depends on an Evidentiary Hearing in Mayor Eric Adams' Case.And HERE is the letter of resignation from the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in D.C.Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.

In today's all-new episode, our hosts Renato Mariotti and Asha Rangappa discuss the conflict of interest surrounding the peculiar case of NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and the larger implications for the entire Department of Justice going forward. Subscribe to our Patreon here, where paid members will get access to exclusive portions of this show. patreon.com/reallyamericanmedia We'll explore the recent legal drama surrounding Mayor Adams and unravel the many complexities of this intriguing case—including the appointment of a special prosecutor, and what this means for judicial impartiality. Renato kicks off the show with a breakdown of the surprising decision by Judge Ho, who appointed Paul Clement as special counsel—despite both the prosecution and defense agreeing to dismiss the case. This decision, echoing a past Supreme Court approach, raises serious questions about the role of the court in situations where both parties agree on a matter. Asha reflects on how this unexpected twist upholds the adversarial nature of the U.S. legal system, comparing it to the Supreme Court's practice of inviting the Solicitor General to argue cases where the government isn't directly involved. Our hosts discuss the possibility that Judge Ho might choose to dismiss the charges with prejudice, eliminating any future DOJ prosecutorial leverage. They also highlight the delicate balance judges must maintain in order to ensure impartiality and protect the court's integrity. We'll also reflect on historical examples of how the members of the judiciary have mobilized against politically motivated decisions in the past. The Eric Adams saga is but one microcosm of Trump's new tumultuous legal landscape, where political loyalty overshadows norms. In an era when court decisions and prosecutorial independence are highly politicized, this episode delivers a vital lesson about the significant legal and political upheaval ahead. In an era where judicial decisions and prosecutorial independence are ever more politicized, this episode is a must-listen for understanding the dynamics shaping our governance and liberty. Be sure to join us next week, as we continue to break down the complex legal issues and headlines that can't be confined to simple soundbites, right here on It's Complicated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americans celebrate the transfer of power, Will Imboden reflects on the Israel/Hamas ceasefire, and a conversation with Supreme Court advocate Paul Clement. Plus, Daniel Darling on challenging stereotypes, a woman discovers the government thinks she died, and the Tuesday morning news Support The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate. Additional support comes from Pensacola Christian College. Academic excellence, biblical worldview, affordable cost. go.pcci.edu/worldAnd from Chosen Gen Ministry, outfitting family discipleship through resources such as the Discipleship Parenting podcast. More at chosengenministry.org.

Real Madrid are the most successful team in the history of the Champions League/European Cup with 15 titles. But how have they achieved this? Steve Crossman and Guillem Balague explore Real's relationship with the competition, looking at their early dominance in the late 1950s, through to their six triumphs since 2014.We hear from former players Clarence Seedorf and Sami Khedira on what makes Real Madrid so special. And former coach Paul Clement joins the pod to give us insight into current head coach Carlo Ancelotti and their "La Decima" win in 2014 against Atletico Madrid.To watch the TV documentary, it is available on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m00276py/how-to-win-the-champions-league4:30 Real Madrid's early dominance 11:40 Clarence Seedorf on the Real Madrid DNA 22:10 Paul Clement on La Decima and Carlo Ancelotti 38:30 Sami Khedira on Real's recruitment 40:30 Can they continue their dominance?

An Interview with Paul Clement, Appellate Lawyer and Distinguished Lecturer in Law The US Constitution has long been revered by its citizens, yet also robustly challenged. Knowing that it would be tested, the founders created the judiciary to serve as an independent bulwark that would protect Americans' rights.  Yet the judiciary's independence has often been called into question lately, in part due to the country's ideological divide. Further, until recently, some of its authority had been ceded to the executive branch, creating an explosion of government regulation and intrusion into citizens' daily lives.  Few understand the state of the judiciary and the US Constitution better than Paul Clement, our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Clement has argued more cases before the Supreme Court than anyone in recent history, giving him distinct insights into future of the Court and the most impactful rulings of our time.  Topics Discussed on this Episode: ·         How Clement's midwestern roots have influenced his approach with the Court ·         The significance of the rule of law in America and how it's distinctive from other countries ·         The danger in straying from the US Constitution's intent ·         State of the US Supreme Court ·         Court packing  - its impact on the rule of law and the Court's make up ·         How the reversal of Chevron will impact government regulation ·         What universities should do to protect free speech and counter anti-Semitism ·         The legal profession distancing itself from controversial cases ·         How Americans can understand and uphold the rule of law Paul Clement served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States between 2005 and 2008. Prior to that, he served as Acting Solicitor General and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General. He is a partner at Clement & Murphy and a Bradley Foundation director. Clement is a 2013 Bradley Prize recipient.

On today's REX Daily Podcast, Dom talks with Phil Duncan from WeatherWatch about the forecast for Labour Day weekend... He talks with Will Wilding, GM and Stud Master at Te Mania Angus Stud, about its recent Yearling Bull Sale, being at the forefront of genetic innovation and being involved in a trial using the latest technology to measure how efficiently beef cattle convert feed into liveweight, as well as their greenhouse gas emissions... He talks with Paul Clement from Surfing for Farmers about setting up the West Coast branch, his involvement in the national body and his dairy farming operation in Hokitika... And he talks with Kat Kaiwai, owner and operator of Tairawhiti Contractors, about winning the Rural Women NZ Rural Champion Award and being recognised with a King's Service Medal for services to women, civil construction and her community.

“Prosecutors elicited perjury and a man's gonna go to his death. We can't allow that to happen.” – Paul Clement, October 9th, 2024.  This week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest chapter in the complex and prolonged legal battle involving Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma's death row since his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire. Following two independent investigations into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of material evidence, and a history of inadequate defense counsel, Oklahoma's Attorney General took the bold step of confessing to constitutional error in the case and supporting a new trial. But Oklahoma's State Supreme Court is pressing on with Glossip's execution, and so, on Wednesday morning, the High Court heard a case long on the appearance of process and short on actual justice. Don Knight, Richard Glossip's attorney of almost 10 years, provides insights into the flawed process, and the shocking revelations from newly discovered evidence boxes. This case highlights broader questions about justice, fairness, and trust in the American legal system…. Leading us to an update from the latest inductee to the Lady Justice Hall of Fame – Amicus listener Barbara Hausman-Smith, and her one-woman protest at One First Street. Listen to the end of the show to find out what links this 76-year-old grandmother from Maine to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and SCOTUS's landmark decision to legalize equal marriage in Obergefell in 2015.  Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Prosecutors elicited perjury and a man's gonna go to his death. We can't allow that to happen.” – Paul Clement, October 9th, 2024.  This week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest chapter in the complex and prolonged legal battle involving Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma's death row since his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire. Following two independent investigations into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of material evidence, and a history of inadequate defense counsel, Oklahoma's Attorney General took the bold step of confessing to constitutional error in the case and supporting a new trial. But Oklahoma's State Supreme Court is pressing on with Glossip's execution, and so, on Wednesday morning, the High Court heard a case long on the appearance of process and short on actual justice. Don Knight, Richard Glossip's attorney of almost 10 years, provides insights into the flawed process, and the shocking revelations from newly discovered evidence boxes. This case highlights broader questions about justice, fairness, and trust in the American legal system…. Leading us to an update from the latest inductee to the Lady Justice Hall of Fame – Amicus listener Barbara Hausman-Smith, and her one-woman protest at One First Street. Listen to the end of the show to find out what links this 76-year-old grandmother from Maine to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and SCOTUS's landmark decision to legalize equal marriage in Obergefell in 2015.  Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Prosecutors elicited perjury and a man's gonna go to his death. We can't allow that to happen.” – Paul Clement, October 9th, 2024.  This week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest chapter in the complex and prolonged legal battle involving Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma's death row since his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-hire. Following two independent investigations into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of material evidence, and a history of inadequate defense counsel, Oklahoma's Attorney General took the bold step of confessing to constitutional error in the case and supporting a new trial. But Oklahoma's State Supreme Court is pressing on with Glossip's execution, and so, on Wednesday morning, the High Court heard a case long on the appearance of process and short on actual justice. Don Knight, Richard Glossip's attorney of almost 10 years, provides insights into the flawed process, and the shocking revelations from newly discovered evidence boxes. This case highlights broader questions about justice, fairness, and trust in the American legal system…. Leading us to an update from the latest inductee to the Lady Justice Hall of Fame – Amicus listener Barbara Hausman-Smith, and her one-woman protest at One First Street. Listen to the end of the show to find out what links this 76-year-old grandmother from Maine to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and SCOTUS's landmark decision to legalize equal marriage in Obergefell in 2015.  Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marty sits down with Caitlin Long to discuss how Elizabeth Warren and crew kicked off financial panic by targeting crypto banks. Caitlin on Twitter: https://x.com/CaitlinLong_ Custodia: https://custodiabank.com/ Paul Clement amicus brief: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca10.88322/gov.uscourts.ca10.88322.10011074966.0.pdf Custodia brief: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca10.88322/gov.uscourts.ca10.88322.148.0.pdf 0:00 - Intro 1:39 - Overview on the Silvergate situation 6:13 - First highlight from the document 10:23 - Recap on Silvergate from the beginning 15:50 - River & Unchained 17:05 - Why crypto banks are targeted 22:35 - Stories from the legal frontline 25:17 - Architects of Choke Point 2.0 and the damage they caused 39:11 - Will justice be served? 45:29 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite 47:06 - Crypto was the target and taxpayers felt the pain 54:51 - Political possibilities 1:03:34 - Pushing back on state overreach 1:13:46 - Clearing the way for mining 1:16:49 - The banks can't handle bitcoin 1:20:25 - Get the word out Shoutout to our sponsors: River https://river.com/tftc Unchained https://unchained.com/concierge/ Zaprite https://zaprite.com/tftc Gradually, Then Suddenly https://thesaifhouse.com/gradually TFTC Merch is Available Shop Now: https://merch.tftc.io Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.comOne of the most consequential developments of the last Supreme Court Term was the overruling of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the 40-year-old precedent directing courts to defer to agencies' reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. It came about through two cases: Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, argued by Roman Martinez, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, argued by former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement (a past podcast guest).Today I'm pleased to be joined by Roman Martinez. One of the leading Supreme Court advocates of his generation, Martinez, 45, has argued 14 cases before the Court. But none has been as consequential—or controversial—as the aptly named Relentless.How does Martinez respond to claims that Relentless will have relentlessly negative consequences for American society? We explore the implications of the overturning of Chevron—along with Martinez's clerkships for then-Judge Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts, his thoughts on the old versus new SCOTUS argument formats, his style as a Supreme Court advocate, and his “secret weapon” in preparing for high-court appearances—in the latest Original Jurisdiction podcast.Show Notes:* Roman Martinez bio, Latham & Watkins* Roman Martinez profile, Chambers and Partners* 40 Under 40: Roman Martinez, Washington Business JournalPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com.

The latest episode of the Argyle Podcast is available to listen to!Super Frank Nouble.Not many footballers, have played for 19 clubs, featuring in the top six of divisions in England, spent two years in China and has set up their own Academy. Well, Frank Nouble has amongst many other things.Growing up in south London, he and his brother Joel, both signed for Chelsea in the early 2000s. Frank flourished, under the guidance of Paul Clement and Brendan Rodgers. Blues legend Gianfranco Zola convinced him to swap Stamford Bridge for Upton Park and a three year spell followed. It was here that Frank began to rack up club after club.Frank had already played in three countries and 17 clubs by the time he appeared at Home Park in the summer of 2020 and despite a goalscoring debut, he never managed to stake a claim in Green.Even though he spent less than a season at Argyle, the impact the club had on him and his family was immense and in Frank's words, “the club is incredible.”This is the story of Frank Nouble.The podcast will also available wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. Click here for the RSS feed.

150 years ago the now familiar QWERTY keyboard was first used. It has become a staple of every desk and laptop across the country since then, with some letters getting more love than others. Paul Clement has been writing about this in today's Irishman's Diary in the Irish Times and joins Seán to discuss the history of the layout.

Steve Crossman is joined by John Murray, Chris Sutton and Paul Clement to reflect on Real Madrid's 2-0 victory over Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League Final. The team, live from Wembley, discuss Kroos' final game, Bellingham's impact at Los Blancos, all whilst witnessing the Real Madrid trophy presentation.Timecodes: 00:09 Intro/full time reaction 03:45 Kroos' retirement 08:20 Trophy lift 17:00 Real Madrid in the Champions League 21:55 Jude Bellingham at Los Blancos

14 time winners Real Madrid take on tournament surprise Borussia Dortmund at Wembley tonight - and you can hear it live on talkSPORT! Rio Ferdinand has his say on Jadon Sancho and Joe Cole charts the success of Jude Bellingham. Paul Clement reveals he was with Carlo Ancelotti yesterday and gives us insight into what he's like behind the scenes. Joe Cole and Peter Crouch have their say ahead of England's Euros. Eddie Hearn talks about his relationship with Frank Warren. Ally McCoist lists his talkSPORT 5v5. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 16th Amendment gives power to congress to “lay and collect taxes.”  After all, a country has to have an ability to raise revenue. When it comes to that revenue, we have had a tradition of paying taxes on income, not the value of an investment, like paying taxes when we sell a few shares of stock in a company and not on the growth of that stock every year we own it.  Those are called realized gains.  There is discussion in the federal government to change that and tax unrealized gains meaning we would have to pay taxes on the increase in value in our homes or investments even before we sell that possession.  The genesis of this Supreme Court case was a provision in the tax cuts package passed and signed into law in 2017 to help pay for those cuts.  We know, tax code and tax law are confusing.  Fortunately, to help us navigate this confusing topic, we have a very special guest with an impressive legal career.  Paul Clement is the country's former Solicitor General (the Department of Justice's chief lawyer in front of the Supreme Court), now in private practice.  He has argued more than 100 cases in front of the Supreme Court, more than any other lawyer since 2000, in or out of government.

In this episode, Blaine sits down with our Editor/Producer Paul Clement who was the Nassau County Runner Up in his weight class in wrestling this year. The episode focuses on the injury that Paul had in the County finals and his recovery.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.comWelcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here. Thanks!How many Supreme Court advocates wind up with three or more arguments in the same Term? Some of my past podcast guests—like Lisa Blatt, Paul Clement, Neal Katyal, and Kannon Shanmugam—can claim this distinction. But it's very, very rare (especially if you don't work—or have never worked—in the Office of the Solicitor General).What's even more rare is having three oral arguments in your very first Term arguing before the Court. But Easha Anand, the 38-year-old co-director of Stanford Law School's renowned Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, just pulled off this feat—which is why I was so eager to have her as a guest on the Original Jurisdiction podcast.How did Easha wind up in law school, after a promising journalism career that included stints at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Wall Street Journal? How did she wind up with three Supreme Court arguments in the same Term? And what are her three pieces of advice for first-time SCOTUS advocates?Listen to our podcast interview to find out. Congratulations to Easha on the unanimous win in her first argued case, thanks to her for joining me, and good luck to her in what I predict will be a long and successful career arguing at One First Street.Show Notes:* Easha Anand bio, Stanford Law School* Stanford's Anand Argues Whistleblower Case in High Court Debut, by Lydia Wheeler for Bloomberg Law* Supreme Court Bar's Breakout Lawyer This Term Started Out in Journalism, by Jimmy Hoover for the National Law JournalPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com.

Paul Corry and Mark Langdon on more rumours of a new Ireland manager and Ireland Women's friendly against Wales tonight; Adam McKendry of the Belfast Telegraph talks Casement Park, and jockey Danny Mullins on the countdown to Cheltenham! Game On.

