Podcasts about supreme court term

The Supreme Court term was limited in its blockbusters this year, but the decision to limit the power of lower court judges to issue nationwide injunctions will have the biggest impact, attorneys and legal scholars say. “It affects how cases get litigated in a big way,” said Anastasia Boden, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian public interest law firm. "I saw someone say 'We're all class action attorneys now, right?' because that's all we've got." Boden joins “Cases and Controversies,” along with Georgia State University College of Law professor Eric Segall to discuss the recent term, its rulings, and the justices that stood out the most. Hosts Kimberly Robinson and Lydia Wheeler also talk about the court's recent emergency order that allows President Donald Trump to move forward with plans to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Do you have feedback on this episode of Cases and Controversies? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded its latest Term. And over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has continued to duke it out with its adversaries in the federal courts.To tackle these topics, as well as their intersection—in terms of how well the courts, including but not limited to the Supreme Court, are handling Trump-related cases—I interviewed Professor Pamela Karlan, a longtime faculty member at Stanford Law School. She's perfectly situated to address these subjects, for at least three reasons.First, Professor Karlan is a leading scholar of constitutional law. Second, she's a former SCOTUS clerk and seasoned advocate at One First Street, with ten arguments to her name. Third, she has high-level experience at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), having served (twice) as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.I've had some wonderful guests to discuss the role of the courts today, including Judges Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) and Ana Reyes (D.D.C.)—but as sitting judges, they couldn't discuss certain subjects, and they had to be somewhat circumspect. Professor Karlan, in contrast, isn't afraid to “go there”—and whether or not you agree with her opinions, I think you'll share my appreciation for her insight and candor.Show Notes:* Pamela S. Karlan bio, Stanford Law School* Pamela S. Karlan bio, Wikipedia* The McCorkle Lecture (Professor Pamela Karlan), UVA Law SchoolPrefer 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.Three quick notes about this transcript. First, it has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter substance—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning. Second, my interviewee has not reviewed this transcript, and any transcription errors are mine. Third, 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: 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 at davidlat dot Substack dot com. You're listening to the seventy-seventh episode of this podcast, recorded on Friday, June 27.Thanks to this podcast's sponsor, NexFirm. 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. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.With the 2024-2025 Supreme Court Term behind us, now is a good time to talk about both constitutional law and the proper role of the judiciary in American society. I expect they will remain significant as subjects because the tug of war between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary continues—and shows no signs of abating.To tackle these topics, I welcomed to the podcast Professor Pamela Karlan, the Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. Pam is not only a leading legal scholar, but she also has significant experience in practice. She's argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court, which puts her in a very small club, and she has worked in government at high levels, serving as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Professor Pam Karlan.Professor Karlan, thank you so much for joining me.Pamela Karlan: Thanks for having me.DL: So let's start at the beginning. Tell us about your background and upbringing. I believe we share something in common—you were born in New York City?PK: I was born in New York City. My family had lived in New York since they arrived in the country about a century before.DL: What borough?PK: Originally Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then back to Manhattan. As my mother said, when I moved to Brooklyn when I was clerking, “Brooklyn to Brooklyn, in three generations.”DL: Brooklyn is very, very hip right now.PK: It wasn't hip when we got there.DL: And did you grow up in Manhattan or Brooklyn?PK: When I was little, we lived in Manhattan. Then right before I started elementary school, right after my brother was born, our apartment wasn't big enough anymore. So we moved to Stamford, Connecticut, and I grew up in Connecticut.DL: What led you to go to law school? I see you stayed in the state; you went to Yale. What did you have in mind for your post-law-school career?PK: I went to law school because during the summer between 10th and 11th grade, I read Richard Kluger's book, Simple Justice, which is the story of the litigation that leads up to Brown v. Board of Education. And I decided I wanted to go to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and be a school desegregation lawyer, and that's what led me to go to law school.DL: You obtained a master's degree in history as well as a law degree. Did you also have teaching in mind as well?PK: No, I thought getting the master's degree was my last chance to do something I had loved doing as an undergrad. It didn't occur to me until I was late in my law-school days that I might at some point want to be a law professor. That's different than a lot of folks who go to law school now; they go to law school wanting to be law professors.During Admitted Students' Weekend, some students say to me, “I want to be a law professor—should I come here to law school?” I feel like saying to them, “You haven't done a day of law school yet. You have no idea whether you're good at law. You have no idea whether you'd enjoy doing legal teaching.”It just amazes me that people come to law school now planning to be a law professor, in a way that I don't think very many people did when I was going to law school. In my day, people discovered when they were in law school that they loved it, and they wanted to do more of what they loved doing; I don't think people came to law school for the most part planning to be law professors.DL: The track is so different now—and that's a whole other conversation—but people are getting master's and Ph.D. degrees, and people are doing fellowship after fellowship. It's not like, oh, you practice for three, five, or seven years, and then you become a professor. It seems to be almost like this other track nowadays.PK: When I went on the teaching market, I was distinctive in that I had not only my student law-journal note, but I actually had an article that Ricky Revesz and I had worked on that was coming out. And it was not normal for people to have that back then. Now people go onto the teaching market with six or seven publications—and no practice experience really to speak of, for a lot of them.DL: You mentioned talking to admitted students. You went to YLS, but you've now been teaching for a long time at Stanford Law School. They're very similar in a lot of ways. They're intellectual. They're intimate, especially compared to some of the other top law schools. What would you say if I'm an admitted student choosing between those two institutions? What would cause me to pick one versus the other—besides the superior weather of Palo Alto?PK: Well, some of it is geography; it's not just the weather. Some folks are very East-Coast-centered, and other folks are very West-Coast-centered. That makes a difference.It's a little hard to say what the differences are, because the last time I spent a long time at Yale Law School was in 2012 (I visited there a bunch of times over the years), but I think the faculty here at Stanford is less focused and concentrated on the students who want to be law professors than is the case at Yale. When I was at Yale, the idea was if you were smart, you went and became a law professor. It was almost like a kind of external manifestation of an inner state of grace; it was a sign that you were a smart person, if you wanted to be a law professor. And if you didn't, well, you could be a donor later on. Here at Stanford, the faculty as a whole is less concentrated on producing law professors. We produce a fair number of them, but it's not the be-all and end-all of the law school in some ways. Heather Gerken, who's the dean at Yale, has changed that somewhat, but not entirely. So that's one big difference.One of the most distinctive things about Stanford, because we're on the quarter system, is that our clinics are full-time clinics, taught by full-time faculty members at the law school. And that's distinctive. I think Yale calls more things clinics than we do, and a lot of them are part-time or taught by folks who aren't in the building all the time. So that's a big difference between the schools.They just have very different feels. I would encourage any student who gets into both of them to go and visit both of them, talk to the students, and see where you think you're going to be most comfortably stretched. Either school could be the right school for somebody.DL: I totally agree with you. Sometimes people think there's some kind of platonic answer to, “Where should I go to law school?” And it depends on so many individual circumstances.PK: There really isn't one answer. I think when I was deciding between law schools as a student, I got waitlisted at Stanford and I got into Yale. I had gone to Yale as an undergrad, so I wasn't going to go anywhere else if I got in there. I was from Connecticut and loved living in Connecticut, so that was an easy choice for me. But it's a hard choice for a lot of folks.And I do think that one of the worst things in the world is U.S. News and World Report, even though we're generally a beneficiary of it. It used to be that the R-squared between where somebody went to law school and what a ranking was was minimal. I knew lots of people who decided, in the old days, that they were going to go to Columbia rather than Yale or Harvard, rather than Stanford or Penn, rather than Chicago, because they liked the city better or there was somebody who did something they really wanted to do there.And then the R-squared, once U.S. News came out, of where people went and what the rankings were, became huge. And as you probably know, there were some scandals with law schools that would just waitlist people rather than admit them, to keep their yield up, because they thought the person would go to a higher-ranked law school. There were years and years where a huge part of the Stanford entering class had been waitlisted at Penn. And that's bad for people, because there are people who should go to Penn rather than come here. There are people who should go to NYU rather than going to Harvard. And a lot of those people don't do it because they're so fixated on U.S. News rankings.DL: I totally agree with you. But I suspect that a lot of people think that there are certain opportunities that are going to be open to them only if they go here or only if they go there.Speaking of which, after graduating from YLS, you clerked for Justice Blackmun on the Supreme Court, and statistically it's certainly true that certain schools seem to improve your odds of clerking for the Court. What was that experience like overall? People often describe it as a dream job. We're recording this on the last day of the Supreme Court Term; some hugely consequential historic cases are coming down. As a law clerk, you get a front row seat to all of that, to all of that history being made. Did you love that experience?PK: I loved the experience. I loved it in part because I worked for a wonderful justice who was just a lovely man, a real mensch. I had three great co-clerks. It was the first time, actually, that any justice had ever hired three women—and so that was distinctive for me, because I had been in classes in law school where there were fewer than three women. I was in one class in law school where I was the only woman. So that was neat.It was a great Term. It was the last year of the Burger Court, and we had just a heap of incredibly interesting cases. It's amazing how many cases I teach in law school that were decided that year—the summary-judgment trilogy, Thornburg v. Gingles, Bowers v. Hardwick. It was just a really great time to be there. And as a liberal, we won a lot of the cases. We didn't win them all, but we won a lot of them.It was incredibly intense. At that point, the Supreme Court still had this odd IT system that required eight hours of diagnostics every night. So the system was up from 8 a.m. to midnight—it stayed online longer if there was a death case—but otherwise it went down at midnight. In the Blackmun chambers, we showed up at 8 a.m. for breakfast with the Justice, and we left at midnight, five days a week. Then on the weekends, we were there from 9 to 9. And they were deciding 150 cases, not 60 cases, a year. So there was a lot more work to do, in that sense. But it was a great year. I've remained friends with my co-clerks, and I've remained friends with clerks from other chambers. It was a wonderful experience.DL: And you've actually written about it. I would refer people to some of the articles that they can look up, on your CV and elsewhere, where you've talked about, say, having breakfast with the Justice.PK: And we had a Passover Seder with the Justice as well, which was a lot of fun.DL: Oh wow, who hosted that? Did he?PK: Actually, the clerks hosted it. Originally he had said, “Oh, why don't we have it at the Court?” But then he came back to us and said, “Well, I think the Chief Justice”—Chief Justice Burger—“might not like that.” But he lent us tables and chairs, which were dropped off at one of the clerk's houses. And it was actually the day of the Gramm-Rudman argument, which was an argument about the budget. So we had to keep running back and forth from the Court to the house of Danny Richman, the clerk who hosted it, who was a Thurgood Marshall clerk. We had to keep running back and forth from the Court to Danny Richman's house, to baste the turkey and make stuff, back and forth. And then we had a real full Seder, and we invited all of the Jewish clerks at the Court and the Justice's messenger, who was Jewish, and the Justice and Mrs. Blackmun, and it was a lot of fun.DL: Wow, that's wonderful. So where did you go after your clerkship?PK: I went to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where I was an assistant counsel, and I worked on voting-rights and employment-discrimination cases.DL: And that was something that you had thought about for a long time—you mentioned you had read about its work in high school.PK: Yes, and it was a great place to work. We were working on great cases, and at that point we were really pushing the envelope on some of the stuff that we were doing—which was great and inspiring, and my colleagues were wonderful.And unlike a lot of Supreme Court practices now, where there's a kind of “King Bee” usually, and that person gets to argue everything, the Legal Defense Fund was very different. The first argument I did at the Court was in a case that I had worked on the amended complaint for, while at the Legal Defense Fund—and they let me essentially keep working on the case and argue it at the Supreme Court, even though by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, I was teaching at UVA. So they didn't have this policy of stripping away from younger lawyers the ability to argue their cases the whole way through the system.DL: So how many years out from law school were you by the time you had your first argument before the Court? I know that, today at least, there's this two-year bar on arguing before the Court after having clerked there.PK: Six or seven years out—because I think I argued in ‘91.DL: Now, you mentioned that by then you were teaching at UVA. You had a dream job working at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. What led you to go to UVA?PK: There were two things, really, that did it. One was I had also discovered when I was in law school that I loved law school, and I was better at law school than I had been at anything I had done before law school. And the second was I really hated dealing with opposing counsel. I tell my students now, “You should take negotiation. If there's only one class you could take in law school, take negotiation.” Because it's a skill; it's not a habit of mind, but I felt like it was a habit of mind. And I found the discovery process and filing motions to compel and dealing with the other side's intransigence just really unpleasant.What I really loved was writing briefs. I loved writing briefs, and I could keep doing that for the Legal Defense Fund while at UVA, and I've done a bunch of that over the years for LDF and for other organizations. I could keep doing that and I could live in a small town, which I really wanted to do. I love New York, and now I could live in a city—I've spent a couple of years, off and on, living in cities since then, and I like it—but I didn't like it at that point. I really wanted to be out in the country somewhere. And so UVA was the perfect mix. I kept working on cases, writing amicus briefs for LDF and for other organizations. I could teach, which I loved. I could live in a college town, which I really enjoyed. So it was the best blend of things.DL: And I know, from your having actually delivered a lecture at UVA, that it really did seem to have a special place in your heart. UVA Law School—they really do have a wonderful environment there (as does Stanford), and Charlottesville is a very charming place.PK: Yes, especially when I was there. UVA has a real gift for developing its junior faculty. It was a place where the senior faculty were constantly reading our work, constantly talking to us. Everyone was in the building, which makes a huge difference.The second case I had go to the Supreme Court actually came out of a class where a student asked a question, and I ended up representing the student, and we took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. But I wasn't admitted in the Western District of Virginia, and that's where we had to file a case. And so I turned to my next-door neighbor, George Rutherglen, and said to George, “Would you be the lead counsel in this?” And he said, “Sure.” And we ended up representing a bunch of UVA students, challenging the way the Republican Party did its nomination process. And we ended up, by the student's third year in law school, at the Supreme Court.So UVA was a great place. I had amazing colleagues. The legendary Bill Stuntz was then there; Mike Klarman was there. Dan Ortiz, who's still there, was there. So was John Harrison. It was a fantastic group of people to have as your colleagues.DL: Was it difficult for you, then, to leave UVA and move to Stanford?PK: Oh yes. When I went in to tell Bob Scott, who was then the dean, that I was leaving, I just burst into tears. I think the reason I left UVA was I was at a point in my career where I'd done a bunch of visits at other schools, and I thought that I could either leave then or I would be making a decision to stay there for the rest of my career. And I just felt like I wanted to make a change. And in retrospect, I would've been just as happy if I'd stayed at UVA. In my professional life, I would've been just as happy. I don't know in my personal life, because I wouldn't have met my partner, I don't think, if I'd been at UVA. But it's a marvelous place; everything about it is just absolutely superb.DL: Are you the managing partner of a boutique or midsize firm? If so, you know that your most important job is attracting and retaining top talent. It's not easy, especially if your benefits don't match up well with those of Biglaw firms or if your HR process feels “small time.” NexFirm has created an onboarding and benefits experience that rivals an Am Law 100 firm, so you can compete for the best talent at a price your firm can afford. Want to learn more? Contact NexFirm at 212-292-1002 or email betterbenefits at nexfirm dot com.So I do want to give you a chance to say nice things about your current place. I assume you have no regrets about moving to Stanford Law, even if you would've been just as happy at UVA?PK: I'm incredibly happy here. I've got great colleagues. I've got great students. The ability to do the clinic the way we do it, which is as a full-time clinic, wouldn't be true anywhere else in the country, and that makes a huge difference to that part of my work. I've gotten to teach around the curriculum. I've taught four of the six first-year courses, which is a great opportunityAnd as you said earlier, the weather is unbelievable. People downplay that, because especially for people who are Northeastern Ivy League types, there's a certain Calvinism about that, which is that you have to suffer in order to be truly working hard. People out here sometimes think we don't work hard because we are not visibly suffering. But it's actually the opposite, in a way. I'm looking out my window right now, and it's a gorgeous day. And if I were in the east and it were 75 degrees and sunny, I would find it hard to work because I'd think it's usually going to be hot and humid, or if it's in the winter, it's going to be cold and rainy. I love Yale, but the eight years I spent there, my nose ran the entire time I was there. And here I look out and I think, “It's beautiful, but you know what? It's going to be beautiful tomorrow. So I should sit here and finish grading my exams, or I should sit here and edit this article, or I should sit here and work on the Restatement—because it's going to be just as beautiful tomorrow.” And the ability to walk outside, to clear your head, makes a huge difference. People don't understand just how huge a difference that is, but it's huge.DL: That's so true. If you had me pick a color to associate with my time at YLS, I would say gray. It just felt like everything was always gray, the sky was always gray—not blue or sunny or what have you.But I know you've spent some time outside of Northern California, because you have done some stints at the Justice Department. Tell us about that, the times you went there—why did you go there? What type of work were you doing? And how did it relate to or complement your scholarly work?PK: At the beginning of the Obama administration, I had applied for a job in the Civil Rights Division as a deputy assistant attorney general (DAAG), and I didn't get it. And I thought, “Well, that's passed me by.” And a couple of years later, when they were looking for a new principal deputy solicitor general, in the summer of 2013, the civil-rights groups pushed me for that job. I got an interview with Eric Holder, and it was on June 11th, 2013, which just fortuitously happens to be the 50th anniversary of the day that Vivian Malone desegregated the University of Alabama—and Vivian Malone is the older sister of Sharon Malone, who is married to Eric Holder.So I went in for the interview and I said, “This must be an especially special day for you because of the 50th anniversary.” And we talked about that a little bit, and then we talked about other things. And I came out of the interview, and a couple of weeks later, Don Verrilli, who was the solicitor general, called me up and said, “Look, you're not going to get a job as the principal deputy”—which ultimately went to Ian Gershengorn, a phenomenal lawyer—“but Eric Holder really enjoyed talking to you, so we're going to look for something else for you to do here at the Department of Justice.”And a couple of weeks after that, Eric Holder called me and offered me the DAAG position in the Civil Rights Division and said, “We'd really like you to especially concentrate on our voting-rights litigation.” It was very important litigation, in part because the Supreme Court had recently struck down the pre-clearance regime under Section 5 [of the Voting Rights Act]. So the Justice Department was now bringing a bunch of lawsuits against things they could have blocked if Section 5 had been in effect, most notably the Texas voter ID law, which was a quite draconian voter ID law, and this omnibus bill in North Carolina that involved all sorts of cutbacks to opportunities to vote: a cutback on early voting, a cutback on same-day registration, a cutback on 16- and 17-year-olds pre-registering, and the like.So I went to the Department of Justice and worked with the Voting Section on those cases, but I also ended up working on things like getting the Justice Department to change its position on whether Title VII covered transgender individuals. And then I also got to work on the implementation of [United States v.] Windsor—which I had worked on, representing Edie Windsor, before I went to DOJ, because the Court had just decided Windsor [which held Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional]. So I had an opportunity to work on how to implement Windsor across the federal government. So that was the stuff I got to work on the first time I was at DOJ, and I also obviously worked on tons of other stuff, and it was phenomenal. I loved doing it.I did it for about 20 months, and then I came back to Stanford. It affected my teaching; I understood a lot of stuff quite differently having worked on it. It gave me some ideas on things I wanted to write about. And it just refreshed me in some ways. It's different than working in the clinic. I love working in the clinic, but you're working with students. You're working only with very, very junior lawyers. I sometimes think of the clinic as being a sort of Groundhog Day of first-year associates, and so I'm sort of senior partner and paralegal at a large law firm. At DOJ, you're working with subject-matter experts. The people in the Voting Section, collectively, had hundreds of years of experience with voting. The people in the Appellate Section had hundreds of years of experience with appellate litigation. And so it's just a very different feel.So I did that, and then I came back to Stanford. I was here, and in the fall of 2020, I was asked if I wanted to be one of the people on the Justice Department review team if Joe Biden won the election. These are sometimes referred to as the transition teams or the landing teams or the like. And I said, “I'd be delighted to do that.” They had me as one of the point people reviewing the Civil Rights Division. And I think it might've even been the Wednesday or Thursday before Inauguration Day 2021, I got a call from the liaison person on the transition team saying, “How would you like to go back to DOJ and be the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division?” That would mean essentially running the Division until we got a confirmed head, which took about five months. And I thought that this would be an amazing opportunity to go back to the DOJ and work with people I love, right at the beginning of an administration.And the beginning of an administration is really different than coming in midway through the second term of an administration. You're trying to come up with priorities, and I viewed my job really as helping the career people to do their best work. There were a huge number of career people who had gone through the first Trump administration, and they were raring to go. They had all sorts of ideas on stuff they wanted to do, and it was my job to facilitate that and make that possible for them. And that's why it's so tragic this time around that almost all of those people have left. The current administration first tried to transfer them all into Sanctuary Cities [the Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group] or ask them to do things that they couldn't in good conscience do, and so they've retired or taken buyouts or just left.DL: It's remarkable, just the loss of expertise and experience at the Justice Department over these past few months.PK: Thousands of years of experience gone. And these are people, you've got to realize, who had been through the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration, both Bush administrations, and the first Trump administration, and they hadn't had any problem. That's what's so stunning: this is not just the normal shift in priorities, and they have gone out of their way to make it so hellacious for people that they will leave. And that's not something that either Democratic or Republican administrations have ever done before this.DL: And we will get to a lot of, shall we say, current events. Finishing up on just the discussion of your career, you had the opportunity to work in the executive branch—what about judicial service? You've been floated over the years as a possible Supreme Court nominee. I don't know if you ever looked into serving on the Ninth Circuit or were considered for that. What about judicial service?PK: So I've never been in a position, and part of this was a lesson I learned right at the beginning of my LDF career, when Lani Guinier, who was my boss at LDF, was nominated for the position of AAG [assistant attorney general] in the Civil Rights Division and got shot down. I knew from that time forward that if I did the things I really wanted to do, my chances of confirmation were not going to be very high. People at LDF used to joke that they would get me nominated so that I would take all the bullets, and then they'd sneak everybody else through. So I never really thought that I would have a shot at a judicial position, and that didn't bother me particularly. As you know, I gave the commencement speech many years ago at Stanford, and I said, “Would I want to be on the Supreme Court? You bet—but not enough to have trimmed my sails for an entire lifetime.”And I think that's right. Peter Baker did this story in The New York Times called something like, “Favorites of Left Don't Make Obama's Court List.” And in the story, Tommy Goldstein, who's a dear friend of mine, said, “If they wanted to talk about somebody who was a flaming liberal, they'd be talking about Pam Karlan, but nobody's talking about Pam Karlan.” And then I got this call from a friend of mine who said, “Yeah, but at least people are talking about how nobody's talking about you. Nobody's even talking about how nobody's talking about me.” And I was flattered, but not fooled.DL: That's funny; I read that piece in preparing for this interview. So let's say someone were to ask you, someone mid-career, “Hey, I've been pretty safe in the early years of my career, but now I'm at this juncture where I could do things that will possibly foreclose my judicial ambitions—should I just try to keep a lid on it, in the hope of making it?” It sounds like you would tell them to let their flag fly.PK: Here's the thing: your chances of getting to be on the Supreme Court, if that's what you're talking about, your chances are so low that the question is how much do you want to give up to go from a 0.001% chance to a 0.002% chance? Yes, you are doubling your chances, but your chances are not good. And there are some people who I think are capable of doing that, perhaps because they fit the zeitgeist enough that it's not a huge sacrifice for them. So it's not that I despise everybody who goes to the Supreme Court because they must obviously have all been super-careerists; I think lots of them weren't super-careerists in that way.Although it does worry me that six members of the Court now clerked at the Supreme Court—because when you are a law clerk, it gives you this feeling about the Court that maybe you don't want everybody who's on the Court to have, a feeling that this is the be-all and end-all of life and that getting a clerkship is a manifestation of an inner state of grace, so becoming a justice is equally a manifestation of an inner state of grace in which you are smarter than everybody else, wiser than everybody else, and everybody should kowtow to you in all sorts of ways. And I worry that people who are imprinted like ducklings on the Supreme Court when they're 25 or 26 or 27 might not be the best kind of portfolio of justices at the back end. The Court that decided Brown v. Board of Education—none of them, I think, had clerked at the Supreme Court, or maybe one of them had. They'd all done things with their lives other than try to get back to the Supreme Court. So I worry about that a little bit.DL: Speaking of the Court, let's turn to the Court, because it just finished its Term as we are recording this. As we started recording, they were still handing down the final decisions of the day.PK: Yes, the “R” numbers hadn't come up on the Supreme Court website when I signed off to come talk to you.DL: Exactly. So earlier this month, not today, but earlier this