Here's another chance to hear my interview with Paul Clement from season one.To get somebody breaking down what matchday is like at an extraordinary level of sport is rare, but that's what you get here in part two. The tactical presentation that gave Paul palpitations; the reason they can't leave the hotel as a team; the Ronaldo effect in the tunnel before the game; the staggered nature of the celebrations – and why, at Madrid, they never last too long.Subscribe to The Big Interview YouTube channel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here's another chance to hear my interview with Paul Clement from season one.Season 2013/14 was a special one for Real Madrid. It was the season of La Decima, their 10th European crown. Paul, assistant to Carlo Ancelotti, saw it all. And this is his account. From a fastidious breakdown of a typical day on the training ground with Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane and Fernando Hierro, through the positional alterations and squad characters that lifted the team at crucial times. Enjoy part one of a fascinating conversation.Subscribe to The Big Interview YouTube channel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last episode of 2023, Cydney and Blaine sit down with our Editor/Producer Paul Clement Jr. and Ari Guerra from the Varsity Wrestling team.  They discuss their strong start to the season, the respect that Coach Marrero has garnered from the team and their expectations for this season.  Paul and Ari have a close matchup in this week's Bear Spot segment.  Tune in to see who won.  

THE TIM JONES AND CHRIS ARPS SHOW  0:00 SEG 1 Today's Speaker's Stump Speech is brought to you by https://www.hansenstree.com/  and is about families trying to get out of Israel with little help from America 17:04 SEG 2 Zack Smith, Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and Co-host of the SCOTUS101 Podcast, talks about having a good faith debate at the SLU Law Center down the street | NYU law student has job offer withdrawn after posting anti-Israel message | Israel's Supreme Court | The Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX trial | Crime is out of control in Washington D.C. https://twitter.com/tzsmith  32:41 SEG 3 The Heritage Supreme Court Preview on the SCOTUS 101 Podcast had Paul Clement and Lisa Blatt. Listen to it here https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/scotus-101-heritages-annual-supreme-court-preview   https://newstalkstl.com/    FOLLOW TIM - https://twitter.com/SpeakerTimJones    FOLLOW CHRIS - https://twitter.com/chris_arps    24/7 LIVESTREAM - http://bit.ly/newstalkstlstream    RUMBLE - https://rumble.com/NewsTalkSTL   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Another term is here! Check out what to expect when Zack hosts veteran Supreme Court advocates Paul Clement and Lisa Blatt to discuss several of the biggest cases the Court will hear this term.Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @scotus101 and @tzsmith. And please send questions, comments, or ideas for future episodes to scotus101@heritage.org.Don't forget to leave a 5-star rating.Stay caffeinated and opinionated with a SCOTUS 101 mug. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.comWelcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking on the button below. Thanks!Looking back over my time at Above the Law, one of the things I'm most proud of is the talent I discovered. My first full-time hire was Elie Mystal, now the justice correspondent on The Nation, frequent television commentator, and author of the bestselling Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution. My second full-time hire was Kashmir Hill, now at the New York Times, who has a book of her own: Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It, published last month by Penguin Random House.Your Face Belongs to Us is about the future of facial-recognition technology, an incredibly powerful tool with great promise and peril. The book is a story about privacy and technology, but it's also a story about the law and legal issues. The future of facial recognition will be shaped profoundly by legal responses. Can we craft laws that allow society to take advantage of the benefits of this technology while at the same time preserving the privacy that it threatens?In my podcast interview with Kashmir, I pushed back on some of the more dystopian elements of Your Face Belongs to Us. I pressed her on whether she might be underestimating the positive aspects of facial-recognition technology, such as its use by law enforcement (such as tracking down January 6 rioters for arrest and prosecution). We analyzed the crucial role played by lawyers in the story of Clearview AI, the mysterious startup at the heart of the book; they include Paul Clement, Floyd Abrams, Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, and attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). And we explored stories of facial-recognition technology gone wrong, including innocent people arrested for crimes they didn't commit because of false positives on Clearview and similar software.Thanks to Kashmir for joining me, as well as for her important work exploring the legal and policy aspects of a transformative but troubling technology.Show Notes:* Kashmir Hill bio, author website* Kashmir Hill archives, The New York Times* Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It, AmazonPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com.

In the first episode of season 5 of the Baldwin Bruins Sports Podcast, the new staff introduces themselves. This year, our team is Co-Hosts, Cydney Herrera and Blaine Harding along with our Editor/Producer, Paul Clement. Tune in!

USPTO Director Kathi Vidal's decision to issue the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) is the latest major controversy surrounding the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  The American Invents Act (AIA) created the PTAB to supposedly provide a cheaper, faster alternative to district court patent litigation.  However, the PTAB quickly gained a reputation for being a patent “death squad” that allows defendants to repeatedly challenge the same patents until those patents are invalidated. During the last administration, former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu tried to correct that by limiting when patents could be challenged at the PTAB.  Because those changes never finished going through the federal government's rulemaking process, Vidal was able to quickly roll them back.  The ANPRM now presents a litany of its own proposals for fixing fix how the PTAB operates and heated opposition on all sides. Nicholas Matich joins Eli to talk about the ANPRM and what's likely to happen with its proposals.  Nick, who is now Principal at the patent litigation powerhouse McKool Smith, served as USPTO's general counsel under Iancu after working at the White House and as Deputy GC of the OMB.  This provides him with an unmatched understanding of how the rulemaking process actually works for proposals emanating from the USPTO.  Nick and Eli also discuss: What Nick learned from working with Viet Dinh and/or Paul Clement at Bancroft PLLC How the OMB reviews & approves agency rules Serving as USPTO's GC Advice for influencing USPTO's rules Iancu's Fintiv factors & how to explain swift reversal Why the ANPRM was a mistake Advice for future USPTO Directors  

In this week's episode, Aaron sits down with Paul Clement Jr. and Jasmin Tiong-Smith from the Boys and Girls Lacrosse team. They chat about their seasons, playoff lacrosse, the differences between boys and girls lacrosse and so much more. Tune in.

The Texas legislature meets once every two years, and they are spending a great deal of this session on bills that would advance religion. We return to our conversation on the Ten Commandments bill in Texas, as we saw a groundswell of opposition to the bill when it headed to the state House. Amanda and Holly take a look at some viral moments, and we share an exclusive conversation with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who spoke in opposition to this bill as a lawmaker, a former schoolteacher, and a Christian.  SHOW NOTES: Segment 1 (starting at 00:38): Why are we still talking about this? Last week's program on the Ten Commandments bill in Texas (Senate Bill 1515) is episode 20 of season 4. You can listen to it on our website. We played the viral video of state Rep. James Talarico questioning the author of the bill. You can watch it on Twitter. An advocate in Waco put together this petition opposing SB 1515, available for Texans who oppose the bill as people of faith to sign.   Segment 2 (starting at 12:39): A conversation with Texas state Rep. James Talarico You can see video clips of the interview with Amanda and Texas state Rep. James Talarico in a Twitter thread she posted. It is also available on YouTube and on a reel posted by the @endchristiannationalism Instagram account.   Segment 3 (starting at 27:32): Putting this discussion into focus For additional resources on the various ways religions interpret and list the commandments, a chart from New World Encyclopedia shows how different traditions order them. You can see a list of the 613 Mitzvot (Commandments) here. Visit this website for a side-by-side comparison of the Ten Commandments as listed in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20. We played a clip of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioning Paul Clement in 2005 during oral arguments in the Van Orden v. Perry case. You can listen to the full argument here, and the clip we played is from 51:24 in the audio recording of the argument. Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC's generous donors. You can support these conversations with a gift to BJC. 

How do you keep a changing room of Galácticos happy? What is it like for a former PE teacher from England to coach alongside Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane? Paul Clement discusses how Real Madrid came back to win a dramatic first ‘One City' Champions League final against Atletico Madrid in 2014.