month, the Court handed down its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, reviewing Tennessee's ban on the use of hormones and puberty blockers for transgender youth. Were you surprised by the Court's ruling in Skrmetti?PK: No. I was not surprised.DL: So one of your most famous cases, which you litigated successfully five years ago or so, was Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Court held that Title VII does apply to protect transgender individuals—and Bostock figures significantly in the Skrmetti opinions. Why were you surprised by Skrmetti given that you had won this victory in Bostock, which you could argue, in terms of just the logic of it, does carry over somewhat?PK: Well, I want to be very precise: I didn't actually litigate Bostock. There were three cases that were put together….DL: Oh yes—you handled Zarda.PK: I represented Don Zarda, who was a gay man, so I did not argue the transgender part of the case at all. Fortuitously enough, David Cole argued that part of the case, and David Cole was actually the first person I had dinner with as a freshman at Yale College, when I started college, because he was the roommate of somebody I debated against in high school. So David and I went to law school together, went to college together, and had classes together. We've been friends now for almost 50 years, which is scary—I think for 48 years we've been friends—and he argued that part of the case.So here's what surprised me about what the Supreme Court did in Skrmetti. Given where the Court wanted to come out, the more intellectually honest way to get there would've been to say, “Yes, of course this is because of sex; there is sex discrimination going on here. But even applying intermediate scrutiny, we think that Tennessee's law should survive intermediate scrutiny.” That would've been an intellectually honest way to get to where the Court got.Instead, they did this weird sort of, “Well, the word ‘sex' isn't in the Fourteenth Amendment, but it's in Title VII.” But that makes no sense at all, because for none of the sex-discrimination cases that the Court has decided under the Fourteenth Amendment did the word “sex” appear in the Fourteenth Amendment. It's not like the word “sex” was in there and then all of a sudden it took a powder and left. So I thought that was a really disingenuous way of getting to where the Court wanted to go. But I was not surprised after the oral argument that the Court was going to get to where it got on the bottom line.DL: I'm curious, though, rewinding to Bostock and Zarda, were you surprised by how the Court came out in those cases? Because it was still a deeply conservative Court back then.PK: No, I was not surprised. I was not surprised, both because I thought we had so much the better of the argument and because at the oral argument, it seemed pretty clear that we had at least six justices, and those were the six justices we had at the end of the day. The thing that was interesting to me about Bostock was I thought also that we were likely to win for the following weird legal-realist reason, which is that this was a case that would allow the justices who claimed to be textualists to show that they were principled textualists, by doing something that they might not have voted for if they were in Congress or the like.And also, while the impact was really large in one sense, the impact was not really large in another sense: most American workers are protected by Title VII, but most American employers do not discriminate, and didn't discriminate even before this, on the basis of sexual orientation or on the basis of gender identity. For example, in Zarda's case, the employer denied that they had fired Mr. Zarda because he was gay; they said, “We fired him for other reasons.”Very few employers had a formal policy that said, “We discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.” And although most American workers are protected by Title VII, most American employers are not covered by Title VII—and that's because small employers, employers with fewer than 15 full-time employees, are not covered at all. And religious employers have all sorts of exemptions and the like, so for the people who had the biggest objection to hiring or promoting or retaining gay or transgender employees, this case wasn't going to change what happened to them at all. So the impact was really important for workers, but not deeply intrusive on employers generally. So I thought those two things, taken together, meant that we had a pretty good argument.I actually thought our textual argument was not our best argument, but it was the one that they were most likely to buy. So it was really interesting: we made a bunch of different arguments in the brief, and then as soon as I got up to argue, the first question out of the box was Justice Ginsburg saying, “Well, in 1964, homosexuality was illegal in most of the country—how could this be?” And that's when I realized, “Okay, she's just telling me to talk about the text, don't talk about anything else.”So I just talked about the text the whole time. But as you may remember from the argument, there was this weird moment, which came after I answered her question and one other one, there was this kind of silence from the justices. And I just said, “Well, if you don't have any more questions, I'll reserve the remainder of my time.” And it went well; it went well as an argument.DL: On the flip side, speaking of things that are not going so well, let's turn to current events. Zooming up to a higher level of generality than Skrmetti, you are a leading scholar of constitutional law, so here's the question. I know you've already been interviewed about it by media outlets, but let me ask you again, in light of just the latest, latest, latest news: are we in a constitutional crisis in the United States?PK: I think we're in a period of great constitutional danger. I don't know what a “constitutional crisis” is. Some people think the constitutional crisis is that we have an executive branch that doesn't believe in the Constitution, right? So you have Donald Trump asked, in an interview, “Do you have to comply with the Constitution?” He says, “I don't know.” Or he says, “I have an Article II that gives me the power to do whatever I want”—which is not what Article II says. If you want to be a textualist, it does not say the president can do whatever he wants. So you have an executive branch that really does not have a commitment to the Constitution as it has been understood up until now—that is, limited government, separation of powers, respect for individual rights. With this administration, none of that's there. And I don't know whether Emil Bove did say, “F**k the courts,” or not, but they're certainly acting as if that's their attitude.So yes, in that sense, we're in a period of constitutional danger. And then on top of that, I think we have a Supreme Court that is acting almost as if this is a normal administration with normal stuff, a Court that doesn't seem to recognize what district judges appointed by every president since George H.W. Bush or maybe even Reagan have recognized, which is, “This is not normal.” What the administration is trying to do is not normal, and it has to be stopped. So that worries me, that the Supreme Court is acting as if it needs to keep its powder dry—and for what, I'm not clear.If they think that by giving in and giving in, and prevaricating and putting things off... today, I thought the example of this was in the birthright citizenship/universal injunction case. One of the groups of plaintiffs that's up there is a bunch of states, around 23 states, and the Supreme Court in Justice Barrett's opinion says, “Well, maybe the states have standing, maybe they don't. And maybe if they have standing, you can enjoin this all in those states. We leave this all for remind.”They've sat on this for months. It's ridiculous that the Supreme Court doesn't “man up,” essentially, and decide these things. It really worries me quite a bit that the Supreme Court just seems completely blind to the fact that in 2024, they gave Donald Trump complete criminal immunity from any prosecution, so who's going to hold him accountable? Not criminally accountable, not accountable in damages—and now the Supreme Court seems not particularly interested in holding him accountable either.DL: Let me play devil's advocate. Here's my theory on why the Court does seem to be holding its fire: they're afraid of a worse outcome, which is, essentially, “The emperor has no clothes.”Say they draw this line in the sand for Trump, and then Trump just crosses it. And as we all know from that famous quote from The Federalist Papers, the Court has neither force nor will, but only judgment. That's worse, isn't it? If suddenly it's exposed that the Court doesn't have any army, any way to stop Trump? And then the courts have no power.PK: I actually think it's the opposite, which is, I think if the Court said to Donald Trump, “You must do X,” and then he defies it, you would have people in the streets. You would have real deep resistance—not just the “No Kings,” one-day march, but deep resistance. And there are scholars who've done comparative law who say, “When 3 percent of the people in a country go to the streets, you get real change.” And I think the Supreme Court is mistaking that.I taught a reading group for our first-years here. We have reading groups where you meet four times during the fall for dinner, and you read stuff that makes you think. And my reading group was called “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty,” and it started with the Albert Hirschman book with that title.DL: Great book.PK: It's a great book. And I gave them some excerpt from that, and I gave them an essay by Hannah Arendt called “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” which she wrote in 1964. And one of the things she says there is she talks about people who stayed in the German regime, on the theory that they would prevent at least worse things from happening. And I'm going to paraphrase slightly, but what she says is, “People who think that what they're doing is getting the lesser evil quickly forget that what they're choosing is evil.” And if the Supreme Court decides, “We're not going to tell Donald Trump ‘no,' because if we tell him no and he goes ahead, we will be exposed,” what they have basically done is said to Donald Trump, “Do whatever you want; we're not going to stop you.” And that will lose the Supreme Court more credibility over time than Donald Trump defying them once and facing some serious backlash for doing it.DL: So let me ask you one final question before we go to my little speed round. That 3 percent statistic is fascinating, by the way, but it resonates for me. My family's originally from the Philippines, and you probably had the 3 percent out there in the streets to oust Marcos in 1986.But let me ask you this. We now live in a nation where Donald Trump won not just the Electoral College, but the popular vote. We do see a lot of ugly things out there, whether in social media or incidents of violence or what have you. You still have enough faith in the American people that if the Supreme Court drew that line, and Donald Trump crossed it, and maybe this happened a couple of times, even—you still have faith that there will be that 3 percent or what have you in the streets?PK: I have hope, which is not quite the same thing as faith, obviously, but I have hope that some Republicans in Congress would grow a spine at that point, and people would say, “This is not right.” Have they always done that? No. We've had bad things happen in the past, and people have not done anything about it. But I think that the alternative of just saying, “Well, since we might not be able to stop him, we shouldn't do anything about it,” while he guts the federal government, sends masked people onto the streets, tries to take the military into domestic law enforcement—I think we have to do something.And this is what's so enraging in some ways: the district court judges in this country are doing their job. They are enjoining stuff. They're not enjoining everything, because not everything can be enjoined, and not everything is illegal; there's a lot of bad stuff Donald Trump is doing that he's totally entitled to do. But the district courts are doing their job, and they're doing their job while people are sending pizza boxes to their houses and sending them threats, and the president is tweeting about them or whatever you call the posts on Truth Social. They're doing their job—and the Supreme Court needs to do its job too. It needs to stand up for district judges. If it's not willing to stand up for the rest of us, you'd think they'd at least stand up for their entire judicial branch.DL: Turning to my speed round, my first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as a more abstract system of ordering human affairs.PK: What I liked least about it was having to deal with opposing counsel in discovery. That drove me to appellate litigation.DL: Exactly—where your request for an extension is almost always agreed to by the other side.PK: Yes, and where the record is the record.DL: Yes, exactly. My second question, is what would you be if you were not a lawyer and/or law professor?PK: Oh, they asked me this question for a thing here at Stanford, and it was like, if I couldn't be a lawyer, I'd... And I just said, “I'd sit in my room and cry.”DL: Okay!PK: I don't know—this is what my talent is!DL: You don't want to write a novel or something?PK: No. What I would really like to do is I would like to bike the Freedom Trail, which is a trail that starts in Montgomery, Alabama, and goes to the Canadian border, following the Underground Railroad. I've always wanted to bike that. But I guess that's not a career. I bike slowly enough that it could be a career, at this point—but earlier on, probably not.DL: My third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?PK: I now get around six hours of sleep each night, but it's complicated by the following, which is when I worked at the Department of Justice the second time, it was during Covid, so I actually worked remotely from California. And what that required me to do was essentially to wake up every morning at 4 a.m., 7 a.m. on the East Coast, so I could have breakfast, read the paper, and be ready to go by 5:30 a.m.I've been unable to get off of that, so I still wake up before dawn every morning. And I spent three months in Florence, and I thought the jet lag would bring me out of this—not in the slightest. Within two weeks, I was waking up at 4:30 a.m. Central European Time. So that's why I get about six hours, because I can't really go to bed before 9 or 10 p.m.DL: Well, I was struck by your being able to do this podcast fairly early West Coast time.PK: Oh no, this is the third thing I've done this morning! I had a 6:30 a.m. conference call.DL: Oh my gosh, wow. It reminds me of that saying about how you get more done in the Army before X hour than other people get done in a day.My last question, is any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?PK: Yes: do what you love, with people you love doing it with.DL: Well said. I've loved doing this podcast—Professor Karlan, thanks again for joining me.PK: You should start calling me Pam. We've had this same discussion….DL: We're on the air! Okay, well, thanks again, Pam—I'm so grateful to you for joining me.PK: Thanks for having me.DL: Thanks so much to Professor Karlan for joining me. Whether or not you agree with her views, you can't deny that she's both insightful and honest—qualities that have made her a leading legal academic and lawyer, but also a great podcast guest.Thanks to NexFirm for sponsoring the Original Jurisdiction podcast. NexFirm has helped many attorneys to leave Biglaw and launch firms of their own. To explore this opportunity, please contact NexFirm at 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com to learn more.Thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers. To connect with me, please email me at davidlat at Substack dot com, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram and Threads at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat dot substack dot com. This podcast is free, but it's made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode should appear on or about Wednesday, July 23. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects. 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

The Supreme Court recently wrapped up its 2024-2025 term and the ACS Policy and Program team is here to break down the headline cases, those that may have slipped under your radar, and several that came and went via the shadow docket.Join the Progressive Legal Movement Today: ACSLaw.orgHost: Lindsay Langholz, Senior Director of Policy and Program, ACSGuest: Christopher Wright Durocher, Vice President of Policy and ProgramGuest: Taonga Leslie, Director of Policy and Program for Racial JusticeGuest: Valerie Nannery, Senior Director of Policy and ProgramLink: John Roberts' Anti-Trans Opinion Is a Garbled Mess. It's Easy to See Why., by Mark Joseph SternLink: Supreme Court Rules Some Americans Have a Constitutional Right to Insist on Theocracy, by Heidi Li FeldmanLink: Don't Let Trump Erase Immigrants from the Citizenship Clause, by Taonga LeslieLink: SCOTUS allows Trump admin to deport people to random countries with no notice, by Chris GeidnerVisit the Podcast Website: Broken Law Podcast Email the Show: Podcast@ACSLaw.org Follow ACS on Social Media: Facebook | Instagram | Bluesky | LinkedIn | YouTube -----------------Broken Law: About the law, who it serves, and who it doesn't.----------------- Production House: Flint Stone Media Copyright of American Constitution Society 2025.