Stamford Chidge & Jonathan Kydd are joined by Martin Wickham to look back at a frustrating draw against Everton at the Bridge.In part one we ask why did Potter shut up shop at 1-0? Was it Brightonesque or an attempt at game management? We look at the substitutions. Gallagher for Pulisic? Why not Mudryk? Cheek for Kovacic and Chalobah for Fofana - understandable but Chukwuemeka for Felix? In part two we look at the poor defending by Koulibaly and Kepa's errors for Everton's 2nd goal. The result was frustrating and felt like a defeat and it seems like when Chelsea don't win the negativity starts. However, Chelsea looked fluid for much of the match, although still profligate and the defence was immense bar the two errors for the goals. So, are we getting in a stew about nothing? In part three we give a very warm welcome to Garry Hayes and Ceri Levy from The Chels podcast to talk about their new project: The Blueprint: How Chelsea FC Changed Football, a brand-new narrative podcast series covering the rise of Chelsea FC and the club's role in shaping modern football, has debuted with an extremely rare and exclusive interview with former Chelsea FC owner Ken Bates.From fearing for their very existence to conquering Europe and winning the Champions League all within two decades, the story of modern Chelsea FC is unlike any other. The Blueprint tells the inside story of how the club has shaped modern football.From the boardroom to the dressing room, the press room to terraces, key figures who played their part or watched history being made before their very eyes, open up and reveal all in this narrative podcast series.Featuring Frank Lampard, Ken Bates, Jody Morris, Petr Cech, Gary Cahill, Paul Clement, Scott Minto, Tore Andre Flo and many more.The two-part Blueprint Ken Bates interview is available on Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon and all major podcast providers. The full eight-part series will be available from May 2023Follow Garry @garryhayes and Ceri @cerilevy and The Blueprint @Blueprint_pod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement has argued 100+ cases before the United States Supreme Court, but we really need SCOTUS to have him back to argue the merits of "chevron deference" in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises. Plus, Silicon Valley's Congressman Ro Khanna joins Hugh to discuss the "Blue Bank Bailout" of SVB and Signature Bank.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you enjoyed my very first blog, Underneath Their Robes (2004-2006)—which I wrote under a pseudonym while working as a federal prosecutor, pretending to be a female associate in Biglaw obsessed with federal judges and fashion—then you'll enjoy this latest podcast episode. How many podcasts combine analysis of Supreme Court oral arguments with discussion of pumps versus cowboy boots versus Mary Janes? (For the record, my guest made the first reference to shoes; I didn't go there unprompted.)My latest guest is—of course—the inimitable Lisa Blatt, chair of the Supreme Court and appellate practice at Williams & Connolly, the legendary litigation firm. Lisa needs no introduction to Original Jurisdiction devotees, so I'll mention just two distinctions. First, Lisa has argued 43 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, more than any other woman in history. Second, she has won 37 of those 43 cases (86 percent), which makes her one of the most consistently victorious SCOTUS advocates. (Trivia question: is there a Supreme Court lawyer currently practicing who has argued that many cases before the high court with that high a win percentage?)In our ebullient and enjoyable interview, Lisa and I covered her special relationship with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for whom she clerked; how she rose to the top of the male-dominated Supreme Court bar, as a woman from Texas who “didn't go to a fancy law school”; how she developed her distinctive, famously unfiltered style of oral argument; and why she prefers cowboy boots over stiletto heels. I hope you have as much fun listening to this episode as Lisa and I had recording it.Show Notes:* Lisa Blatt bio, Williams & Connolly LLP* Reflections of a Lady Lawyer, Texas Law Review* Lisa S. Blatt: Cases argued, OyezPrefer reading to listening? A transcript of the entire episode appears below (although you really should listen to this one, since as is the case with her SCOTUS arguments, a transcript doesn't do Lisa justice).Two quick notes:* This transcript has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter meaning, e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning (although I've done less clean-up than usual to better preserve the flavor of our fabulous and freewheeling conversation).* Because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email. To view the entire post, simply click on "View entire message" in your email app.David Lat: Hello, and welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to by visiting davidlat.substack.com.You're listening to the seventh episode of this podcast, recorded on Wednesday, November 30. My normal schedule is to post episodes every other Wednesday.I must confess, with all due respect to my past guests, that this episode might be the most fun one yet—and I owe it all to my guest. Lawyers are known for being risk-averse and many carry that over into their interviews, not wanting to say anything that might get them in trouble or rub someone the wrong way. That's definitely not true of my latest guest, who's known for her refreshing candor, whether you're chatting with her at a cocktail party or whether she's arguing before the United States Supreme Court.Lisa Blatt serves as Chair of Williams & Connolly's Supreme Court and appellate practice. She has argued 43 cases before the Supreme Court, more than any other woman in history. And she has prevailed in 37 of those 43 cases, giving her a win percentage of 86 percent—which has to be one of the highest around, at least among advocates who have argued before the Court as often as she has. She has won numerous awards, including Litigator of the Year from the American Lawyer in 2021.Lisa graduated from the University of Texas for both college and law school, summa cum laude both times. She clerked for then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the D.C. Circuit and then joined Williams & Connolly as an associate. After government service, at the Department of Energy and then the Office of the Solicitor General, where she worked for 13 years, Lisa returned to private practice, and in 2019, she came full circle by returning to Williams & Connolly.In our lively and wide-ranging conversation, Lisa and I discussed her unique relationship with the late Justice Ginsburg, for whom she clerked; her distinctive approach to Supreme Court oral advocacy, including her thoughts on trying humor with the justices; why she loves coaching debate; and why she thinks lawyers should not be passionate about their work.Without further ado, here's my interview of Lisa Blatt.DL: Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. I'm honored to have you on the podcast.Lisa Blatt: Well, thank you. I am honored to be here.DL: So if I had to guess where you're from based on meeting you at a cocktail party or hearing you argue before the Court, I would've guessed you're one of us, a New Yorker or a Northeasterner. But you're from Texas.LB: That's right. Both of my parents are from New York, and I grew up listening to the word “y'all” with a very thick New York accent, so everyone assumes I'm from New York. But no, I was born and raised in Texas, West Texas. I moved all over Texas, UT for undergrad and law school, and a lot of my personality is because I'm from Texas. And I think I'm on my 12th pair of cowboy boots?DL: Oh wow, okay!LB: I'm definitely a Texan. Part of the way I talk just is because my parents are both from New York.DL: That makes sense. And you have a kind of candor, although I guess Texans are pretty candid too, aren't they?LB: I don't think my candor comes from being from Texas! I don't know where that comes from, actually—no one in my family's like that.DL: Fair enough. So going to your upbringing in Texas, were there any hints that you might become a lawyer? I believe your parents were not lawyers.LB: Right. Dad was a software engineer, Mom a stay-home mom until she became a psychologist. But no, I think it was Thurgood Marshall, something about his story of Brown—I still get sort of teary when I think about it—something about his story of what he did in Brown v. Board of Education, being the lawyer, the advocate, not the justice. I just wanted to be a lawyer and I did debate, speech and debate starting maybe in seventh grade, I was always very into debate and just knew that I wanted to go to law school.DL: What events did you do in speech and debate?LB: Now it's embarrassing, but policy debate, which is all that fast talking, and I had to unlearn that many years later. But yeah, I did policy debate and I spent many years coaching debate, so I do love the art of advocacy and argumentation and trying to persuade someone.DL: I read in one of your profiles or interviews that you do coach or did coach debate. What was that like for you? It seems like you're very competitive about coaching debate?LB: No, actually that's not right. I'm very passionate about coaching debate, and I feel very strongly about coaching; it's what I would definitely do if I wasn't a lawyer, and I feel very passionate about helping children and kids. But I don't think it's about winning—and that's one of the things you have to teach kids, because they just want a trophy. So much in life when it comes to competition and jobs is arbitrary and capricious. One of the things that is so important for us, even adults, to understand is that some stuff is out of our control. If I can just teach one child how to stand up straight and feel good about an argument, then that's a home run. So I love everything about coaching debate.Also, the different perspective was just a huge thing, getting a bunch of kids in a room. I've taught middle-school debate and high-school debate, and I would say my favorite was middle school because they're not yet completely sold on their politics and ideology, and trying to just get them to open up about things like background checks or hate speech or should dodgeball be banned in schools because it's violent. Just anything, any topic—nowadays not all topics are as safe as others, but just lots of fun topics—which tastes better, Coke or Pepsi, anything that you can just form an argument about and how to organize your responses.Look how excited I get! Just the notion of being able to teach this in a way that is helpful, especially for women, and a lot of kids are very insecure at this age, and everything about trying to show them that they can be confident is just the best thing in the whole world.DL: Speech and debate was huge for me in that respect. I was a very nerdy kid, very insecure, but when I found something and I enjoyed it, and I was good at it, it was a big boost for my confidence. So your husband's a lawyer, you're a lawyer, I believe you have two kids—are either of them into speech and debate?LB: One's in law school, they both did debate, and the other one's just applying and now getting into law school. So we're going to be Blatt & Associates, or Blatt Blatt Blatt & Blatt. David, my husband, no debate, he finds it completely foreign, but both Daniel and Rachel did debate.DL: Excellent. So in doing my research, I did come across your wedding announcement when you and David got married. I'm curious: did you give much thought to the whole “take his name or not take his name” thing?LB: My maiden name is Schiavo, so I was so eager, I would've married anybody with any last name—as soon as somebody gave me a proposal, the answer was yes. So yes, I gave a lot of thought to taking his last name. Everyone mispronounced Schiavo. Actually its direct translation is “slave” in Italian. So I was happy to [take his name], I happen to love Blatt, which rhymes with your last name. It's so great.DL: It's very easy to spell. The only issue is one or two t's, but absolutely.LB: I'm actually fine with people—a lot of people still know me as Lisa Schiavo, and that's fine too—but I like being Lisa Blatt.DL: So as we talked about, you went to UT for college and law school, summa cum laude, did super well. And in some ways your first big break, I would say, was clerking for then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the D.C. Circuit. She was a great advocate and a great justice, but some say she wasn't warm and fuzzy with her clerks. But based on your great piece for the Texas Law Review—Reflections of a Lady Lawyer, which I'm going to put in the show notes—it sounds like you had a fairly close relationship with her?LB: Extremely, because I couldn't talk about the law with her! I'm being completely serious. Both my co-clerks were absolutely brilliant people from Harvard, on the Harvard Law Review, but that was just never going to go anywhere with me, to talk with her about the law. And so I'm probably one of her few clerks where it was shoes, jewelry, or clothes. I could not keep up with her, and we talked about fashion.When it was one of her huge anniversaries, it may have been her tenth year on the Court, twenty years on the bench, there were only two people, maybe three people who gave a toast, and I was one of them. And everyone talked about all her this, that, and the other thing, legal giant—and I spent the whole time roasting her about how skinny she was and all her jewelry and how she was an airhead, and she was cracking up. But she liked people who made her laugh, and I think I made her laugh.DL: That makes perfect sense. Look at [her late husband] Marty, look at [her good friend] Justice Scalia, and you. She was somewhat reserved or introverted, but she was drawn to people who could bring her out.LB: She's so hard to talk to about… I just couldn't talk to her about the law, and I was probably her least productive and least intelligent clerk. I remembered at this toast I did for her, I showed everyone the bench memo I did for her, it was a made-up thing, but she took only the caption—a draft opinion, I drafted the opinion, and she cut out the caption and used that for the opinion. It's true, it was a true story, but I did it on a big blowup poster and it was very funny. And I was also her first and last clerk from University of Texas, because she's such a snob, a super school snob….DL: That is true. Yeah….LB: Some of them are very, very specific about their Ivy League schools. But I loved her, and I do think it was a different relationship than she had with other clerks. Very different.DL: That makes perfect sense. You mentioned you both were into or bonded over fashion. Did you have similar or different styles?LB: No, she was so weird! She would just—come on, she wore all those caftans, at least back in when she was on the D.C. Circuit. Actually, now I think I dress like her because I love bright colors, and she definitely is where I got my “you know what, just wear it, own it.” Because she would show up in the strangest outfits and she just like looked very happy and I thought, “Wow, I wanna be her, she's beautiful.” She just loved life and travel and clothes. She definitely had a unique clothing style. I have a bunch of Mary Jane shoes that I have now after she passed away that I call my “RBG shoes.”DL: Oh, interesting…. Mary Janes, and cowboy boots. I would've thought you would go for some pumps, with three- or four-inch heels or something?LB: I'm so tall, I can't do it. No, I can't do heels, really. Cowboy boots are my thing.DL: Okay, fair enough. So turning to what you're most well-known for, arguing before the Supreme Court, I believe you have argued more Supreme Court cases than any woman in history. You noted that in your Texas Law Review piece, but I noticed that on your Williams and Connolly bio, it doesn't say that. Was that intentional? Do you want to be known as a Supreme Court advocate and not a female Supreme Court advocate?LB: Uh, no. How about a “female Jewish funny old-lady Supreme Court advocate”? No, I didn't even know that, David. I guess I could put [it] on my website. I don't know if anyone cares, so, no intentionality, no, no intentionality at all. I am very proud of the fact that I have more arguments than any woman in history, but I expect and hope to see other women pass me up very shortly, and I assume they will.DL: Do you happen to know who would be number two?LB: Well, I'm hoping it'll be Elizabeth Prelogar when she gets out of the SG's office.DL: That's right, that's right. She is racking up a lot of arguments.LB: And she's gloriously fantastic.DL: She's amazing.LB: She's amazing. But there are plenty of women out there. Well, [my partner] Sarah Harris, my right-hand person, she's far more talented than I am. Because I'm a little bit different than other people, I hope that my style doesn't necessarily rub off, but I hope that what rubs off on people is that somebody who didn't go to Yale or Harvard and who lacked a lot of self-confidence and wasn't really groomed for anything can just do well. I was incredibly insecure for so much of my professional life. And so I very much want to be a model for people.DL: And you write about that very eloquently in your Texas Law Review essay, which again, I really commend to people.I'm curious, your Williams & Connolly bio does note that you've argued 43 cases before the Court, and you've won 37. And as I recall, didn't you have a very long win streak before you notched that first loss?LB: Yeah, I was in the twenties, and Ted Olson gave me a case to lose. Yeah!DL: And let me ask—are you the “winningest” Supreme Court advocate with a certain number of arguments below your belt, like 25 or 30 or 40? Your win percentage is something like 90 percent, 88 percent, something like that.LB: I don't know….DL: One thing that's interesting about the Supreme Court, and I think you alluded to this earlier—you said so much of life is arbitrary and capricious and luck, and I would argue that despite your amazing talents as a Supreme Court litigator, so many Supreme Court cases are decided based on political or jurisprudential or other factors independent of the argument style. How important would you say briefing and argument are? I know this is a very vague question….LB: I'll break it down two ways. I disagree on the jurisprudential [point], except for abortion, guns, race, and religion. Everything else, I think, is open to grab, although you could make some points about statutory construction and administrative law—so you're increasingly more correct, but I still think that there are plenty of cases that are completely up for grabs on bankruptcy or even arbitration these days. Just random commercial cases or civil cases, I don't think it's that ideological. I will give you on—I don't think the Court needs to be briefed on how to rule in an abortion case, you're just completely right.Then there's oral argument, and whether that matters, and a lot of us who argue like to say it matters. At a minimum, I would say it matters in that you can lose a case at argument and you can go backwards. It's much harder to win a case at argument, but it's pretty easy to lose a lot of ground and lose a case at argument. And as you can tell now from the current format, the justices are just bursting with stamina in terms of how much they want to argue. It's like the cage has been opened, and I think they're going to go back to all-day argument soon.DL: Do you like the new approach?LB: How can you not?DL: I do, as a listener….LB: Because there's no time limit for them in the lightning round or whatever they call it—round robin, Justice Sotomayor just called it—and you can tell they're all sort of looking at each other like, “How much longer can I get away with?” The worst thing about the old style, where it was rapid fire and Justice Thomas was silent, is you just didn't learn that much about what their concerns were because it was so hard to get your point out, it was so hard to hear what every justice thinks. Now Justice Thomas is free and is so involved in argument, and all of them are, so you're just getting all of them now. The only problem with that is you're having nine conversations, so it's just turning into very long arguments. But the parties, who aren't lawyers, it's helpful for them to see the Court in action, so I like that, and for the public to see how hard they're working through the issues.DL: Absolutely—and I know this is a pending case, so we won't delve into the merits—but I would commend people to the argument in the Warhol case [Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith], which you and Roman Martinez and Yaira Dubin recently argued. It's a great case. It's super-interesting. The argument went on for quite some time, but you really do see the justices grappling with the issues in a very earnest and non-ideological way. It's a great argument.LB: One of the things I don't like talking about in argument is the law, so to me, those cases are the most fun, because you can talk about how the case matters in the real world, what it means to people, the public, the parties, and you're not