On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court delivered its final decisions of the 2024–25 term. In this episode, Steve Vladeck of the Georgetown University Law Center and Sarah Isgur of SCOTUSblog join to discuss the significant cases from this Supreme Court term.    Resources Trump v. CASA, Inc. (2025)  Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025) DHS v. DVD (2025) Steve Vladeck, “163: A New Kind of Judicial Supremacy,” One First (June 30, 2025) Advisory Opinions podcast Stay Connected and Learn More Questions or comments about the show? Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠podcast@constitutioncenter.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Continue the conversation by following us on social media @ConstitutionCtr. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate. Follow, rate, and review wherever you listen. Join us for an upcoming ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠live program⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or watch recordings on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Support our important work. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Donate

The TribCast gang is finally reunited, and joined by Georgetown Law Professor Steve Vladeck to recap the big cases and unresolved questions from the U.S. Supreme Court's recent rulings.

The administration has revealed new details about U.S. airstrikes on Iran's nuclear program, the Supreme Court hands down it's final rulings of the session today, and a new aid group in Gaza is drawing international controversy because hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while approaching the group's food distribution sites. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Krishnadev Calamur, Alex Leff, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Our executive producer is Jay Shaylor.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

As the end of the 2024-2025 Supreme Court term draws near, so do the decisions of several precedent setting cases. From challenges to birthright citizenship to pornography bans, some hot button topics will have rulings expected to arrive in the coming weeks.   Fox News contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Jonathan Turley, and constitutional lawyer Tom Dupree share their predictions on the outcome of these cases and discuss SCOTUS's recent verdict on gender-transition surgery for minors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Passing Judgment, we explore the Supreme Court's decision to abstain from ruling on a Trump emergency appeal about firing Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel. Jessica Levinson and Katie Buehler, Law360's Supreme Court reporter, analyze the nuances of presidential power and the debate over the constitutionality of restricting executive authority. Here are three key takeaways you don't want to miss:Supreme Court Decision on Trump Emergency Appeal: The episode discusses the Supreme Court's recent decision not to review an emergency appeal concerning the firing of Hampton Dellinger from his position as the head of the Office of Special Counsel. The court allowed the temporary restraining order, which pauses the firing, to run its course and expire. Legal Arguments and Statute Constitutionality: The legal argument centers on whether President Trump had to provide a reason for Dellinger's firing, as required by federal law. Trump's administration argues that the statute requiring a reason is unconstitutional and that the president should have the power to fire at will. This theme explores the larger question of presidential authority and statutory constraints.Significant Supreme Court Cases: Katie Buehler highlights other significant Supreme Court cases beyond the Trump-related decision, including a case involving the Federal Communications Commission's authority and executive power, as well as cases on religious rights such as opting-out of LGBTQ-related education and funding for religious charter schools. Follow Our Host: @LevinsonJessica@bykatiebuehler

It's Hump Day! Sam and Emma speak with Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate, to discuss the ongoing oral arguments of this current Supreme Court term. First, Sam runs through updates on the last two weeks heading into US elections, Trump's fascism, Israel's indiscriminate offensives on Gaza and Lebanon, election interference, Rudy Giuliani's legal (and financial) woes, Georgia's election regulations, the House GOP's leadership jocky, and Trump's upcoming Rogan appearance, before diving a little deeper into the moral, humanitarian, and all-around political failure that has been the Biden Administration's full-scale backing of Israeli genocide. Mark Joseph Stern then joins as he and Sam first unpack the suspicious lack of a major (both in quantity and quality) court load for the final Supreme Court term heading into the 2024 elections, exploring the conservative-majority Court's active attempt to fade into the background rather than risk making controversial decisions (which they surely would) should they hurt Trump's chances. Stern then looks to a few major cases that SCOTUS has shunted to after November, first tackling Garland v. VanDerStok's insane argument over the sale of disassembled munitions (aka Ghost Guns) to skirt background check, serial number, and tracking requirements for arms sellers, why the Court likely won't make an extreme decision, and how victims of this insanely criminal scheme are already taking action. After expanding on the particular role the extremist Fifth Circuit (Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) plays in advancing these absurd cases to the Trump-packed Supreme Court, Mark and Sam dive into the potential play the Court might make regarding abortion access nationwide, and look to the potential bolstering of anti-trans healthcare legislation via US v. Skrmetti. They wrap up the interview with DeSantis' legal battle against Florida's abortion referendum and the Trump Campaign's ongoing lawfare to undermine and obstruct ballot tallies come November. And in the Fun Half: Tim Pool loudly quits one of his shows to become a theoretical family man, Tim Walz discusses the Harris Campaign's relationship to dipshits like the Cheneys and the Trump Campaign's relationship to dipshits like Elon Musk, and JD Vance attempts to claim that Donald Trump – the Kleptocrat-in-Chief – isn't attached to monied interests. Kerry from New York and Sam unpack the relationship between masculinity, maturity, and comedy, MTG and the Trump Campaign start laying the groundwork for election denial (with some help from fair-and-balanced reporting by CBS), and Rudy Giuliani has to turn over practically all of his property to the Georgian election workers he got harassed. Alex from Boston explores some misunderstandings of the pharmaceutical industry, and John Kelly calls Trump a fascist, plus, your calls and IMs!   Follow Mark on Twitter here: https://x.com/mjs_DC Check out Mark's work at Slate here: https://slate.com/author/mark-joseph-stern Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityrep ort Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Join Sam on the Nation Magazine Cruise! 7 days in December 2024!!: https://nationcruise.com/mr/ Check out StrikeAid here!; https://strikeaid.com/ Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 20% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Shopify: Upgrade your business and get the same checkout AllBirds & Skims use. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/majority. Go to https://shopify.com/majority to upgrade your selling today. SHOPIFY DOT COM SLASH majority. Blueland Cleaning Products: Blueland has a special offer for listeners. Right now, get 15% off your first order by going to https://Blueland.com/MAJORITY. You won't want to miss this! https://Blueland.com/MAJORITY for 15% off. 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On the FIRST official episode of Case in Point, host Sarah Parshall Perry tees up some big cases at the Supreme Court--controversial enough that they’re sure to grab headlines. AND we air former SCOTUS 101 host Zack Smith’s recent Supreme Court Preview event at the Heritage Foundation with some legal heavyweights.

On the FIRST official episode of Case in Point, host Sarah Parshall Perry tees up some big cases at the Supreme Court--controversial enough that they're sure to grab headlines. AND we air former SCOTUS 101 host Zack Smith's recent Supreme Court Preview event at the Heritage Foundation with some legal heavyweights.

Every year on On the Issues, we bring you a Supreme Court term in review with a live studio audience. This year, for the first time we're bringing you one from Washington, DC—we're going to discuss the most important rulings of the 2023-2024 term, unpacking issues from abortion rights to presidential immunity—while we prepare for what's coming next as the Supreme Court begins its new term this week.Joining us to discuss the term are some very special guests:Mark Joseph Stern: Mark Joseph Stern is a senior writer at Slate.Moira Donegan: Moira Donegan is a U.S. columnist at The Guardian.Jamelle Bouie: Jamelle Bouie is an opinion columnist at The New York Times.Madiba Dennie: Madiba Dennie is deputy editor and senior contributor of Balls and Strikes.Chris Geidner: Chris Geidner is the founder of the Law Dork Substack and an MSNBC columnist. Check out this episode's landing page at MsMagazine.com for a full transcript, links to articles referenced in this episode, further reading and ways to take action.Support the show

We get Hurricane Milton updates and a closer look at the SCOTUS docket.

TOP NEWS | On today's Daily Signal Top News, we break down: According to a new study conducted by Dr. Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami and commissioned by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, 61% of American Jews report feeling less safe since the terrorist attack last year.  A new report finds that there have been more than 50 jihadi cases across 29 states since April 2021.  It has been just over a week since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the south east. Now Florida is bracing for another major hurricane.  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says it is “categorically false” that the Biden administration has used FEMA funding to support migrants. Monday kicks off the first day of the Supreme Court's new term.  Relevant Links Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda

TOP NEWS | On today's Daily Signal Top News, we break down: According to a new study conducted by Dr. Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami and commissioned by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, 61% of American Jews report feeling less safe since the terrorist attack last year. A new report finds that there have […]

In this segment of The Mark Reardon Show, Mark is joined by Ilya Shapiro, the Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. He discusses today being the first day of the new Supreme Court term and the one year anniversary of the October 7th Israel Terrorist Attack.

Democracy had a pretty rough ride at the Supreme Court last term. Presidents have criminal immunity now! Agency experts aren't the experts anymore! Sure, you can convert that rifle into an automatic weapon! And guess what? More horrors await us this term.  But we are not going to spend this last episode before the start of a new term dispassionately picking over a smattering of cases for a lawyerly preview, or helplessly doom spiraling. Instead, we will hear from two women who refuse to blithely accept what the High Court is handing down—two women who have decided to do something, in very different ways.  You're going to find out why one of these women will head to SCOTUS on Monday in the suit she wore to argue before the High Court 44 years ago. Dahlia Lithwick will ask the other woman, Sky Perryman of Democracy Forward, about the legal theories, doctrine tracking, and litigation strategies her organization is deploying to fight for democracy in the courts –– even (and especially) in courthouses and cases far from One First Street, where until now, the conservative legal movement has had almost free reign. Because any honest preview of the new Supreme Court term needs to look wider and deeper than the handful of cases docketed for the coming weeks.  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democracy had a pretty rough ride at the Supreme Court last term. Presidents have criminal immunity now! Agency experts aren't the experts anymore! Sure, you can convert that rifle into an automatic weapon! And guess what? More horrors await us this term.  But we are not going to spend this last episode before the start of a new term dispassionately picking over a smattering of cases for a lawyerly preview, or helplessly doom spiraling. Instead, we will hear from two women who refuse to blithely accept what the High Court is handing down—two women who have decided to do something, in very different ways.  You're going to find out why one of these women will head to SCOTUS on Monday in the suit she wore to argue before the High Court 44 years ago. Dahlia Lithwick will ask the other woman, Sky Perryman of Democracy Forward, about the legal theories, doctrine tracking, and litigation strategies her organization is deploying to fight for democracy in the courts –– even (and especially) in courthouses and cases far from One First Street, where until now, the conservative legal movement has had almost free reign. Because any honest preview of the new Supreme Court term needs to look wider and deeper than the handful of cases docketed for the coming weeks.  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democracy had a pretty rough ride at the Supreme Court last term. Presidents have criminal immunity now! Agency experts aren't the experts anymore! Sure, you can convert that rifle into an automatic weapon! And guess what? More horrors await us this term.  But we are not going to spend this last episode before the start of a new term dispassionately picking over a smattering of cases for a lawyerly preview, or helplessly doom spiraling. Instead, we will hear from two women who refuse to blithely accept what the High Court is handing down—two women who have decided to do something, in very different ways.  You're going to find out why one of these women will head to SCOTUS on Monday in the suit she wore to argue before the High Court 44 years ago. Dahlia Lithwick will ask the other woman, Sky Perryman of Democracy Forward, about the legal theories, doctrine tracking, and litigation strategies her organization is deploying to fight for democracy in the courts –– even (and especially) in courthouses and cases far from One First Street, where until now, the conservative legal movement has had almost free reign. Because any honest preview of the new Supreme Court term needs to look wider and deeper than the handful of cases docketed for the coming weeks.  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On October 7, the Supreme Court begins its 2024–2025 term — the fourth in which it is dominated by a supermajority of conservative justices. Just months after a disastrous presidential immunity decision, and in the face of continued controversy over the justices' ethics and partisanship, the Court will reconvene to hear arguments on issues with profound consequences for American life. Among the questions on the docket: whether so-called “ghost guns” are subject to regulation, whether prosecutorial misconduct invalidates a death sentence, the power of federal agencies to protect waterways, the applicability of criminal sentence reduction laws, and access to gender-affirming medical care.  This live panel featured Brennan Center President Michael Waldman, who served on the 2021 Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, and Brennan Center Senior Fellow Caroline Fredrickson, former president of the American Constitution Society. They were interviewed by constitutional law scholar Wilfred Codrington III. It was recorded on September 25, 2024. If you enjoy this program, please give us a boost by liking, subscribing, and sharing with your friends. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please give it a 5-star rating. Keep up with the Brennan Center's work by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The Briefing: https://go.brennancenter.org/briefing

Do you love culture war? Then the upcoming Supreme Court term is for you...You can subscribe to 5-4 Premium on Patreon, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto. Leon Neyfakh and Andrew Parsons provide editorial support. Our researcher is Jonathan DeBruin, and our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations.Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On Twitter, find Peter @The_Law_Boy and Rhiannon @AywaRhiannon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this supersized episode, Christopher Wright Durocher joins Lindsay Langholz to discuss what to expect from the imminent start to the 2024-2025 Supreme Court Term.  Then, Sylvia Albert and Eyricka Geneus of Common Cause join Ashley Erickson to dig in on volunteer opportunities in this final stretch of the 2024 election cycle.Join the Progressive Legal Movement Today: ACSLaw.orgHost: Lindsay Langholz, Senior Director of Policy and Program csacasGuest: Christopher Wright Durocher, Vice President of Policy and Program at ACSGuest: Ashley Erickson, Senior Director of Network Advancement at ACSGuest: Sylvia Albert, Director of Voting and Elections at Common CauseGuest: Eyricka Geneus, Election Protection Field Coordinator at Common CauseLink: ACS National Supreme Court Preview 2024-2025Link: The Shadow Docket by Stephen VladeckLink: ProtectTheVoteVisit the Podcast Website: Broken Law PodcastEmail the Show: Podcast@ACSLaw.orgFollow ACS on Social Media: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube-----------------Broken Law: About the law, who it serves, and who it doesn't.----------------- Production House: Flint Stone Media Copyright of American Constitution Society 2024.

The Supreme Court kicks off its new term on Oct. 7 and the justices will hear arguments the first week in a dispute over “ghost gun” kits and an appeal from a death row inmate in Oklahoma. With about 27 cases granted for argument so far, the term is light on potential blockbusters. “There are a lot of cases that I would describe as kind of the meat and potatoes type cases that you typically see on the Supreme Court's docket,” said Kannon Shanmugam, chair of the Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice at Paul Weiss. Shanmugam joins “Cases and Controversies” to discuss the court's term and the more notable issues the justices will consider, including a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans health-care providers from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to transgender minors. Do you have feedback on this episode of Cases and Controversies? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The Supreme Court's latest term was marked by decisions of enormous consequence. However, the way the Court has communicated about these rulings far undersells the gravity they carry.While “expressing itself in extremely modest terms,” Professor Jeffrey Fisher says, the current Supreme Court has “[handed] down decisions that have enormously consequential effects for our democracy, people's rights, and everything in between.” He and Assistant Professor Easha Anand, co-directors of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, agree that these recent decisions could reshape American law and politics for years to come.In this episode of Stanford Legal with host Pam Karlan, Fisher, and Anand take a critical look at recent Supreme Court rulings on abortion, gun rights, tech platforms, and the power of federal agencies, examining the Court's evolving approach and considering the potential long-term impacts on American democracy and the rule of law.Connect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>>  Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford  Law Magazine >>> Twitter/XLinks:Jeff Fisher >>> Stanford Law School PageEasha Anand >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic >>> Stanford Law School Page(00:00:00) Chapter 1: Introduction to the Supreme Court Term and Key CasesPam Karlan is joined by Professors Jeff Fisher and Easha Anand to discuss the past term at the Supreme Court, constitutional law and Supreme Court practice, highlighting key cases and themes from the term. They explore how the court's conservative majority shapes the docket and the role of Justices Barrett and Jackson in developing their judicial voices.(00:06:56) Chapter 2: High-Profile Cases: Guns, Abortion, and Administrative LawExamine major cases, including gun rights in Rahimi v. United States and Cargill v. Garland, abortion-related cases, and the pivotal Loper Bright decision affecting the administrative state. They analyze the court's reasoning and the broader implications of these rulings.(00:15:28) Chapter 3: The Court's Evolving Role and MethodologyDiscussion of the broader implications of the Supreme Court's evolving approach to its docket and decision-making processes, particularly in relation to the administrative state and the impact of recent rulings on future cases.(00:19:14) Chapter 4: The Supreme Court and Technology CasesThey delve into the significant technology cases that were brought before the Supreme Court this term. They discuss how the Court addressed state laws from Florida and Texas aimed at restricting content moderation by big tech companies, marking the first time the First Amendment was applied to social media platforms. The discussion highlights the tension between traditional legal frameworks and the evolving digital landscape, with a focus on the implications of these rulings for the future of free speech online.(00:24:10) Chapter 5: Trump and the Supreme Court: Balancing Power and ImmunityThe group explores the complex legal landscape surrounding former President Donald Trump's involvement in Supreme Court cases. Easha Anand provides an in-depth analysis of the Trump v. United States case, where the Court examined the extent of presidential immunity concerning acts related to the 2020 election. The discussion also touches on the broader implications of the Court's rulings on Trump's legal challenges, including how these decisions might shape future presidential conduct and accountability.(00:29:27) Chapter 6: Supreme Court's Role in Protecting DemocracyPam Karlan and Jeff Fisher discuss the Supreme Court's role in safeguarding democratic processes. They analyze the Court's reluctance to engage deeply in political matters, such as the January 6th prosecution and political gerrymandering, highlighting the tension between judicial restraint and the need to protect democratic values. The chapter concludes with reflections on the broader implications of these decisions for the future of U.S. democracy, particularly in the context of voting rights and election integrity.