so much talking about what some word in the U.S. Code means.DL: Exactly. That case covered everything from Darth Vader to Mondrian to The Jeffersons, and so it was a really fun case for folks to listen to.Turning to advocacy and your style of arguing before the Court, which we alluded to, Sarah Isgur of the Advisory Opinions podcast said that nobody should try to imitate Lisa Blatt, even though Sarah thinks you're an amazing advocate, nobody should try to imitate Lisa. And I agree that there's a sort of “don't try this at home, kids” quality to your argument. Would you say you have a distinct style of argument, and if so, how is it?LB: Well, it upsets me that so many people say don't try to emulate her because… it just upsets me to hear that. I'd like….DL: I would be flattered! I'd be like, I'm inimitable, I'm sui generis, you can't imitate me!LB: One of the things that you have to do when you're a Supreme Court advocate or any advocate is make sure everything you say you can back up. If somebody wants to say, “wait a minute, did you just say what you said,” you're going to go, “I absolutely said what I said, and I'll repeat it again,” and that has always been my philosophy.It's true I think some people think I maybe go right up to the edge, but I'm okay with that. Sometimes I say things and I'm like, oh my God, why did I say that? In the Romag case with Neal Katyal, that was definitely one of my more notable ones, where I said, “I think you might have to cut me off.” The Chief just looked at me like, “Are you crazy?”So I say things like that and I'm like, what? Or “I didn't go to a fancy law school,” and I'm like, well, why did I say that? So things like that, I'll regret saying, and you shouldn't say things like “I didn't go to a fancy law school,” so I would never recommend people repeat that. But I would think that lots of people make statements and arguments that they're like, I should have said it differently, so I don't know why I should be any different.What I guess is upsetting to me is my style, if it's unique, it's that I have this very strong view that truth is the best form of advocacy and for someone to have a different view—it's disturbing to me. Why would you not be incredibly honest and direct with the Court? That's all I have to say, and I think everyone would agree. I don't know whether it was Irv Gornstein or Michael Dreeben [who said it], but Paul Clement and I often talk about this, that oral argument is truth serum, so whatever someone tells you to do, what you think is really going to come out. I've tried to change my style, I would like to be different, but it's very hard for me to not be the way I am.DL: Well, let me give you some examples. I totally agree with you on the point about fidelity to the law and the facts, and I think that if someone were to compare you to Paul Clement, your former colleague in the SG's office, who would also be identified as one of the best Supreme Court litigators of all time….LB: Paul is the best. Let's just be clear.DL: Okay, well, fair enough….LB: Paul is magical in a completely different way. His magic is the way he engages with cases and doctrine, and I've never seen anything like itDL: What would you say is your special sauce or superpower?LB: I don't think I have one! I think, I'm not trying to be funny, but I think that they sometimes are laughing, like a fair amount of times are laughing. And so I don't know why that is, that they think it's funny, the things I say.DL: I think this is another aspect of your argument that I think people say don't try to imitate. Usually when people say, well, what are the rules of appellate or Supreme Court advocacy, they say, well, listen to the judges or justices, don't talk over them, really try to be responsive, [and] people also say generally don't try humor. But you do try humor, and it almost always works.LB: No, I don't try it, I don't try it! That's, no, you never should try humor! Absolutely. Never. Try. Humor. It would be a disaster. And can you imagine making a bad joke? That is the worst thing to do. Don't try humor. I think sometimes I say things…. I remember the first time I said something that got a hysterical laugh, it was an argument in the gas tank case [United States v. Flores-Montano], which is mentioned in the Guide for Counsel. Definitely considered, I know at least by Justice Ginsburg, it was one of her favorite arguments, and it was a glorious argument, but in the course of the argument, Justice Scalia said, I said something and he goes, “Is that public?” And I said, “I just made it public.” And they all just broke out laughing. And I'm like, I'm not trying to be funny, but sometimes that bluntness and directness, it's funny, but I'm not trying to be funny. Does that make sense?DL: Well, so when you made the funny quip in the Warhol argument about the airbrushed photos of Lisa Blatt, you were not trying to be funny? Because it was funny.LB: Nor was I trying to be funny when I said the court was “yakking.”DL: Yes. That was also great!LB: The minute that came out, I was like, ah, how do I take that back? And they thought it was hysterical, but I wasn't trying to be funny. Why would anybody say that? Intentionally?DL: Okay, okay, fair enough.LB: But, so, I think it's just quirky. I don't, maybe, I don't know what the word is. I don't know.DL: When people say, don't try to imitate you, I don't think they're saying anything about your fidelity to the facts or the law or the record. I think you and Paul are pretty much toe to toe on that. But you have very different styles. He's conversational and you are conversational, but you're much more… lively, no offense to Paul, you're more sort of… in your face, I guess? I don't know how to put it….LB: Oh, I don't know what I think of that. Paul is definitely just more eloquent and elegant and intellectual, and I'm just more, let's talk, let's roll up our sleeves.DL: And I think that would be your superpower. I think you have a way to just cut to the heart of the case, in a way, and to also play out the consequences. I know that we're deciding cases on the law, precedent, not policy, blah blah blah, but I think you're really great at unfolding [consequences]. I love the line you had in the B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District case about the cursing cheerleader, where you're saying near the end in your rebuttal, like, “judges, justices, don't do this!” in terms of setting forth a bad rule.LB: I said, “please don't do this to courts,” or “please don't do this to schools.” Yes, I said “please.” Okay. The minute I said “please,” it's like, I would highly recommend never saying, in any oral argument, “please.” But it did come out that way.DL: It was great!LB: Maybe it's just refreshing because nobody says “please.” Or I referred to North Korea and Russia. And so, but trust me, I am not trying to be entertaining because I strongly think that that is a disastrous move. You should never try to be that or try to be—you just can only be yourself.DL: Yes.LB: And so what you see at argument, I think with a lot of people is just someone's true self. And maybe it's because I didn't go to a fancy law school.DL: You mentioned in your Texas Law Review piece that it took you a while to learn to be yourself, that you tried on a couple of styles before settling on your current one?LB: Absolutely. Yes. That's why I feel the modeling and supporting younger people are extremely important. But how are you supposed to know this in your thirties? I didn't have the confidence and I hated everything about myself, so, yeah, I thought I would look at other, I guess, women and men and want to be like them. Maureen Mahoney, one of the best all-time advocates, everything about her is to die for. I couldn't be her if my life depended on it. And it was very hard for me to just accept the fact that I was never going to be that kind of lawyer or just always be a little different and not ever feel comfortable like in a suit, and just really…. I'm sure a lot of people feel this way, where they don't feel like they belong. This is not some great revelation. And so the sooner you can accept your weaknesses and lean into your strengths, the better off you are. So the more I can try to tell people that wherever that leads you, the better. It just took me a while, probably late thirties, early forties.DL: What were some of the styles you tried on before settling into your current one?LB: I grew up in the eighties, seventies and eighties. It was the suits, the, like, really uncomfortable suits, pantyhose, all that stuff, like uncomfortable shoes, not bright colors, or not speaking up, or worrying about how it comes out. I think the biggest thing that a lot of people won't do is admit they don't understand something. And I do that all the time at the meeting, I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about, I literally have no clue what you just said. And a lot of people would never do that. And I think I sat through so many meetings where I would just go, I have no idea what those people are talking about. And now I'll say it and maybe people think I'm dumb, but I don't care. I'd rather—I'm positive that there's probably someone in the room that didn't follow it either.DL: Yes, exactly. I think that's so true.LB: But you know what? Shame and humiliation drive so many people and the way they conduct themselves, and the sooner you can sort of laugh at yourself, the better off the world would be.DL: That's very true, very true. I'm curious, over your 40-plus arguments, is there a win that you're most proud of? You have won a lot of really interesting cases, but is there one, maybe one that we haven't heard of or have not heard as much about?LB: Yes, and it'll be probably, you know, a lot of people will get mad at this, and please don't hate me on social media, but the [Adoptive Couple v.] Baby Girl case.DL: Ah yes….LB: With the Adoptive Couple [case] that I did with Paul, it just took, you know, like two years into my life and it was just a long, long struggle. And so I am proud that we won that case. It was just involved, a child, a family, and so it was just, to me, a meaningful case. It was also, you know, definitely one of my more memorable oral arguments.DL: I remember that case. I re-listened to that one recently, and this was a case that was interpreting the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, which is now back before the Court. And you just had a really powerful line in there where you said something like, “Look, we're talking about children, we're not talking about property or something.” You had a really resonant line in that argument.LB: Yeah, so I think in that case, I think it's fair to say that I know this from inside sources that, you know, you could see that case in two ways: it was one about the law and one about the facts. Then you can take it from there, and I chose to argue the case about the facts. I think the ICWA case now before the Court is very much about the law.DL: Interesting.LB: It's just so—some cases are more about the facts than the law.DL: I think you won that case on the facts as well. There were a lot of facts, I think, that were not great for the other side.LB: It was a 5-4 case. It was just tough, and the argument was very tough. It was also just very meaningful for me because I did it with Paul who was, you know, such an inspiration, and I basically give Paul credit for my entire career. So it was just a huge deal to me to have him up there arguing with me.I also blame Paul because I was really restrained in the whole beginning of the argument and it looked like we were losing. And Paul is like, you know, you gotta keep, keep it under control. And right before I went up for rebuttal, I said, “Can I just let loose?” And he said, “Yeah, just do it.” So I don't know if he remembers it that way, but I always say, Paul told me just to let loose, so that's what I did.DL: I would say another one of your superpowers is you really bring it in the rebuttal. Rebuttal is sometimes kind of an afterthought, but your rebuttal in that case, your rebuttal in the BL v. Mahanoy Area School District Case….LB: No, Oklahoma [Carpenter v. Murphy] was the worst.DL: What do you mean by the worst?LB: Well, because I basically said, this will stimulate you, and then repeated about rapists and molesters and murderers. It was, it was epic. And then everybody blamed me for going hysterical, and then everything I predicted happened in Oklahoma [after McGirt v. Oklahoma, which addressed the same issue after the Court deadlocked in Carpenter]. But yeah, no, the Oklahoma rebuttal was definitely one that was probably a little over the top.DL: Well look, sometimes you go a little over the top, but I think you also just bring a—I know you don't like this word as applied to argument—but I do think people would say you're a passionate advocate, or you're….LB: Ugh!!!DL: I know, I know, I've read your pieces saying don't use the P word, save it for your, save it for your hobbies, or…LB: Save it for sex.DL: Ha!LB: I'm not a big fan of “passion.” Do you really want a passionate surgeon? No.DL: Well, I guess maybe….LB: I just want someone who's good. Do you want a passionate architect? No. Do you want a passionate airline pilot? No. Just get me somebody who can get the job done and not mess up my face, or my house, or my plumbing. I mean, just get the job done. I do not want a passionate professional, period.DL: Okay, so well…..LB: I would say I'm extremely high-energy.DL: Yes, yes. And I think you just have a sort of sincerity, I think, [so] that nobody feels they're ever getting a snow job from you. It's like very, very honest, very unfiltered. And I think that that candor, that uber-compliance with the duty of candor to the court, I think is very appreciated by the judges.LB: Again, think of a surgeon. Seriously. When you're out and under their knife, you need them doing a good job with whatever they're repairing. Your life is in their hands and you need to take care of them. And that is in addition to putting myself in the role of a mother, I also think of a surgeon. I mean, you do everything you can for your kids. And if you're a surgeon, you know you got a job to do and you just, you gotta get it done. And so, I don't like that word “passion.” It sounds like it interferes with judgment. That's why I don't like that word. And maybe I am passionate, but I don't like to be called that.DL: So what are you passionate about then? What do you like to do outside of work? I see you, the listeners can't, but we're on Zoom, I see you're wearing a Peloton sweatshirt. Are you passionate about exercise? I know you mentioned you're not passionate about cooking or baking because you tried that on and that didn't work. So what do you like to do when you're not arguing before the Court?LB: I love to play with my dog, I love to exercise, I love music, and I love children.DL: Okay. Those are all worthy interests.So this is the lightning round, [since] I see our time is almost elapsed. Let me ask you my final four questions, which are standardized for all guests.The first is, what do you like the least about the law? And that can either be the practice of law or it can be law as that system that governs all of us.LB: The stereotypical male ego.DL: Fair enough. That is a good point and a very concise one. What would you be if you were not a lawyer?LB: Debate coach.DL: Oh, there are a lot of similarities there.LB: I would coach. I would be involved with children in some way, teacher, coaching, whatever I could do with kids.DL: Wonderful, wonderful.LB: I think everything that you think is different about me as an advocate is why I really come alive with children, because they're so not used to adults that are normal. They're so used to adults kind of doing weird stuff with kids and they're like, they just flip out when an adult is like, just tells it to them straight. They just, there's some way, just so much fun. I love kids.DL: Well, it's funny, I think in your Texas piece you had a line about how, well, the kids know that you're different from the other parents because….LB: I swear with them. I can't tell you how much I love kids. I mean, I love dogs too, but I love children.DL: Oh, that's great. Well, I'm sure that if you ever retire from Supreme Court advocacy, I'm sure a school or debate camp would love to have you.Question number three, how much sleep do you get each night?LB: I sleep all the time, in the middle of the day, in the morning, I just sleep. I love to sleep, so I don't know, seven, eight hours. I would sleep for 12 if I could. I really like to sleep.DL: I am so glad to hear that.LB: Naps are the best.DL: I agree with you on that. I have a great ability to nap. Unfortunately, not everyone does, and some people have trouble sleeping, but it sounds like you're not one of them.LB: I've had trouble since the pandemic. I've had trouble sleeping, but I still, then I'll just sleep in the daytime. But I do like to sleep, so I definitely get enough sleep.DL: Oh, good, good. And I guess my final question: any words of wisdom, especially for listeners who look at your life and career and say, I want to be Lisa Blatt?LB: Maybe it's two things that are similar. The hardest lessons are how to deal with failure, and you just can't let failure define you. It is inevitable. Setbacks are so inevitable, and so is embarrassment, shame, and humiliation. And so the sooner you can adapt to that, the better. Jeff Wall once gave me the best advice of my entire life: with every door that closes, the window opens. And the other thing that Jeff Wall told me that was sort of foundational was when you look back upon your life, will you be thinking about how much money you have or how many arguments you have? And the answer is no. You're not gonna be thinking, if I'd only had one more argument or gotten one more award, you'll be thinking about the relationships you've made along the way, that those are the most important. Now, I remember telling this to Judge [Pamela] Harris, who's an amazing Fourth Circuit judge, and she said, “No, that's not what I'll be thinking about, I'll be thinking about what good I did for the world.” And I was like, “Ah, I can't win for losing!” So if you don't think about your relationships, at least think about what good you did for the world.And then the other piece of advice, which is along [the lines of] don't let failure define you, is just don't let other people's view of you define you just because someone doesn't respect you. Okay. You need to define who you are for yourself, and it is so easy to see yourself through other people's eyes, and it's just something you need to fight if you're insecure, like I was.DL: Again, very, very true, and I think you have managed to succeed and define yourself in a really unique way. And again, I have such admiration for you, Lisa, and I'm so grateful to have you on the show.LB: Yeah. And David, let me just plug you. You're a god and my family loves you. My husband loves you. We always read you. You're just amazing. My husband follows everything you say about Yale.DL: Well, there's a lot to say, and I think I'm gonna be hopping on a train soon to head up there for an event. But, again, thank you so much….LB: We are avid, avid followers of you.DL: Thank you again, Lisa. This was so much fun and best of luck in the arguments you have stacked up for the rest of this Term.LB: Thank you. And thank you for inviting me!DL: Thanks again to Lisa for joining me. I'm always inspired by people like Lisa who can reach the pinnacle of the legal profession while remaining true to themselves. She's a unique advocate and personality, and I mean that in the very best sense.As always, thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers, for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, you can email me at davidlat@substack.com, and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Original Jurisdiction. Since this podcast is relatively new, please help spread the word by telling your friends about it. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, as is most of the newsletter content, but it is made possible by your paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast should appear two weeks from now, on or about Wednesday, December 28. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; and (3) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Annual gathering aims to silence woke heretics... misses spectacularly. The Federalist Society national convention kicked off with Judge William Pryor mocking Above the Law for insinuating that the organization is a bunch of ideological hacks in a monologue that was "funny" to the extent it amounted to a quarter hour of self-owns. A day later, FedSoc proved its hackery when the Board voted to bar its founder and co-chair from identifying himself to the media as either a "founder" or "co-chair" -- a move that backfired when Steven Calabresi's immediate response was to tell the media that the Board had voted to bar him from calling himself the founder or co-chair. Please do not let these people write your contracts! We also discuss "Paul Clement's Lament" that law firms care more about money than his passion project of making America objectively worse and more dangerous. And more news of bubbling layoffs!

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking on the button below. Thanks!Burying your own child is one of the most difficult experiences to endure. Burying your own child because he was murdered is even more horrific.Just ask Ruth Markel. She was the mother of my friend Dan Markel, the renowned professor of criminal law who was shot in his garage on the morning of July 18, 2014. At the time of his death, Dan was only 41, the father of two young boys. Now Ruth has written a powerful, deeply moving memoir about her life since that fateful day, The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life.I was honored to have Ruth as my guest on the Original Jurisdiction podcast. We discussed what the past eight years have been like for her, why she wrote The Unveiling, how she got Florida to pass a landmark law about grandparental rights, and the latest in the Markel case—not just the legal proceedings, which are far from over, but also her struggle to win access to her grandsons, whom she was not allowed to see for six years. You can listen to our conversation by clicking on the embed above.[UPDATE (11/17/2022, 3:35 a.m.): Yesterday brought big news in the case: after staying silent for the more than six years since her arrest, Katherine Magbanua, who served as the go-between connecting the Adelsons and hit men Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, has agreed to talk to the authorities. Here's the order from Judge Robert Wheeler providing for her transfer from prison to the Leon County State Attorney'ss Office for a proffer on or before November 28 to 30.]Show Notes:* Ruth Markel, author website* The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life, Amazon* Mom's quest to solve university professor's murder, by Brad Hunter for the Toronto Sun* How targeted murder of Dan Markel went down, by Brad Hunter for the Toronto Sun* Surviving A Son's Murder With Ruth Markel, Surviving the Survivor (podcast)Prefer reading to listening? A transcript of the entire episode appears below.Two quick notes:* This transcript has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter meaning—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning.* Because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email. To view the entire post, simply click on "View entire message" in your email app.David Lat: Hello, and welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to by visiting davidlat.substack.com.You're listening to the fifth episode of this podcast, recorded on Tuesday, November 8. My normal schedule is to post episodes every other Wednesday.My plan for this podcast is to have at least two categories of guests. The first consists of high-profile lawyers, like Alex Spiro, Paul Clement, and Robbie Kaplan. The second consists of individuals with expertise in topics that are important to me and my audience.One such topic is the 2014 murder of law professor Dan Markel. Dan was a friend of mine from college, when we worked together at the Harvard Crimson, and from the early days of legal blogging, when he founded PrawfsBlawg and I founded Above the Law. I have been following the quest to bring his killers to justice for more than eight years, here at Original Jurisdiction and at Above the Law before that.For my third podcast episode, I had as my guest Steven Epstein, author of Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder. For this latest episode, I'm honored to have as my guest Ruth Markel, who has the most personal connection of all to the case: Dan Markel was her son. And like Steve Epstein, Ruth is also the author of an important and acclaimed new book about the case, The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Ruth is a noted author, public speaker, and the president of RNM Enterprises, a leading management consulting firm. She has worked in senior management positions in both private and public sectors for the past forty years. The Unveiling is actually her tenth book; some of her earlier works include Moving Up: A Woman's Guide To A Better Future At Work, published by HarperCollins in 1988, and Room At The Top: A Woman's Guide To Moving Up In Business, published by Penguin in 1985. In connection with the Markel case, she has appeared on such prominent programs as 20/20, Inside Edition, and Dateline NBC.In our conversation, Ruth and I discussed what the eight years since the murder have been like for her; why she wrote The Unveiling; how she got Florida to pass the Markel Act, an important piece of legislation about grandparental rights; and the latest developments in terms of both the legal proceedings in the Markel case and her ability to see her two grandsons, who were cruelly kept from her for years after the murder.Without further ado, here's my interview of Ruth Markel.DL: First of all, Ruth, congratulations on the book, which I have read and I highly recommend, and condolences on both Dan's passing and the journey you have been on these past eight-plus years. I think one point that you make in the book repeatedly is that this type of situation is not one discrete loss, but it's a suffering that recurs again and again as you go through what you refer to as the “trial life.” So again, just my condolences and thank you for trying to seek justice for Dan's murderers and also getting legislation passed to help other grandparents.Ruth Markel: Thank you so much, David. I first of all have to thank you, a long and special thank-you, because I know you've written so much about Dan's murder, and I know that you knew him too. And whatever you've written is very accomplished and very thorough, and I appreciate your hands and eyes on the case, because we always need people who really know what's happening, rather than just reporting on separate incidents. So I really, really have a lot of gratitude to say to you—on the part of the family, it isn't just me, but it's all of us who want to thank you.DL: It's the least I can do. As I've written before, I knew Dan—I knew him from college, when we worked on the Harvard Crimson, and then we reconnected again as bloggers, when he founded the extremely successful PrawfsBlawg and I started Above the Law.One thing I wanted to ask you about—and I know you've talked about this in past interviews—many of us know Dan as a brilliant legal scholar, a prolific blogger, an academic, but what can you tell us about his childhood? What was he like growing up? I think some readers will be interested in hearing that maybe he wasn't what we [might have expected].RM: No, not at all. I think if anybody had any contradictions from their later life to their earlier life, that would be Dan Markel, the late Dan Markel. Danny was a bum when he was younger. He was Dennis the Menace at his core—very, very high-energy as a child. He never liked normal toys. His favorite objects at 18 months, two years, were a pail, a mop-and-pail type of thing, and a stepladder. And a stepladder was his favorite toy. When he was really young, he would go up on the kitchen counter not to look for cookies, like many kids go into the pantry, but [for] the challenge of climbing it up and climbing it down, and so forth.We lived in Montreal. First, we're Canadian. Many people don't even know that we're Canadian, that Dan was Canadian. And there's a lot of places that write that he was born in Toronto, but that's not true—he was born in Montreal. We lived there until he started school, kindergarten, when he was five, and then moved to Toronto.And he was still [unfocused] in the first few years of school, even until eight, nine years old. The funny story is the school had an aptitude test in grade three, and they called me and they said he had the highest score in the school—not only the highest score in the school, but the highest score that [they] ever saw from this aptitude test. And then [the principal] said to me, bluntly, she says, “Why is he only getting an A-minus or A, what's wrong with him? He's not performing at this high peak.” So I said to her—it was a very funny conversation with the principal—I said, “You know what? Wait another year. I promise you, by when he's nine or ten, he'll settle down. Because he read all the comics from me, at five or six, his reading, his skills were there. But [he tended to] wander off, he had high energy, which really was, as you know, the trait for the rest of his life and so forth.So he really got serious about nine, 10 years old. And then he became really not serious in his choice of outside activities—he skied, he played baseball. But I would say, you know how there's the expression, “he settled down”—he settled down around 10, 11, and you could see he was going to be, I wouldn't call it scholarly yet, but that high level of achievement.DL: And then I know of course, and we all know of course, about his résumé and his credentials. He went to Harvard College. He studied abroad in Cambridge. He went to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Judge [Michael Daly] Hawkins on the Ninth Circuit. He worked at a very prestigious law firm, now known as Kellogg Hansen, and then he went into academia. But as I recall from past interviews, you've said that his success as a lawyer or as an academic is actually not what you're most proud of about him as an adult.RM: That's true. I'm most proud of him as a father and as what all his friends call the ”connector” part, the friend part. But let me talk about the father part for a minute. He was really amazing—his love for his children was so special. He would go to their daycare centers when they were small and he would have breakfast with the kids. He would read. As a dad he had a strong Jewish identity, and he would often at the daycare center say, this Jewish holiday is coming up, this is Christmas, this is Hanukkah. He would read stories, and they really liked that aspect of him.He also was amazing because when the children would do any artwork, Danny put up a clothesline, he had a very open space across his living room, and he hung all their artwork. And what was so funny is when some of the students—he invited all the students who went with him to the final-level criminal courses [over] for dinner—and they were shocked because they thought, oh my, they're coming to the stuffy professor's house, and if they didn't trip over the toys, they were lucky. Right across the room was all this artwork, and I used to tease him: he started a new design category called “Preschool Decor.”He was funny. He was really—as you know, Danny had an academic side—but his social side was so, so strong and so much a part of him that everywhere he went—and he lived in a lot of places, you mentioned a few, New York, Tel Aviv, London, Boston, San Francisco, Toronto—he always stayed connected. And he used to say, “Oh, my best friend here.” So we used to tease him—you have a hundred best friends in New York, a hundred here, a hundred there. And it was true actually. When he passed away, the memorializing [took place] all over the world. So he was blessed. We were blessed in that whole aspect of his life.DL: Fast forwarding now to the terrible events of July 2014, which again you talk about in detail in your book, what was it like when you heard the news that Dan had been shot? I think you said in the book that it was like an out-of-body experience, that it was just really surreal for you?RM: Right. I had several experiences. The first is numbness, and in the book I do talk about the purpose of the book. Maybe I should say it now because it'll give you really where I'm going. So I wrote the book, which is called The Unveiling: A Mother's Reflection on Murder, Grief, and the Trial Life, and the reason I wrote it and called it [that] is what's so significant here.The title of the book is The Unveiling. In Jewish life, the unveiling is the time after a person is buried, the gravesite has been settled, the funeral is over, [and] there's different cultural customs, but we chose about eight months after the [funeral for the] unveiling. On the tombstone is writing. And we spent a lot of time as a family writing what's called the inscription. The Jewish tradition is you leave this piece of fabric cover[ing] the tombstone until the day that you actually have a ritual or a service called the unveiling…. And so why I called it The Unveiling is because my real grief process—which is very important, which I want the public to know about, not just me, there's so many school shootings, and I'll come to this in the second part of the reason I wrote the book—but the first part is that was [the start of] my grief journey, the real deep, deep grief. And before that, I did have what you would call an out-of-body experience. I was numb. I was in a daze.The next reason for writing the book is more important to the public, and that's really to lift the curtain on what it is to be in a victim experience, particularly a victim experience in the criminal system. So there's two parts, and they're very important in the follow-through of not just my own personal experience.I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there's a term called “homicide survivors.” Homicide survivors are different. It's a different loss and a different trauma than illness and so forth, and the homicide-survivor trauma lasts longer because it doesn't get resolved. In addition, it's the violent, sudden finality of the death, which other types of trauma don't have. Even the pathway afterwards is very different than other losses because now I'll go to the second point, which is the criminal system, and the victim experience of the criminal system, [coupled] with the fact that the psychological component of the trauma is very different, the criminal system doesn't end.And there's no such thing… the word “closure,” I've said it before, it's a word in the dictionary. All those words are not meaningful. You're dealing now with a psychological factor, which is impaired, let's call it, because of the level of grief and the long-term effect and the interaction of the criminal system, which is everlasting. Look, here we are, it's eight years, we're nowhere finished. So it's that combination that really makes this whole experience different.DL: You've actually just answered some of the questions I wanted to raise….RM: Oh, good.DL: … as to why you wrote the book and why you named it The Unveiling, which I think is a very powerful title. Let me ask you this. Some readers might not know, but this is far from your first book—it's your 10th, but your prior books were very different. They were focused on business and career and professional subjects. You've just talked about having to relive that pain and reopen that wound. Were you really convinced to write this book, given that it would involve reliving this trauma that you've just described?RM: No, this was hard. I'll tell you how I started to write the book. You're very right about the other books. [It's a] foreign language when you do a personal-trauma story, it's a foreign language as to business management books, where it's charts and checklists and a whole different kind of process.So how did I write the book, and why did I write the book? Right after Danny's murder—I hate to say the word—we were privileged with the media, as you know well, and you were part of it. There were tons and tons of things happening. I normally wasn't thinking initially of anything like this kind of book, but I did have—so I'm a little older—I did have a box, and I would photocopy and print [stories]. Nobody does that today. But I got this box filled up, which gave me a chronology. I could get the chronology on the internet, as you know, and I did as well, but it was just that, an earlier phase, and I was not planning this kind of book. I knew maybe I would write a book, but not the level that I wrote the trauma about. But, as time progressed, a lot of time actually, because we were preoccupied with the justice system, then it was about a year and a half or two years before the pandemic, which probably was a good thing because I used the pandemic to write, I have to tell you that. So in the period before I started to feel, I have a message, I guess it's because I've written before, whatever, but I started to feel really, I have a message about victims and trauma and grief. And there's not that much out there, and not that much with a personal story. So that was the real sort of the fork in the road. And I decided, okay, now it's serious.Then, as you know, you would know, you go out, you have to get a publisher, an agent, the whole thing. It was after [hitman Sigfredo] Garcia's [trial]… I needed to get, I guess, to Garcia's and [go-between] Katherine [Magbanua]'s trial of 2019…. The trial ended in October and in November, I was in New York looking for, starting the regular routine of pitching the publisher and not the publisher, really, but the agent at that point. And then the pandemic came, January [2020]. I live in Canada, and we locked down very, very early, so it was different here, a whole different climate. We locked down much more, I don't want to say seriously, but I would say more uniformly.Now I'm a person who's always doing something—I'm like Dan or Dan's like me, I don't know which one is which—but the point is I said, oh, now I better get this together. And that's what I did. I really wrote in the pandemic, the first year, because it was a good time to write—not smart time, maybe, because you are isolated. I hardly saw my grandkids, Canadian grandkids in that time, but I was, yes, the fact is that I was busy and I was occupied, but it was very hard. The first part of the book on the grief and the murder and the finding out, it was more than challenging.DL: Did you find the book therapeutic in terms of writing it and talking to other survivors of homicide? I know, for example, you mentioned in the book you had a coach, someone who had gone through a similarly awful experience. Did you find some solace in writing the book?RM: I wouldn't call it solace. I did have support. The coach was terrific and we had excellent expertise and legal support, as you know, from Gibson Dunn and others, and a lot of Danny's friends. So we were definitely privileged.I can't tell you… I can't tell you that the book in any way has added any closure. I don't use the word, but any help, “therapeutic”—has there been any cathartic benefit? Not yet. When we'll come to the grandparent legislation, the answer is totally different. And that's what's fascinating because I'm in the process still of the criminal system, I think because I'm still a victim.Look, I'm going to put it out in—I don't know if you want to go into the case, who's arrested and when, but we went through, now Garcia was arrested in 2016, later [hitman Luis] Rivera, later Katherine Magbanua. We didn't have any trial until 2019. And then there's the appeal of Garcia. What we just went through, just to give you the current view, is really amazing. We just did the trial from a point of view of calendar for Katherine Magbanua. We just finished it right in May, in July was sentencing, and Shelly, my daughter, had to do the victim impact statement. Then following that, Charlie Adelson was arrested, just before Katherine Magbanua's trial. Then he had the Arthur [bail] hearing. Now Katherine is appealing, and you know, the public doesn't see all this, but we are in full-blown systems and movements and conversations and communications about what's happening. And so that's why I think in all fairness, the book has not yet been as cathartic, let's call it. It's very helpful for me now to go out and talk about the victim experience, but because I'm still so immersed, I don't know if I have that feeling [of catharsis]. I'm still like a student in school. I didn't graduate yet. I'm studying still, if you know what I'm trying to say. It's continuous.DL: And you mentioned that throughout the book. You talk about, for example, even the different vocabulary words that you're learning as part of the legal process. And the book is interesting. There's an update at the end on the legal proceedings where you talk about how Katherine is about to be retried, and then of course now we know she was convicted on the retrial and sentenced. And then, of course, since the publication there has been another series of developments—for example, denial of Charlie Adelson's bail request, [after] the so-called Arthur hearing under Florida law.How would you say you feel in a general sense, given the state of developments right now? You have three people who have been convicted and put behind bars, and you have this pending appeal from Katherine, but honestly I don't think it's going anywhere, knock on wood. And then you have, of course, Charlie's looming trial for the first part of 2023. I know you may want to be a little guarded in some of the things you say, but what would you say you just feel generally about where the state of the legal proceedings is right now?RM: I think for us, for me… 2022 has been a great year, in the sense—and I'll explain why it has been very, very good. After 2016, after the arrest—I'm going to go into the grandparent issue for a minute because it relates to why 2022 has been very important—after the arrest in 2016, Wendi, Danny's ex-wife, cut us off from visiting the children. We tried behind the scenes, the lawyers and so forth, and we even used the media. Now, just to put it in perspective, we are privileged with the media, but Phil and I, Dan's father, we never went [to the media right after] Dan was murdered. Most parents and most lawyers, they bring their clients out into public view, and we didn't—we didn't need to, because Danny had quite a bit of international acclaim, he was memorialized all over the world, and [going public] was really not our way of grieving. However, after we were unable to see the boys, Benjamin and Lincoln, Dan's children, we decided, let's try whatever we can to get some exposure to the fact that we are not able to see these young children. So that's what we did. We went [to the media], we were going to anyway, the programs were running, as you know, 20/20 had two sessions, Dateline had two two-hour sessions, then the [Over My Dead Body] podcast came out, and so forth. So it's been an unusual journey [in having] so much media available to us.Then also, which really is a privilege, Jason Solomon started Justice For Dan. And he even started a petition on Justice For Dan to have people sign, and there were a lot of Canadians, a lot of Americans who signed [in support of] us to be able to see the children. Anyway, needless to say, that was effective, but not enough—it gave us a voice, but not a change in dynamics, let's call it.Anyway, so what happened was after Garcia's trial, it was October 12th, 2019, I'm in Tallahassee, it's my birthday, I'm in the hairdresser, and this young woman [Karen Halperin Cyphers] comes over to me and she says, “Can I give you a hug?” And I don't really know her, I don't recognize her as one of Dan's friends, but I could see she's his age, I thought maybe she saw me on TV. And then she told me who she was and so we went for coffee. And then she said to me….Now this is really important in the process of grief, I'm going to explain to you—I was advised by my New York lawyer, Matt Benjamin from Gibson Dunn, “Ruth, you're going to have to write a bill” [if you want to address the problem of grandparent alienation]. I'm sitting in Toronto. This is in 2016, after we went on Dateline and 20/20. A bill. I'm sitting in Toronto. What do I know? I'm in Canada. Although I had advocacy experience in my early, early social-work career, I did not know the American system, and also we are a little