In this 20-min podcast: -President Biden announces a package aimed at reforming the Supreme Court. USTL President tells the history of removal of Supreme Court Justices. -Do you agree with term limits for the Supreme Court? If so, go to www.termlimits.com/SCOTUS and sign the petition! -Indiana state chair for US Term Limits, Micah Beckwith, is running for Lt. Governor of Indiana. -FL. Gov. Ron DeSantis is fine with Supreme Court term limits, as long as we also impose them on EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS. -Ohio state chair for US Term Limits, Bernie Moreno, scoffs at those who support SCOTUS term limits without acknowledging Congressional term limits first. Stay up to date on the latest Term Limits news! Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can shop for hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and more at http://termlimits.com/store Has your local state Representative or Senator committed themselves to defend Term Limits? See if they are listed, and if not, ask them to sign the pledge at http://termlimits.com/pledge Help U.S. Term Limits fight to place TERM LIMITS on all members of Congress by donating at http://termlimits.com/donate. We will not stop until TERM LIMITS is enacted on ALL members of Congress, NOT JUST THE PRESIDENT!! To check on the status of the Term Limits movement in your state, go to http://termlimits.com/TakeAction

President Biden has suggested some changes to the Supreme Court. One is term limits. The other is the implimentation of ethical standards. KSL Newsradio's Amanda Dickson asked her guests on A Woman's View what they think about these suggestions. Her guests this week include Francine Giani, former Executive Director of the Utah Department of Commerce, Lisa Walker, certified athletic trainer and teacher at Springville High School and Robin Ebmeyer, UVU's Director of Emergency Management and Safety. 

Kevin and Tim talk about the Olympics for a bit, including very online people getting mad Should the Supreme Court have term limits? Constitutional Amendment limiting immunity for Presidents and Congress from the guy Kevin ran against in 2020. A bunch of random news --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/afreesolution/support

Frank Pavone - There was some controversy to start the olympics this week in Paris, when an opening ceremony scene parodied “The Last Supper” with drag queens. Less than 24 hours after the official video was posted to YouTube, the scene was removed. In the U.S. christians are bracing for the idea of a Kamala Harris presidency. Her views align with leftist and marxist ideals of so called “tolerance”. Mike O'Fallon - “What can be, unburdened by what has been”, a phrase used by democratic nominee Kamala Harris in many if not all her speeches. What does this really mean? Plus, Joe Biden is attempting to establish term limits for the Supreme Court. The Founder of Sovereign Nations joins us to discussSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In an op-ed published Monday, President Joe Biden asserted that "no one," including Supreme Court justices, is above the law and advocated for term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the high court. Emphasizing his respect for institutional separation of powers, Biden argued that the current state of affairs undermines public confidence in the court. Later today, at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, Biden is expected to propose a system where the president appoints a justice every two years for an 18-year term and call on Congress to pass binding conduct and ethics rules for justices, including gift disclosures, a ban on public political activity, and mandatory recusal in cases of conflicts of interest. Biden will also push for a constitutional amendment to limit the broad immunity enjoyed by presidents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court wrapped up a memorable term in July with several decisions that will impact America's cities, towns and villages. Amanda Karras, the Executive Director and General Counsel of the International Municipal Lawyers Association, joins CitiesSpeak to explain what the court's decisions mean for local governments and leaders.For more information, visit us at nlc.org.

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.

On this show, we discuss some of the major cases from the 2023-2024 Supreme Court term and implications for the future with NCCU Law Professors Don Corbett and Tamika Moses.

On this show, we discuss some of the major cases from the 2023-2024 Supreme Court term and implications for the future with NCCU Law Professors Don Corbett and Tamika Moses.

In this final (bonus) episode of Grave Injustice, Lisa Graves is joined by three top legal experts to discuss the latest term of the U.S. Supreme Court which saw the court's six right-wing appointees shelter Trump for his crimes and bestow new, almost king-like powers on the executive, uphold flagrant racial gerrymandering, and upend a long-standing legal doctrine that has major implications for the federal government's authority in keeping our air and water clean, our food and drugs safe, our environment protected, and so much more. Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the courts for Slate magazine and hosts the podcast Amicus; Michael Podhorzer, senior advisor to the AFL-CIO, Founder of the Analyst Institute and the Research Collaborative, and author of the Substack “Weekend Reading;" and Alex Aronson, director of the legal advocacy organization Court Accountability and former chief counsel to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse; all join Lisa to share their insights on the term and the state of the US judiciary. Subscribe to this limited series wherever you get your podcasts including Apple and Spotify. Follow COURIER on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Facebook, and Twitter/X.You can find out more about COURIER at couriernewsroom.com

The US Supreme Court closed out a blockbuster term with rulings that are likely to shield former President Donald Trump from facing a jury until after the election and further undercut the power of federal regulators.  In decisions that split 6-3 along the court's ideological line, the justices for the first time in history said former presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts and gave businesses the ability to challenge regulations long after they've been finalized.  Cases and Controversies hosts unpack those decisions and discuss how the justices declined to rule on the constitutionality of state laws out of Florida and Texas that tried to regulate some of the largest social media platforms. They also look at how the justices voted this term and whether they issue unanimous rulings more often not, as many have claimed in public appearances.  Hosts: Kimberly Robinson and Lydia Wheeler Producer: Matthew Schwartz

We discuss Mark's recent column in Forbes: a brief review of five pending SCOTUS cases: (1) SEC v. Jarkesy; (2) Relentless v. Department of Commerce/ Loper Bright v. Raimondo; (3) Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve; (4) Garland v. Cargill; and (5) Starbucks v. McKinney.  Administrative statists have floated a false narrative about the many indisputably important administrative law cases pending at the U.S. Supreme Court this term. With at least half a dozen such cases still awaiting decision by month's end, it promises to be a watershed year. Greater freedom and constitutional restoration appear to be in the offing, which may explain the liberal meltdown that has already begun. Before the Supreme Court (erroneously) upheld the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding mechanism last month, some commentators on the left were proclaiming that a decision leaving Congress to appropriate annual funds to the CFPB would trigger a second Great Depression. Similarly absurd claims have abounded about the remaining undecided cases, so it is time to set the record straight lest bureaucratic caterwauling lead the Court further astray.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Supreme Court wrapped up oral arguments and has now turned to rolling out decisions in some of the most consequential cases of the year. Those decisions will shape policies nationwide on divisive issues like homelessness and reproductive rights, and some of them could affect the presidential election. John Yang discussed more with NewsHour Supreme Court analyst Marcia Coyle and Joan Biskupic. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The Supreme Court wrapped up oral arguments and has now turned to rolling out decisions in some of the most consequential cases of the year. Those decisions will shape policies nationwide on divisive issues like homelessness and reproductive rights, and some of them could affect the presidential election. John Yang discussed more with NewsHour Supreme Court analyst Marcia Coyle and Joan Biskupic. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The Supreme Court wrapped up oral arguments and has now turned to rolling out decisions in some of the most consequential cases of the year. Those decisions will shape policies nationwide on divisive issues like homelessness and reproductive rights, and some of them could affect the presidential election. John Yang discussed more with NewsHour Supreme Court analyst Marcia Coyle and Joan Biskupic. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

It's the start of a new Supreme Court term... and the start of Strict Scrutiny's fifth season! While the cases ahead may seem technical and boring, they're actually quite significant. Melissa, Kate, and Leah preview the first oral arguments the Court will hear in October Term 2023.Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Julia Longoria, host of WNYC's "More Perfect" talks about "More Perfect's" season as some episodes re-air on WNYC this week, and Steven Mazie, Supreme Court correspondent for The Economist and legal advisor for WNYC's "More Perfect" previews the upcoming term, with cases on guns, the abortion pill and more on the schedule. 