different in Canada, it didn't occur to me even that that [might be] the solution. And then my other friend said, “It's all-American—you have to get lobbyists.” So I prepped, I'm getting the buzz in my ear, but I didn't do anything for three years. And why I think this is important—I'll get back to the journey—the reason it's important is because many families that are grieving, they want to memorialize their child, they want to start a foundation, they want to do something, but they don't break out of it from out of their head. So here was my experience, I was sitting on it for three years, but Karen Halperin Cyphers says to me, right in the coffee shop [in October 2019], “Okay, what can I do for you?” And I just blurt out, “Grandparent alienation.” And she says, “Done.” So here I am, fortunate that Karen had all of these contacts through her position—at the time she was a partner in a media firm in Tallahassee—and this was only in October 2019. In January of 2020, Karen already organized in the Senate, [Florida State Senator] Jeff Brandes actually wrote a bill, got it passed in the Senate, but we couldn't get it into the other house in 2020. So this is another part. Try, try, and try again…. This is why we're coming back to 2022. Why is it such an exceptional year? In the first part of 2022, [Florida House Speaker] Chris Sprowls decided that he would get a representation in the House and the Senate at the same time, and he really organized. Anyway, the best news in the world: the Senate passed it unanimously, and the House was, I think, 112-3. And in the end, Governor DeSantis signed it on June 24. So that's the first part of 2022—and a really big part of the success that we feel. So the mood is changing, is what I'm trying to tell you.Now, the next good part of 2022. So Katherine Magbanua was scheduled to have her retrial in February. That was postponed. The word is “continued”—I love the word “continue” when it meets “canceled,” but we won't go into law language—anyway, and it's till May 16th. In the same period, I get an email from Wendi Adelson, that's Danny's ex-wife, the mother of his children: “Ruth, we're making a bar mitzvah for Benjamin around May 14th”—two days before the actual Katherine Magbanua trial—”and we're inviting you all then.” “All” means us plus Shelly's family.I couldn't be more delighted. And I said, yes, we're coming for sure, and then I suggested, “Can we have an in-person visit on May 13th, the day before the bar mitzvah? The kids have not seen us now [for a long time].” So she writes back right away, “You know what? If you want an in-person visit, come in April.” First the date she selected was the Passover date, then she wrote back, apologies, come April 20th. And we said, we're on. We came April 20th. We saw the kids. We had a wonderful visit. We get back to Toronto, let's say, 1 a.m. on April 21st, at 6 a.m. I get a call from law enforcement in Tallahassee—well, they're not in Tallahassee, now they're down in Broward [County in South Florida]—and they just arrested Charlie Adelson. In 24 hours, a lot on the children and on the case.So 2022, this is the big year, right…. it's an actually an important story piece because families wait and, and certainly for us, the waiting and uncertainty are really the characteristics of the victim experience. But this is just an example of sometimes when the waiting does materialize into something that's very fruitful.DL: Just to rewind a little bit, you mentioned the passage and the signing into law of the Markel Act, which deals with the problem of grandparent alienation. Can you say briefly to listeners what the Markel Act permits?RM: The Markel Act, actually, is not a broad-based, all-encompassing act for any grandparent who's alienated or any grandparent who has difficulty. Florida laws are very restrictive, [some] of the most restrictive ones in North America, and considering they have all these elderly people, their grandparent legislation is very, very restrictive. And there's a piece in there that people have to understand. The reason it's restricted is because the natural parent in Florida has the right for autonomy and privacy [in child rearing], and that is huge, and that trumps anything else, and it always has to be reviewed against what are their rights.So what happened with the Grandparent Act? When it was developed, it was developed to meet a very specific set of circumstances, which is if one of the partners in the marriage or ex-marriage or whatever divorced relationship was deceased or is deceased, and the other partner has some civil or criminal findings against them, that gives the grandparents rights to go to the courts and request a visit, and the request is less conditional than under other circumstances because those findings have to be met. So to that extent, it's very restrictive.Having said that, and one of the most amazing things of why I said earlier on, I have to say that having passed this legislation has really given me—I would say I always have hope, but it has given me more satisfaction on a different level—do you know how many people write to me now asking how to use the Markel Act, telling me about grandparent alienation, and what's really sad is how many circumstances there are in Florida where [the Act might apply]. [There is also a 2015 law about grandparent visitation rights, which] is something else which I did another presentation on… like if your child has committed a felony. It's not the same. It's not the Markel Act, I have to say. But the point is, what happens? These adult children come out of prison, and the grandparents have taken care of the kids all these years, and [the adult children] tell [the grandparents], “Bye bye, Charlie.” So the grandparents lose out, and the children really lose that because that's their new family. But those families can get help—not necessarily [from] the strength of the grandparent legislation, but there are places to help them, and also they should know to go to Legal Aid as well.DL: That's really important, and I'm glad you're sharing that information with people. One of the things that's interesting to note—it's very selfless in a way, what you've done, because the Markel Act, as I understand it, does not at the current time apply to your particular case. But on the bright side, I do note that very shortly after its passage, you were invited by Wendi to meet with the boys.So I see we're almost out of time. In closing, can you talk about how much contact you have with the boys right now? Because for those of us reading the book, that was in many ways one of the most heartbreaking things—that for years, you were kept away from your grandsons after this horrific event. Can you talk a bit about how often you get to see them now and under what circumstances?RM: We're only at a stage where the door is open, like a crack in the door. We did try to get some Zooms on the boys' birthdays to wish them happy birthday. We were successful. We made other attempts to get visits, which didn't materialize, but just recently, I asked Wendi for a visit in December, and she approved, she confirmed it. So that'll be the next visit. We saw the boys, we had contact with them in April, and now I'm really hopeful that I will get to see them in December. So we're, you know, it's a rocky ship still, but it's more open communication. And although small, but it's working in the right direction, very incremental, small steps. And so forth.DL: As you mentioned, 2022 was a big, big year for you and your family. My final question is, what are you hoping for or expecting from 2023? Which is not that far away, less than two months until the start of the new year. What are you looking forward to in the coming year?RM: I'm looking forward to, look, right now, I'll put it this way, the grandparent priority is a little bit, I don't want to say on the back burner at all, but it's less. Now we have to get justice in the criminal system, which has always been the competing priority…. So that's really one of the things I do want to say that I'm also looking at now, and in 2023 I want to make sure that people understand the victim experience, and particularly the legal and professional people who help—psychologists, lawyers, clergy, whatever, have to understand the victim experience. How can you learn to develop compassion for the victim in all these professions?I have an agenda, I guess I'm a person who has agendas, and this is really because I really think it's an undervalued [experience]. And there's a statement, I read this in one of the reports in Canada, the [statement] is “the victim is the orphan of the criminal system.” And so that's my new challenge, and I hope that there are some lawyers, legal schools, law firms listening today. I have a lot of programs that I would really like to talk about in terms of an educational format to get the sensitization to what the victim experiences in the criminal system.DL: Well, I think you've been doing a wonderful job of advancing your agenda, just in terms of getting people to understand that victim experience. And of course getting legislation passed to help other grandparents in similar situations. And of course spearheading and enduring this long, long quest for justice for Dan's murderers.So again, on behalf of my listeners, on behalf of all of us who knew and cared for Dan, thank you, Ruth, for everything you've done. You are really an inspiration—just how you have endured this tragedy with such dignity and grace and how you have managed to try and find some things positive out of an unspeakable tragedy. So thank you.RM: Thank you very much, and please continue writing. You're doing a great job.DL: Will do.RM: I always welcome your articles and your support, so thank you.DL: Thanks again to Ruth for joining me. As I have said before, her resilience and strength over these past eight-plus years, as well as how she has used her experience to help both other victims and other grandparents, is nothing short of inspiring.As always, thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers, for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, you can email me at davidlat@substack.com, and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Original Jurisdiction. Since this podcast is new, please help spread the word by telling your friends about it. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, as is most of the newsletter content, but it is made possible by your paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast should appear two weeks from now, on or about Wednesday, November 30. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. 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On the morning of July 18, 2014, Dan Markel pulled into his garage in the upscale Betton Hills neighborhood of Tallahassee, where he was a law professor at Florida State University. Seconds later, the 41-year-old father of two was shot twice in the head. Taken to the hospital, he was pronounced dead less than 12 hours later.Dan Markel was a friend of mine. We worked together as editors of the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s, and we reconnected in the early 2000s as the founders of two prominent legal blogs, PrawfsBlawg for him and Above the Law for me.As both a friend of Dan's and a journalist covering the legal profession, I have closely followed the years-long quest to bring his killers—all of his killers—to justice. And so has litigator turned bestselling true-crime writer Steven B. Epstein, author of Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder. As I write in the foreword, “Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Extreme Punishment is now the definitive account of Dan's life and death, the standard against which all future tellings will be measured.”I invited Steve to join me as the third guest of the Original Jurisdiction podcast. We talked about what inspired him to tackle the Markel case, how he went about researching and writing the book, his email correspondence with Dan's ex-wife Wendi Adelson (who some suspect of playing a role in the murder), and his predictions for what might happen next in the case. To listen, please click on the embed at the top of this post.Show Notes:* Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder, Amazon* Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder, Barnes & Noble* Steven B. Epstein: True Crime Writer, author website* Steve Epstein bio, Poyner Spruill LLPPrefer reading to listening? A transcript of the entire episode appears below.Two quick notes:* This transcript has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter meaning—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning.* Because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email. To view the entire post, simply click on "View entire message" in your email app.David Lat: Hello, and welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to by visiting davidlat.substack.com.You're listening to the third episode of this podcast, recorded one week ago, on Wednesday, October 12. My normal schedule is to post episodes every other Wednesday.For the first episode, I interviewed Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, one of the nation's top trial lawyers. For the second episode, I interviewed Paul Clement of Clement Murphy, one of the nation's top appellate and Supreme Court lawyers.At the end of the second episode, I mentioned this third episode would be a bit different, and it is. Like my first two guests, my latest guest is a friend, but he has made his name outside the realm of practice.Steven B. Epstein is a lawyer turned bestselling true-crime writer. After earning his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both with highest honors, he clerked for Judge Earl Britt in the Eastern District of North Carolina. After a few years in legal academia, Steve turned to civil litigation, practicing for more than 30 years and handling dozens of trials and appeals in federal and state courts. Since 2010, he has been a partner at Poyner Spruill in Raleigh, North Carolina.But I had Steve on the show not to chat about his legal career, but his career as a writer. In 2019, he published his first true-crime book, Murder on Birchleaf Drive: The True Story of the Michelle Young Murder Case, which became a #1 bestseller on Amazon in the true-crime genre. In 2020, he published his second book, Evil at Lake Seminole, about the murder of Mike Williams in Tallahassee. And this month, October 2022, Steve published his third book, Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel's Murder.As many of my listeners and readers know, this is a case to which I have a personal connection. Dan Markel was a friend of mine from college, when we worked together for the Harvard Crimson, and we reconnected as early entrants to the field of legal blogging, when he founded PrawfsBlawg and I founded Above the Law.In 2014, Dan was brutally murdered, shot in the head after pulling into his garage. Dan's murder—and the years-long quest to bring all of his killers to justice, which is not yet over—is the subject of Steve's book, Extreme Punishment. As I write in the foreword, “Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Extreme Punishment is now the definitive account of Dan's life and death, the standard against which all future tellings will be measured.”Without further ado, here's my interview of Steve Epstein.DL: Welcome to the podcast, Steve, and congratulations on the publication of Extreme Punishment, which I think is some of your best work yet. And on behalf of those of us who knew and cared about Dan, thank you for writing it. Before we dive into the book, can you introduce yourself to the readers—or listeners, I should say?Steve Epstein: Sure—and thank you for those kind words, David. For those who don't know, you've been along this ride with me for the last couple of years. I appreciate all of your encouragement. I appreciate the foreword to the book, which is beautiful, and I'm thrilled that that's the introduction my readers are going to have to my writing, so thank you for all of that.I'm a native of New York. I grew up mostly on Long Island. I then went south to go to college at the University of North Carolina and decided to stay there for law school. I clerked for a federal judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina. A couple years later, after I was done with the judge, I was off to the University of Illinois, where I was actually teaching on the University of Illinois law faculty for just two years. I've been back in North Carolina ever since 1996, when I finished up at Illinois, and I've been practicing law ever since then at two different private law firms. And as you said, I've also written three books.DL: And what is the focus of your legal practice, or what has it been over the years?SE: I was a civil litigator. I started as a personal injury lawyer and then became more of a commercial civil litigator, mostly on the defense side, mostly working for self-insured large corporations. Then over the years, I drifted into actually doing family law, which is about two-thirds of my practice now, and has been the majority of my practice for the last eight years.DL: As I mentioned in the foreword, you have multiple connections to this story, which we'll explore in a minute. But before we do that, for those of my readers who are not familiar with the subject of your book, Extreme Punishment, which is the murder of law professor Dan Markel—many of my readers are familiar with it, but for those who are not—can you give a quick overview of what this case is about?SE: Sure, and we'll start with the subject of the book, Dan Markel. Dan was a young, very hungry, very intellectually gifted law professor when he joined the Florida State faculty in 2005. He had two Harvard degrees, undergraduate and law school. He had a master's degree from the University of Cambridge. He was also somebody who took his Judaism very seriously, so that was part of his DNA. And he was very successful as a law professor.He was married to a woman named Wendi Adelson, who was from South Florida. Dan himself was from Canada, which is where he grew up—he actually never became an American citizen before his death, he was a Canadian. Wendi Adelson grew up in South Florida in a town called Coral Springs, which isn't too terribly far from Miami, and they wound up becoming a couple while Wendi was still a law student at the University of Miami, while Dan was practicing law at a boutique firm in Washington, D.C.Wendi actually went to Florida State with Dan when he got his gig as an assistant law professor, and Wendi finished up law school at Florida State University. Even though her degree says University of Miami, she actually finished up in classrooms in which Dan was teaching law school at Florida State.On July 18th, 2014, which is when my book actually begins—in fact, that's part of the title to chapter one—Dan was murdered by a gunman who showed up in his garage, shortly after he had dropped his two young boys off at preschool and gone to the gym for a workout. Two bullets penetrated the front window of his car and went straight into his head. He was pronounced dead at the hospital, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, about one o'clock the next morning.So this is a story about Dan's life, Wendi's life, and how that all led to that fateful morning, and then the march to justice that has literally been going on now for eight-plus years, with four different people involved in this crime now behind bars—three convicted, one awaiting trial—and a significant possibility of more arrests and convictions later on.DL: That's an excellent overview of this really tragic, horrific event. And for those of us who knew Dan, it was just insane. As I write in the foreword, he was a law professor. He was part of our legal-nerd circles. I knew him from college because we worked on the Harvard Crimson together. I reconnected with him in the mid-2000s because we were legal bloggers.I remember the morning, that July morning, where there was just furious calling, texting, Facebook messaging among his friends, saying, did you hear what happened to Dan, did you hear what happened to Dan? And we just could not, for the life of us, figure out who would want to kill our friend who was a law professor. It just seemed so crazy….SE: And it was. And so investigators who started investigating this crime, literally within an hour of the shooting, were faced with this very puzzling dilemma: why would someone want to kill this 41-year-old, extremely successful law professor, who had made hundreds if not thousands of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, across the legal academy and across the world? He was enormously popular. He was extremely well-known. Who would want to kill him?DL: What I would add there is—as I've written in Above the Law and Original Jurisdiction covering Dan, as your biographical portrait of him makes really clear—he was a very complex guy. He wasn't boring, he wasn't vanilla, some people he didn't rub the right way. He had strong opinions. He was outspoken. But again, to us it just seemed that there was nobody who'd want to kill him. It just seemed like such a crazy thing.I will pause here for any listeners whose interest has been piqued by the discussion so far. Feel free to hop off the podcast at this point and get the book, Extreme Punishment by Steven B. Epstein, and you can always tune back in after you've had the chance to read the rest of it.Now, for those of us who are familiar with the case, let's take a deeper dive. We talked about or alluded briefly to your personal connections to this story. What inspired you to tackle the Dan Markel murder for your third?SE: Well, it's a story I really didn't initially want to write because I had just written a book about Tallahassee. I'm not from Tallahassee. I've been there a few times. My daughter was actually very interested in attending Florida State University. We visited Florida State University. She wanted to be a theater major. She wanted to audition there, and she was crushed to not be invited to give a live audition at Florida State University. She wound up at the University of Alabama.But you know, even then I noticed some things about Florida State. We actually did go down there when a friend of hers was in a play in production down there, and it's very interesting how seedy it is. It's almost like Yale, which you have a little familiarity with—it's odd that a university of that stature is in a town where, literally once you walk off campus, you don't feel safe. And that's definitely true about Tallahassee. It's got this very unique vibe to it for a capital city of the third-largest state.So I didn't want to write another story about a murder that happened to somebody who lived in Tallahassee. But the mother of the victim of my second story, Cheryl Williams, who is a fantastic human being—and I encourage you also to read my second book, Evil at Lake Seminole, where you'll learn a whole lot more about this incredibly courageous woman—we continued having conversations long after I finished that book. She's been a fan, she's been a friend, and she's been a confidant. And we were talking about what I was going to write next, and I was literally searching for the right true-crime story to write next when she encouraged me to think about writing about Dan Markel.At that point, all I knew about this story was stuff I gleaned from reading the pages of the Tallahassee Democrat, which I was doing as part of my research for Evil at Lake Seminole. And so I knew just a little bit about this law professor who was killed, and there was a suspicion that maybe his wife's family was involved, and I knew that there had been a trial, and that's literally all I knew.And then mysteriously within a couple of days of speaking with Cheryl and her encouraging me to write this story, on my DVR—we have Direct TV—on my DVR in my saved shows, a Dateline appeared, a Dateline about the Dan Markel murder. I don't know how it got there to this day, but I was like, okay, this is a sign, this is a sign from God. I'm going to watch the Dateline episode.I watched it, and I was mesmerized. And the thing that led me in the next direction was one of the talking heads, a guy named Matt Shaer. Matt did a podcast, which a lot of your listeners probably have listened to, called Over My Dead Body—sort of like the Serial podcast that is now getting a lot of attention because the person who was convicted of that crime in Serial has just been exonerated, released from jail after nearly 20 years. Well, this podcast sounded a whole lot like it had the production value of Serial, Over My Dead Body, and I listened to all eight episodes, and I was absolutely at that point convinced this was a book that I was meant to write.And so I started, and I reached out to Matt Shaer to get some assistance, I reached out to you because you were also interviewed in that podcast, and then I literally just started figuring out who was involved, sending emails. I made a visit to Tallahassee. I met with Dan Markel's next-door neighbor, Jim Geiger, who was the person who found him slumped over behind the steering wheel of his Honda Accord, the fateful morning of July 18th, 2014. I started realizing the enormity of Dan's circle of friends, and I basically had to start picking and choosing who I was going to talk to because there were far too many to interview. I wound up interviewing probably three dozen or so of Dan's friends, and then all of the lawyers involved in the case, and on and on and on.DL: One thing people will be curious about is did you reach out to or hear from Wendi Adelson, Dan's ex-wife—who some have suspected of involvement in the murder, other people have disagreed—but did you ever hear from her?SE: Yes, I did. So I actually have [these emails] in front of me, because I want to get it exactly accurate. At some point I wanted to reach out to Wendi's circle of friends, which was a lot smaller [than Dan's], and easily identify who the people were who I needed to talk to. The first person I reached out to is a woman named Jane McPherson, who was a Ph.D. candidate in the school of social work at Florida State. Why did I want to talk to her? She actually wound up in the interrogation room with Wendi the day Dan was shot, and she was there for about half an hour, and some of what happened during the time she was there was very significant, so I wanted to talk with her.I also wanted to talk with somebody who was a professor on the main campus named Daniel Sack. Ironically, Daniel Sack became Wendi's boyfriend not long after she broke up with Dan Markel—so the two Dans. And so I reached out to both Daniel Sack, who by that point was a professor in Massachusetts, and Jane McPherson, who I think at that point was a professor in Georgia, because their emails were easily accessible from their faculty websites.I began both emails—and this is significant—“My apology for this intrusion.” Each of the emails I started that way, and I explained who I was, explained I was working on a book about Dan Markel. I didn't hear from either of them. This was March 20th, 2021, it was a Saturday.So that Monday morning, at 10:53 a.m., I had this surprise email in my inbox, and all I could see in my inbox was only the name of the person sending me the email and the subject line, I saw the name was Wendi Adelson and the subject line was “Central character.” And it began, “Dear Steve,” and here are the magic words: “My apology for the intrusion”—which right away I found to be somewhat passive-aggressive.It's quite clear she was literally stealing my words that I used in the emails to her friends, Jane McPherson and Daniel Sack. She continued, “My apology for the intrusion, but my friends”—and I knew who they were—“have contacted me about your interview requests. As a central character in your writing, I am curious why you haven't contacted me. Most sincerely, Wendi.” As if we were on a first-name basis.I had never had any communications with her up until that point, and the reason I didn't is I knew full well she wasn't going to talk to me. She is implicated, certainly her family is implicated, in the murder of Dan Markel. There's no way she's going to talk to me. So I didn't reach out to her, and I literally said in response to her email, calling her bluff—and I knew it was a bluff—I said, “I didn't think you would talk to me, but if you are interested in talking to me, of course I would love to talk to you, and I won't talk with you about anything related to the murder. I'm interested in your background. I'm interested in growing up in Coral Springs, the relationship you had with your brothers. I'm interested in your appearance on The Weakest Link. So if you're interested in talking to about those things, by all means, let's chat.”And not surprisingly, I never heard another word from Wendi Adelson. But for some reason I decided, you know what? I'm going to reach out to her again. And I did in October, so some seven months had passed since my interaction with Wendi that she instigated, I didn't instigate, and I decided to push her a little bit and said, you know, I hadn't heard from her and I was wondering if she had actually gotten my email. And she responded within 15 minutes, and within 15 minutes she said, “Steve, you do not have my consent to use my identity and trauma for your own profit. Best, Wendi.”DL: “Best.” And I totally agree with you about the wording, the replication of “apologies for the intrusion.” She's trolling you. She's saying, I've got your number, and the people you're reaching out to, they're loyal to me, and I know what you're doing. She's yanking your chain, isn't she?SE: Yes. And if you pay close attention to her testimony in both trials [of Katie Magbanua], she does that quite a bit. She has little words and little phrases that just, you know, they're needling. She has this habit of needling.In talking with people who were mutual friends of Dan and Wendi's, that's what they said about her, is that she would needle them about little things. Like one of Dan's friends was a little bit short, and she would needle him about his height—not really appropriate, but as her way of one-upping him, she would bring up his height. And she was friends with him.I don't think she considers me a friend, and she was doing more than needling me. She was effing with me, in my view, with her emails and reaching out and calling herself the “central character.”Yes, she is a central character in my book. There's tons of information about Wendi Adelson in my book that I learned from all kinds of sources, not the least of which is Wendi's own writing, Wendi's own CV, which I was able to find, and then friends of Wendi's that I was able to talk with. So you'll learn a whole lot about Wendi Adelson, and you'll learn a whole lot about growing up Adelson in this book.DL: I thought her veiled threat was really a bit disingenuous because she's a smart lawyer, she knows you're a smart lawyer, she knows that this story is in the public domain, she knows the laws about privacy and defamation, and so the notion that you had to get her consent to write about something that is already out there—as long as you're writing stuff that is true, and your work is very heavily researched—that struck me as a bit rich.SE: Yeah, but it tells you a lot about Wendi Adelson, that it doesn't matter that I would've recognized right away that her threat meant nothing—which of course I did, I chuckled when I read it and then reread it to my wife and reread to all kinds of other people who also chuckled—that of course she knew that I didn't need her permission in order to write about her, as zillions of other publications have. I'm very careful and very diligent, and I'm confident that everything that I've said in this book is true and well-researchedDL: It's interesting—I will say also, just as a testament to the book, I think that the biographical chapter of Wendi is very fair and does not paint some negative or nasty picture. It's not a hatchet job. I think that you are trying to get inside her world, just as in the earlier biographical chapter about Dan, you tried to get inside his world. I think that later things develop, and we learn more about members of her family who are, shall we say, problematic. But I thought your chapter was very fair. I did not think you were out to get her or something.SE: If Wendi Adelson was a hideous, despicable monster, why would Dan Markel have fallen in love with her? Why would Dan Markel have married her and had two kids with her and have been beside himself with grief when she left? The notion that she's this horrible, despicable person, or this completely unintelligent person, doesn't make any sense. You have to understand why Dan was so head-over-heels in love with her in order to understand this story.This story is a love story about the two of them. And when that love fell apart, it's a story about what happens from there and why this becomes not just Wendi's mission, but her parents' mission, and her brother's mission, to do something about the fact that she lives seven hours apart from where she really wants to be and where they want her to be.That's what this story's really about. As a family-law attorney, we call that relocation. And Wendi tried her very best, mostly at the urging of her family, to relocate with the children to South Florida, so that they would have more access to both Wendi and the boys. And she failed. And the question then became, well, what now?Now we know the answer. Extreme Punishment is all about the answer, but you have to know the antecedents. You have to know the seeds of what happened, both in terms of the good and the relationship that was good for a long time between Dan and Wendi, and then how that relationship soured, and why it soured, and why the in-laws started getting involved.And understanding about Rob Adelson, Wendi's older brother, and how his parents got involved in his relationship, is a really telling part of this picture about how those parents of the Adelson children couldn't help themselves from being involved and completely overly involved in what was going on in their children's love lives.DL: One thing I'm curious about… when I talk about this case to people, they say, “Well, this sounds”—again, I've used this term multiple times in our conversation, but—“this sounds insane.” This is a family of well-to-do dentists, they're well-educated and they have significant assets and real estate investments, and they have lot to lose. And sure, divorces and custody battles and relocation battles can get acrimonious, but would a family that is this well-established and well-respected and well-to-do, would they really hire hit men to take out their former son-in-law? I think your book does a brilliant job of explaining how things came to that point, but can you give a short overview just to anyone who says, “I can't even believe this story, Steve, you're pulling my leg. This is ridiculous.” How did it come to this?SE: Well, the most telling pieces of evidence, if you're trying to follow the line from, okay, it's a simple divorce, and Dan and Wendi are going their own separate ways, and they're trying to figure out what to do with the boys and custody and all of that, the line from there to two bullets in Dan's head, you can't get there without really understanding four emails that were sent from Donna Adelson to Wendi Adelson, both before and after the relocation battle.[They make] very clear that Donna believed that there was no limit to what needed to be done in order to make sure that Wendi was able to move to South Florida with those boys—convert the kids to Catholicism, put them in church, have a Christian tutor, teach them about Jesus, make your Facebook photo, Wendi, a picture of the boys and you in front of a church. The goal was to get into Dan's head and make him believe these boys were going to be taken away from him one way or another. And his best bet was to do it amicably and peacefully by allowing them to relocate to South Florida, and he could deal with it then. There were places he could go there. He had a great uncle who lived there. He could stay with him. And Dan actually gave a little bit of thought to that from friends I talked to. Dan didn't consider that completely out of the question. But ultimately he decided this is my life, I've built a life here in Tallahassee. I like my life here in Tallahassee. Wendi actually has a good life here in Tallahassee. She's also on the Florida State faculty, albeit as a clinical faculty member. There's nothing wrong with both of us living here and raising these boys together. And I want to do that in a loving way, and my goal is to do that with Wendi and co-parenting with her.But the Adelsons didn't see it that way. The Adelsons saw Dan standing in the way of what they wanted. They were willing to spend a million dollars to bribe him to bring the boys to South Florida. And what's notable is that every time they were trying to do these despicable things, it was Wendi who had to play this role, and Donna told her, “You need to do this great acting job. You're a great actress when you want to be, you need to do this for us. It's going to be best for you. It's going to be best for the kids. Put on the best acting job of your life, sweetheart.”And what's notable is Wendi refused. She didn't do that. She wouldn't go along with the bribe. She wouldn't do her acting job. She lost the relocation battle. And now you're getting closer from just a simple divorce to two bullets in the head of the person standing in the way of the relocation.DL: She lost the relocation battle. The judge denied her motion to move six, seven hours closer to family. The other ploys that were suggested by Donna, [Wendi] didn't attempt or they didn't work. And so I think then you do get a little bit closer. You can kind of see how it got to this situation.SE: And let me add one more thing. Dan was doing his own legal writing. He had two different lawyers, and they literally were signing their names to the briefs that he was preparing. In family law—and I can say this because I'm a family law attorney—you don't write briefs to judges that have 47 footnotes that basically are half of each page, or dense footnotes underneath the line, which is what of course you do in law review articles. But that's the way these briefs were written to this family court judge who had, by the way, just recently been appointed as a family court judge.[Dan] was writing these vicious, scathing attacks on Wendi and on Donna and Harvey, telling the judge that the parents were footing the bill [for the litigation], they were interfering, and telling [the judge] that Wendi was being dishonest, that in fact she should be sanctioned for all of her dishonesty. He came up with every adjective in the book to describe her and her lawyer, even at one point getting the point of suggesting to his friends that he was going to seek to have them disbarred.So all of these things he was saying about the Adelson family, not surprisingly, the Adelson family clearly took very personally. And then the last straw, which has been widely reported, is that in his final motion before he was killed, Dan asked the judge to take away visitation between Donna and her grandchildren, and that the only visitation she should be permitted to have would be supervised.Wendi testified at both trials [of Katie Magbanua] that nobody took that [threat of taking away Donna's visitation] very seriously. That is impossible for me to believe—having read Donna's attacks on Dan, and also knowing that Donna was losing at every turn, lost the relocation battle, there was a battle over whether Wendi would have a second deposition taken, she lost that battle—Donna was watching, and she was pissed at Wendi's lawyers for not doing a better job. So the notion that Donna Adelson was not concerned about this motion that would result in restricting her access to the grandchildren I find completely farfetched. And that was the last thing that was on the table and never got resolved because, again, two bullets wound up in Dan Markel's head and he was killed.DL: A lot of us who knew Dan, who were his friends, often wonder what could have averted this, or what [other] paths could have been taken. For example, you talk about how Dan came close to getting positions at other universities, including maybe universities closer to Wendi's family, and they didn't work out. And I think that'll be of interest to a lot of my listeners who are legal academics. You also talk about how this battle was litigated. Do you think that if he had not taken such a scorched-earth approach in the divorce or relocation litigation, maybe this wouldn't have happened? And again, I'm not victim blaming—I'm trying to figure out [if] there were off-ramps to avoid this tragedy, maybe in just different worlds.SE: Well, certainly if things had worked out differently. In his first year teaching at Florida State, Dan was offered a position at the University of Miami Law School and wound up teaching there in a look-see visitor position in the fall of 2006. By a whisker-thin vote against him, he was denied a position on the permanent faculty. It's interesting, Wendi had a full-year position there. She stayed. Dan went back to Tallahassee to teach at Florida State, licking his wounds and moving on, not having gotten that job. And the person that I spoke to at the University of Miami and remembers that vote vividly, he wakes up at night in a cold sweat because he knows that had that vote gone differently, this awful tragedy probably never would've happened because those grandchildren would've grown up within an hour's drive of Donna and Harvey Adelson. But because they were seven hours away, that was a game changer.And Donna—I haven't even mentioned this—Donna was driving up after Dan and Wendi broke apart. Donna was driving up, sometimes with Harvey, sometimes on her own, every other weekend. Every time Wendi had the kids, Donna was there. So she was living basically both in Tallahassee and in South Florida, and yet she was the office manager for the dental practice, and Charlie now owned the dental practice, and she didn't think that was fair, and she wrote in her emails that she wanted Wendi's lawyer to say how unfair it was that Donna had to drive up and Harvey had to come, and that the family had to spend all this time in Tallahassee when the easy solution was just to move the children down to where their loving family was. So that was one of the things that could have happened differently.Dan had three offers, actually, during the first five years he was at Tallahassee. He had three different offers. Take it back four years—he was there for four years, and within those first four years he had three different offers: one at the Washington University in St. Louis, one at Miami, and one at the University of Houston.Washington University in St. Louis wound up revoking his offer, and that story is told in the book. University of Houston occurred while Wendi was pregnant with Benjamin, and a very pregnant Wendi got on the plane with Dan to explore the University of Houston. Wendi actually described the position she was offered in the immigration law clinic as her dream job, but the timing just wasn't right.So there are all kinds of things that could have transpired differently. But certainly Dan getting under the Adelsons' skin—he basically was getting almost as vitriolic in his writing in those legal briefs and legal filings as Donna had been in her emails to Wendi—the acrimony was reaching a level that would've, I think, had a lot of people very upset on both sides. But no one could have predicted that this was how it was going to end.DL: No. Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, I think in some ways this was a story, terrible as it is, that you were just born to write, having been a matrimonial lawyer, having been a law professor, having been the author of two prior true crime books, one of them set in Tallahassee, the Mike Williams story. So again, I urge readers to check it out.SE: Yeah. To any of your listeners who have ever been to the “Meat Market” [academic job fair], I'm a three-time veteran myself. I describe the Meat Market in all of its gory detail. And what most people would not even suspect is that Dan was an abject failure at his first Meat Market. He had over two dozen interviews lined up and literally struck out, got nothing. And he learned about himself a lot through that process. And the second time he went through the Meat Market, he actually had a callback interview at Berkeley and came close to getting a teaching position at Berkeley.So there's a lot in this book about Dan. Dan had many facets to him, some weaknesses, and I don't try and hide Dan's weaknesses. Dan was well aware of his weaknesses and relied on Wendi as his wife to help him through some of his own social quirks—and Wendi did for a while. But that was one of the thingsthat chafed at her, along with how Jewish Dan was compared to the way she was brought up, and many other things. It got to the point where it was clear this marriage was not going to work, and then the thing in the divorce that really set the tone was they had very different ideas, not only about how to be married, but how to be divorced.Dan felt that the lines between them should be as blurred as possible. Dan felt that the more he was able to see the kids during Wendi's time, the more she was able to see the kids during his time, the more contact that they had with each other, the better off it would be for the kids. And Wendi didn't want that more than she wanted to be hit by a speeding train. She wanted nothing to do with Dan Markel. She realized she had to have something to do with him because they were raising their kids together. But the idea he had, the concept he had about what divorce should look like, could not have been more diametrically opposite as to what she thought divorce should look like. And that was one of the things that was also causing heightened acrimony between the Adelson family and Dan.DL: You have such incredible details in the book that capture these things. Take the scene where she is thinking of taking the kids to Whole Foods and it's during her time, and then she sees Dan inside and then she says, oh, I don't want to go in there because then we're going to see him and then he's going to want to talk, and then it's going to be like our shared time, and she goes somewhere else.SE: That was two days before he was shot. That was the Wednesday before the Friday of the shooting.DL: It's just amazing. One thing I'm curious about—and you do this so well in your other books too—you do all this research, but then what I love really about the writing, and I guess it's also true of the genre of true crime, is it's told in a narrative nonfiction way. It's told as if we are inside the heads of these protagonists. Is that difficult? And at times, do you find yourself having to take some poetic license to imagine what was going through people's heads? I remember you talk about Wendi putting her hair in a messy bun. And again, I know you can look at these things, you can look at the interview footage from her police station interview, and you can see her hair or what have you. But how do you do this? I think it's amazing.SE: There is definitely creative license that has to be taken to fill in very small, inconsequential gaps where I, as the writer, clearly don't have access to what was happening in Wendi's home the morning that Dan was shot. I know what she described in her interview with the police investigator, but I have to obviously fill in those gaps a little bit. So I do take creative license with very small things like that. And to the extent that there's dialogue that happens that there's no recording of, there's no transcript of—for instance, when Wendi called Dan when he was up in New York at a colloquium and she said, I'm leaving you, the exact words that were said, there's no written recording of that. So I'm obviously ad libbing the exact words that they said to one another at the time before Dan got on a plane and flew back to Tallahassee. So little things like that. As a writer, I do have creative license to manufacture. But important facts and things about people that are documented, I have to get those things right, and I work very, very hard, I kill myself trying to make sure I am getting those things right.DL: And I know it took you a long time to write and you interviewed 50-plus people for it. How long did it take you from when you started your research to the completion of your manuscript, roughly?SE: There was a little bit of waiting because I was waiting on the second trial and then I got a gift from God when they decided to indict and arrest Charlie Adelson. And I know I got the facts surrounding his arrest right, because I worked very hard to get the right interviews with the right people. That's an interesting story of itself, the arrest of Charlie Adelson. So there was a little bit of a gap there while I was waiting for that trial to occur. And then there was obviously Charlie's arrest. But I finished writing at the end of June, and I had started writing in December of the prior year. So it was a full 18, 19 months of writing.DL: It's interesting, the scene of Charlie [getting arrested] in his underwear, stoned probably, is… people just need to read it. But let me ask you this. I heard about this in a different podcast, your interview with Judy the YouTube Lawyer, and I thought it was a really interesting point you made. The first trial for Katie Magbanua, the go-between connecting the Adelsons and the hitmen, ended in a mistrial. And for those of us who've been following this case, it really saddened us and angered us to see how that first trial shook out. But can you explain how this might, totally counterintuitively, have been a good thing?SE: It was a blessing in disguise, as it turned out. So the juror who actually hung the jury, I met with that juror in person in Tallahassee and had an extensive interview. The juror was unabashedly, basically nullifying the judge's instructions, deciding that these two children—not the Dan Markel and Wendi Adelson children, but the children of the hitman, Sigfredo Garcia, and Katie Magbanua, the go-between between the Adelson family and the hitman—that those children shouldn't grow up without two parents. And so although she agreed to convict one, Sigfredo Garcia, she wouldn't agree to convict the other. And that's what hung the jury. And that story is told in the book, in the chapter called Civic Duty.But as it turns out, between that and Covid, that bought the State Attorney's Office a couple of years to try and figure out how to put on a better case. You've been a prosecutor, I'm sure you've been part of mistrials before, and as a prosecutor, you want to learn from your mistakes and do better the next time and put on a better case.The one thing in the first trial that left the prosecution unable to put on the case that they wanted to was not being able to use the Dolce Vita video and audio to show that Charlie Adelson and Katie Magbanua, two years after the murder, were basically discussing what had happened in the murder and how to deal with the fact that this perceived gang member was shaking Donna Adelson down as part of the so-called “bump” [undercover operation], and how to deal with that.There was a lot of valuable information in that dialogue, the State Attorney's Office believed, but it was a noisy Italian restaurant, and if they were going to play it for the jury, the jury wasn't going to be able to make out a thing. So they got the lead FBI agent to literally, on his own, over the course of a hundred hours, prepare a transcript by listening with noise-canceling headphones and using some proprietary FBI software.And lo and behold, he comes up with this great transcript, and the judge in the first trial, Judge James Hankinson, says no, you can't give the jury that transcript, because that's basically taking the FBI agent's own interpretation of what these people are saying, and the jury's just going to substitute that for the voices that they're hearing in the actual recording. So they put on one minute basically of the audio of the meeting in Dolce Vita between Katie Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, just to show the jury we don't really have anything useful here.In between the two trials, with all this extra time afforded by Covid, they reached out to several different audio forensics experts and eventually landed one in South Carolina named Keith McElveen, who had spent about 10 years working for the CIA dealing with this whole issue of how to hear individual voices in noisy, what he calls “cocktail party,” environments. And he came up with 12 different patents for proprietary software, and he was able to get a fairly clear recording for 41 minutes. He missed the first 25 or so minutes of the Dolce meeting between Katie Magbanua and Charlie Adelson, but the last 41 minutes he got pretty darn well, especially what Charlie was saying, and it was very clear they were talking about the murder and at one point—this is why Charlie was arrested at one point—Charlie literally says, “Why didn't they know it was me? Why didn't they know it was me?” And at another point he's talking about the money drop, and he asked Katie, “When everyone was there the next day, did anybody take any money? I mean, it's not like you're driving around in a Bentley, you know, riding around in a mega yacht on the seas.”And there were many other things. I actually have an entire chapter toward the end of the book that is devoted solely to how incriminating Charlie Adelson is in that Dolce Vita record—Katie not as much, because her voice is much softer, and you can't hear a lot of what she's saying.Why the Dolce Vita audio was so effective for the prosecution at the [second Magbanua] trial was because Katie didn't do anything like run away or say “what the hell are you talking about” or “I don't want to be involved in this.” She participated in this conversation, she chimed in, and you can hear her chiming in several times, basically accepting all of the premises in Charlie's rambling through the course of 41 minutes, and it was used extremely effectively during Sarah Kathryn Dugan's cross-examination of Katherine Magbanua on the witness stand. If anything, that cross-examination is what sealed Katie's fate with the second jury who unanimously found her guilty.DL: And then, of course, that Dolce Vita enhanced recording was used as the basis for arresting Charlie….SE: Absolutely.DL: …. which I know Georgia Cappleman in the state prosecutor's office had been resisting for a while because, understandably, they wanted to take their one best shot at Charlie if they were going to go after him.SE: And they wanted Katie to flip. They thought all that time that Katie… you know, who's going to spend six years in jail, when they have information that can land a much bigger fish with the prosecutors? Surely at some point they thought she's going to flip. But after six years she never did. And now she's convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At this point, she's made some horrible miscalculations. Maybe she believed her lawyers were so good, they were going to get her off. I don't know.DL: So you don't really have a theory on what I view as one of the huge questions to this case: why the heck didn't she cooperate? I know Georgia Cappleman at one point said [Katie] holds the keys to her own cell, or something along those lines. And yet here we are. She's been convicted. She's looking at life in prison. She has two kids. Her husband, or the father of her children, is also looking at life in prison. And yet she still has not said anything, right?SE: I think that the operative word there is “still.” So I posit at the very end of the book that it's not too late, and I spent some time on the phone with some big wigs, some stalwarts in the Florida criminal bar, to confirm that it is never too late for someone in their position, even after they've gotten a mandatory sentence of life in prison, which first-degree murder is in Florida, that there are ways around that mandatory life-in-prison sentence, and if they wanted to deliver the goods, it's never too late for them to approach the State Attorney's Office. And certainly somebody like Georgia Cappleman and Jack Campbell, the elected State Attorney, would be interested in hearing from Katherine Magbanua about all the stuff that they've been waiting for her for six years to tell them.What kind of deal she can get now, post-conviction, post-sentence, would certainly be a very different deal than what she could have gotten back then. And even Sigfredo Garcia, you wouldn't think that he's got something valuable to offer. But the reality is that Luis Rivera is not a terribly good witness after having already testified about a dozen times now. There are so many inconsistencies in his testimony. Sigfredo Garcia has never testified, so even if he just repeated the same sort of things that Luis Rivera has said at two different trials, he would be a much cleaner witness than Luis Rivera. So there probably is a deal there even for him, even if he can't point directly at Charlie Adelson.The obvious reason why he didn't come forward before Katie Magbanua's second trial was because anything he would've said would've implicated her. She's the mother of his children. She's the love of his life. It makes sense that he was never going to throw her under the bus. And even Katie during the first trial wouldn't let her lawyers say horrible things about Garcia. They had permission in the second trial to do that because he was already convicted and sentenced to life. And they did. They tried to make it seem like this was a direct conspiracy between Charlie and Garcia—they're the bad people, Katie knew nothing. And that never made any sense because the very first thing Sigfredo Garcia would've done upon his arrest, if in fact he had the goods on Charlie Adelson, is he would've run to the State Attorney's Office just like Luis Rivera did.And even though he didn't have the goods on anybody named Adelson, if Sigfredo Garcia had the goods on Charlie Adelson, especially after Katie Magbanua was arrested, if she knew nothing about it, he would've sprinted with his lawyers by his side to the State Attorney's Office to make a deal, and he never did. Because he didn't know they walled Charlie and the Adelsons off through Katherine Magbanua. That was her whole point. The whole point of Katie being involved was to wall the killers off from the people hiring them.DL: So you mentioned it's never too late. People are now looking at Charlie Adelson. He's sitting in jail. His motion for bail after the so-called Arthur hearing under Florida law was denied. He's looking at a trial early next year. Do you think he could cut some kind of deal? Any predictions about what will happen next if he goes to trial? Does he have any viable defense, especially in the wake of the enhanced Dolce Vita recording?SE: Well, according to Daniel Rashbaum, his attorney, his saying five or six times during the enhanced recording “and I had nothing to do with this”—that's his defense. The fact that he fit those words into that conversation, even though there are about 45 incriminating things that he said that belie the notion, such as “why didn't they know it was me”—how do you square those two together? Daniel Rashbaum has his work cut out for him.And besides that, Charlie Adelson is a very unlikable guy. If he takes the witness stand, the notion that he's going to charm this jury, I mean, they're going to hear all of these conversations that he's had with his mother, with Katie Magbanua, and they paint him in a horrible, horrible light, as does the Dolce Vita recording. So the notion that he's going to charm this jury into believing that he's an innocent victim or that he was only trying to hire these hit men not to kill Dan Markel, but just to scare him and intimidate him, none of that makes any sense. He really has his work cut out.That said, would the State Attorney's Office make some kind of a deal with him so they didn't have to try this [case]? We're just talking about the number of years, and would he accept 30 years instead of life? Would they do that? That's a possible deal that could get done. As you know, as a former prosecutor, most cases end in a plea bargain, not because the person being convicted is ratting somebody else out, but just because the most economically efficient thing for a prosecutor to do is to see if there's not a way to get somebody to agree they did the crime and accept a lesser sentence than their maximum sentence.So that's always possible. There are people speculating, you know, is he going to give up his sister? Is he going to give up his mother, his father, in exchange for his own freedom? A, it's hard to believe that anything like that happens, but B, would that even be something that the State Attorney's Office would consider? You're the person who paid a hundred thousand dollars to get this done. You're the person who had the relationship with Katie Magbanua. The fact that you might also be able to give us your mother or your father or your sister—that's not going to get you a better slice of bread. So at the end of the day, if Charlie's making a deal, he's making a deal to get a lesser sentence, not because he's going to give up one of his family members. And the likelihood of him making a deal increases exponentially if Katie Magbanua or even Sigfredo Garcia flips and turns state's evidence.DL: Looking at his family members, I agree with you. I don't think that [the government] would give him a good deal just because he can give up somebody else in his family. But do you think that the authorities will eventually move against Donna, who the evidence strongly suggests was involved?SE: If you remember back to the time that there was a turf war between the Tallahassee Police Department and the State Attorney's Office, even though they had drafted a probable cause affidavit and leaked it only for Charlie, that affidavit points the finger at Donna every bit as much as it points the finger at Charlie.And remember, Charlie's signature isn't on any important piece of evidence in this case. Donna's signature is on 44 pieces of evidence, the checks that were written to Katie Magbanua to keep her quiet from literally just after the murder happens until just before Sigfredo Garcia is arrested. And those checks stop the instant Sigfredo Garcia is arrested, and Donna is the one who stroked every single one of those checks, and there's no dispute. Both trials made clear that Katie didn't work for the Adelson Institute. There's no reason the Adelson Institute would've been paying her, but Donna was in on that.And then if you watch what happens in the bump and Donna's reaction to that, and all of the communications that Donna has with Charlie, and then Donna's communication even with the undercover agent who orchestrated the bump as she speaks to him for eight minutes, even that is quite entertaining, hearing Donna protest that she didn't know anything at all about what happened to Dan Markel and is as torn up about it as anyone. So yeah, there's tons of evidence against Donna and the very first thing she says after the bump to Charlie, “who does it involve,” he asks her, “who does it involve”? And she says, twice, “the two of us.” And then she says, “I think you know what I'm talking about.”DL: Exactly. SE: Those are incredibly incriminating words. And then you add that to the other evidence. You take the emails that she wrote, all of the checks that were written. I would hate to be Donna Adelson's defense lawyer as well.The only thing she has going for her is that she's in her seventies and she's not the most attractive target because she's got some sympathy on her side because she's in her seventies, she's a grandmother. But when you think about the role that she has played, she was the one who selected Danny for Wendi off of JDate. She was there at the beginning, and the evidence seems to suggest very strongly she was the one who decided not only that it was time for Wendi to leave him, but that it was time for his place in Ben and Lincoln's life to end as well, because Wendi needed to come home with the boys. And Donna Adelson was there literally every step of the way. And if you're the State Attorney's Office, you have to have her within your sights because of the very significant role she played in Dan Markel being part of this tragedy.DL: Absolutely. I totally agree with you.I'm so grateful to you, Steve, for taking the time and for writing this remarkable book, which as I say in the foreword is going to be the definitive account of this tragic event and its aftermath. So again, thank you for devoting so much time and energy to giving people an idea of who Dan was and telling the world about this crime and the quest to bring folks to justice. I believe this would've been, this month, Dan's 50th birthday?SE: The book was released on October 9th, and it was released on that day to be a further tribute to the late Dan Markel—that would've been his 50th birthday. Yes, and we are speaking, I don't know when this is going to drop, but we are speaking on Ruth Markel's birthday, so happy birthday to Ruth. She has her own book out, The Unveiling, and it comes straight from her heart, everything she's been through since that awful day in July of 2014.I've gotten to know her very well. She's an incredible human being. Two of my favorite people in the world now are Cheryl Williams and Ruth Markel, and I actually connected them at one point because they have so much in common. They've lived through so many similar things, and they're both incredible, incredible women.And that's one of the things that I love about true crime, is that you learn about just incredibly tenacious human beings who care so much about justice. And Ruth and Phil and Shelly [Markel] are not done getting the justice that they so richly deserve. Stay tuned. There's a lot more to be written even after folks turn the last page of my book.DL: That's an excellent note to end on. I agree with you that Ruth Markel is amazing and I urge people to check out her book, The Unveiling, just to see what she has endured and how she has tried to turn it into something for good, to protect the rights of grandparents who wind up in horrific situations like the one that she's faced. Again, it is a testament to the human spirit.So again, Steve, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for joining me, and we will continue to hope and pray for complete justice in the case of Dan Markel.SE: Thank you, David. Thank you for having me on. I really, really appreciate it.DL: Thanks again to Steve for joining me. As I wrote in the foreword to Extreme Punishment, “I wish nobody had to tell this tale. But since it is being told—and should be told, to honor Dan's legacy—I am thankful to Steve for doing so with such thoughtfulness, understanding, and skill.”As always, thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers, for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, you can email me at davidlat@substack.com, and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram, at davidbenjaminlat. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Original Jurisdiction. Since this podcast is new, please help spread the word by telling your friends about it. And if you might be interested in sponsorship opportunities for either the podcast or the newsletter, please reach out to me.Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, as is most of the newsletter content, but it is made possible by your paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast should appear two weeks from now, on or about Wednesday, November 2. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; and (3) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Who is the nation's top Supreme Court advocate?If you were to poll the SCOTUS bar, many members would name Paul Clement. The 43rd Solicitor General of the United States and a veteran of over 100 arguments before the Court, he has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal described Clement as “the preeminent advocate in his generation,” while SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein dubbed Clement “a god.”And Clement, 56, has been having quite the year. He won two of the biggest cases of the last Term: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the landmark Second Amendment case, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of the praying football coach. Despite his win in Bruen, his law firm at the time, Kirkland & Ellis, announced that it would be withdrawing from all Second Amendment cases—on the day that Bruen was handed down. So Clement and his longtime colleague Erin Murphy withdrew from Kirkland, leaving to launch Clement & Murphy, their own appellate and Supreme Court boutique.After I had a top trial lawyer, Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, as my first podcast guest, it seemed like a logical next step to welcome a leading appellate advocate as my next guest—especially since the episode would air during the first week of October, the start of the new Supreme Court Term. I invited Paul Clement to join me, and I was delighted when he agreed.In our conversation, we discussed a wide range of topics, including his high school and college debate career, his advice for appellate advocates, some additional backstory behind his departure from Kirkland, his concern about Biglaw's increasing unwillingness to take on controversial cases and clients, and the time he may or may not have attended a Green Day concert with Elena Kagan. You can check out the episode by clicking on the embed at the top of this post.Show Notes:* Paul Clement bio, Clement & Murphy PLLC* The Law Firm That Got Tired of Winning, by Paul Clement and Erin Murphy for the Wall Street Journal* You Won Your Gun Case. You're Fired, by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board* The Legal Wunderkind Challenging The Health Law, by Nina Totenberg for All Things Considered/NPR* The Paul Clement Court, by Jason Zengerle for New York MagazinePrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers of Original Jurisdiction, a transcript of the entire episode appears below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Molly discusses Dobbs and how this pro-life victory underscores the importance of fighting at every level to reclaim our country. Plus, she discusses Paul Clement's departure from Kirkland and the opportunity for America First attorneys, and Sidney Powell's clash with the Texas Bar over her license.