In a 6-3 ruling at the end of the 2022-23 term, the Supreme Court handed down a major First Amendment decision about the intersection of free expression rights and anti-discrimination laws in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The Court held that Colorado could not force a website designer to design a site and create expressive designs that she disagreed with, which included creating a website for same-sex marriages. In this episode, host Jeffrey Rosen is joined by ACLU National Legal Director David Cole and New York Times opinion columnist David French to break down the 303 Creative decision, as well as review the 2022-23 term as a whole, other key decisions from this past year, and where the Court is headed next.   Resources:    303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023)   ACLU (David Cole as Counsel of Record), “Brief for Amici Curiae American Civil Liberties Union and American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado in Support of Respondents”, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis  David Cole, “The Supreme Court Picks its Battles” The New York Review (July 4, 2023)  David Cole, ACLU, “Supreme Court Term in Review: Reconciling Our Losses and Wins” July 6, 2023  David French, “Brief of 15 Family Policy Organizations as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners”, 303 Creative LCC v. Elenis  David French, The New York Times “How Christians and Drag Queens Are Defending the First Amendment” (June 30, 2023)  David French, “Harvard Undermined Itself on Affirmative Action,” New York Times (June 29, 2023)  David French, “The Supreme Court Just Helped Save American Democracy from Trumpism,” New York Times (June 27, 2023)  Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org.    Continue today's conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr.    Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly. 

Between threatening Facebook and suing Wachtell, the Chief Twit is pretty active. We also talk about the end of the Supreme Court Term and the struggles in bar prep. ------ Elon Musk is desperately seeking a win and if he can't get it in a cage match against Mark Zuckerberg, he'll try his hand in court. Spoiler: it's going to go just about as badly. He's sent a legal threat to Facebook that fails to articulate much in the way of a legal issue and now he's suing Wachtell for being the lawyers that forced him to buy the company in the first place. Meanwhile the Supreme Court Term ended in a blaze of gaslighting and a hail of disingenuous spin. And now law schools are facing legal threats if their student body looks diverse. Finally, bar prep is just a little bit more stressful for students prepping with Themis, which continues to suffer website problems in the critical weeks before the exam.

New York Times legal reporter Adam Liptak says the Supreme Court's liberal members have accused the conservative supermajority of engaging in politics and not applying established law to the questions before them. We'll talk about how the Court ended affirmative action in college admissions, limited the rights of gay people, and ended the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness program, as well as the major ethical questions have been raised about several conservative justices.

Another Supreme Court term has come to a close. This year, the court delivered major decisions on voting rights, free speech, Indigenous sovereignty, and racial justice, among other issues. The ACLU was involved in cases throughout the term and in many ways, our wins exceeded our expectations. However, in the last two days of the term, the court dropped decisions overturning affirmative action, codifying discrimination in the name of “free speech,” and blocking President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. Here to help us reconcile our wins and losses and break down the term is returning favorite, David Cole, ACLU's national legal director.

The Justices finish another historic year by barring racial preferences in college admissions and overturning President Biden's regulatory overreach in forgiving student loans. What does this tell us about the new conservative majority, and how much credit does Donald Trump get for his three High Court appointments?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Friday the Supreme Court struck down the President's plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans. And, the Supreme Court rules businesses can refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers Plus, protests in France continue, following the police killing of an unarmed French teenager of North African descent Also, how to protect your scared dog during 4th of July fireworks Guests: Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post reporter on the economics of higher education, and Axios' Sam Baker. Credits: Axios Today is produced by Niala Boodhoo, Alexandra Botti, Lydia McMullen-Laird and Alex Sugiura. Music is composed by Evan Viola. You can reach us at podcasts@axios.com. You can text questions, comments and story ideas to Niala as a text or voice memo to 202-918-4893. Go deeper: Supreme Court strikes down Biden's student loan relief plan Supreme Court rules businesses can refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers How to calm scared dogs during fireworks shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NYU Law professor and frequent MSNBC analyst Melissa Murray brings her genius perspective to the podcast this week, and explains the whys and wherefores of this intense Supreme Court term that has just come to a close. Plus, she has positive suggestions for what We, the People can do to keep our own checks and balances on the Court and lawmaking in general. There is some hope, and Professor Murray is here with it. That's not to say the M&M cookies Marissa bakes during the podcast don't help ease some of the ire of the Court's recent decision. Plus, Melissa recounts the inspiring reason she became a lawyer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court ended its term this week with three rulings that will have far reaching consequences in the lives of millions of Americans.The court struck down President Biden's student debt relief program. It also sided with a Colorado website designer who wants to refuse business to a same-sex couple, and it effectively killed affirmative action in college admissions.All three rulings were a 6-3 split. All of the court's Republican-nominated justices voting against the three justices who were put forward by Democratic presidents. NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with two legal experts, journalist Dahlia Lithwick and law professor Leah Litman from the University of Michigan, about what this term tells us about the current Supreme Court.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit nealkatyal.substack.comTen years ago this week, the Court issued one of its most important, and devastating, decisions. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down key aspects of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This week's episode gets into the case with the legendary John Legend. It's a fitting time to do this, since I just found out I won Moore v. Harper in the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision, a case that made clear that many election shenanigans are subject to serious court scrutiny. And the episode begins with a discussion of the Hunter Biden indictment and some reflections on the end of the Supreme Court Term and what to expect. There's a ton of bonus material for paid subscribers too, including John Legend's reflections on his childhood dreams and how he made the transition from a consultant at Boston Consulting Group to the mega star he is today. Please consider subscribing, and I'm giving all profits to charity.Shelby County begins back in the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. During this time, the country was deeply divided, and Jim Crow laws were rampant throughout the South. In states such as Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and others, African Americans were systematically denied their right to vote. States and counties weaponized a whole arsenal of different voter suppression tactics. Some were overt, like poll taxes to literacy tests. And others were really subtle, like changing the polling hours for an election in a minority neighborhood the day before the election took place. Or moving the polling place across the street without telling anyone.In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which was the single most important piece of voting rights legislation in American history. The Act contained many provisions, but perhaps the two most powerful were Sections 4b and 5. Taken together, these two provisions said that states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting practices must get federal court or federal DOJ approval before changing their voting laws. That meant any change – whether trying to have a literacy test or moving a poll across the street. Because Congress knew that there was no limit to the terrible ingenuity of racists who wanted to block people from voting.Now this didn't impact the whole country.  Section 4b, it limited the preclearance requirements only to those states and counties which, prior to the 1964 presidential election, had a voting test in place and less than 50 percent voter registration. This is known as the “Coverage Formula.” In 1965, the formula covered nine states and a few dozen counties that tended to be the most racially discriminatory.The Voting Rights Act (or VRA, as it's called) was passed in 1965 and set to expire after five years. So, the Act was reauthorized in 1970. It was reauthorized yet again in 1975, 1982, and, in 2006. Each time the Act was reauthorized, it was challenged in Court. Time and again, however, the Supreme Court upheld the law; the Court pointed to the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting and gives Congress “the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”But then President Obama won the Presidency. And I was tasked with representing the federal Government in defending the Voting Rights Act. It was my 4th Supreme Court argument ever.  My boss Elena Kagan had a long confirmation process, and so instead of her as Solicitor General arguing it, the task fell to me. I worked my tail off.  But it was hard to argue about the persistence of race discrimination 3 months after the nation elected its first black President.  In any event, I threw myself in, and gave what I think was a pretty bang-up argument. I knew the Act had the blood of patriots on its pages – that Selma and the bridge were a deep part of its history.  And I made much of the argument looking directly at Justice Clarence Thomas, because I really wanted his vote.  Well, in any event, we did save the constitutionality of the VRA, in an 8-1 decision.  The one dissenter: Clarence Thomas!In that 2009 decision, called Northwest Austin v. Holder, the Court said that the VRA could stand.  But it said that it was worried the government would have to justify the coverage formula – that it hadn't been updated in 50 years. And so, over the next years, these largely Southern States argued that the coverage formula was unfair.  And so that's the issue in Shelby County.The Court heard the case, and issued a sweeping 5-4 ruling. Writing for the Majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the coverage formula was outdated and violates the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty among the states. He pointed to the changes in voting registration numbers between 1965 and 2006 (when the VRA was reauthorized). For example, in Alabama in 1965, white voter registration was 50 percent higher than Black voter registration; in 2006, that difference was less than one percent. In Mississippi, there was a 63 percent difference between black and white voter registration in 1965, but in 2006, Black voter registration exceeded white voter registration by 3 percent. In short, the Chief Justice concluded that the Coverage Formula no longer addresses current voting disparities, and therefore must be unconstitutional. He writes the following: “In 1965, the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the Nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were…”Justice Ginsburg wrote a phenomenal dissent, one I go into some detail talking about with John Legend. There's no better person to talk about and explain these concepts—John has spent years thinking about and supporting voting rights.If you want a bunch of background material on the Shelby County case, including a short summary of the decision, a longer abridged one, and the full text of the decision, you can find it all at https://nealkatyal.substack.com/