Category: 3-LawSometimeCommentary

Secretary of Defense Hegseth is making use of his sights.  He is focusing at times on Senator Mark Kelly, seeking to wreak havoc upon him for his utterances which have angered Hegseth’s master.  Meanwhile, purported drug smugglers have found Davy Jones’ locker at the order of Hegseth, it has been reported, including those left helpless after initial lethal strikes.  Yale Professor and Bancroft Prize winner John Fabian Witt joins us to help us make sense of the international law and laws of war issues here. Meanwhile, your poor co-host, Andy, is subjected to a Socratic barrage at the hands of a Kingsfield-like Professor Amar, as the relentless logic - or is it illogic - of Hegseth’s actions run into a Constitutional wall.  This is an entirely new, and entirely irresistible analysis; it’s Professor Amar at his best. CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

OA1212 - What’s a cop to do when he stumbles onto a crime, and the evidence points to someone he knows all too well? In today’s deep dive, friends become suspects, concerned parents become FBI agents, and laptops become lost jungle detritus. This criminal case out of the US District Court of the Northern Mariana Islands (a US territory in the Pacific) may not have reached the Supreme Court, or have any particularly important precedent, but what it lacks in prestige it makes up for with a fact pattern seemingly written by a law professor specifically to test your knowledge of criminal procedure and evidence. Come for the caper, stay for the OA midterm!

• U.S. v. Weindl, (D.N. Mar. Is. 2012)

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Kate, Leah, and Melissa kick off the show by speaking with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin about First Choice Women’s Resource Centers  v. Platkin, whose wonky exterior masks an under-the-radar abortion case. Then they preview the rest of December’s oral arguments, which include cases about the future of the administrative state as we know it, campaign finance, and judicial review of asylum cases. Finally, some legal news, including the dismissal of the James Comey and Letitia James indictments. 

Favorite Things:

• Leah: A Battle with My Blood, Tatiana Schlossberg (The New Yorker)
• Kate: Death by Lightning (Netflix)
• Melissa: Studio Museum in Harlem; Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love: A Cookbook, Samin Nosrat
   

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2026! 

• 3/6/26 – San Francisco
• 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Buy Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

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Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

• 3/6/26 – San Francisco
• 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

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By design –  and also by dint of unbridled, undisciplined extremist exuberance – Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House is thus far a tricky thing to characterize. While many of the administration’s moves seem copy/pasted from a manual for authoritarian takeover, they’re also deeply rooted in longstanding structural democratic deficits in America. For their part, The administration’s boosters argue this whiplash-inducing dismantling of institutions, norms and precedents are simply the right’s answer to similarly seismic constitutional shifts in the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. In a recent piece in the Boston Review, What Are We Living Through?, law professors Jedediah Britton-Purdy and David Pozen try to puzzle through these conflicting narratives of change. They join Dahlia Lithwick on this week’s Amicus to map this moment and to plot paths through it. 

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OA1211 - For this special Thanksgiving episode, we take a break from the news for Matt to share his gratitude in short interviews with just a few of the staff, attorneys, and partners who make his Boston immigration law firm's work possible. Stop in to meet everyone from George the office emotional support dog to Matt's long-time friend and law partner Nicole as we discuss the daily work of deportation defense in 2025 and how everyone is looking out for their mental health throughout this unprecedented crisis. Finally in today's footnote: Matt's former student and current research assistant Olivia joins to discuss the serendipitously-timed email which brought her to OA and what it takes to prepare to have an unscripted but informative conversation about complex topics. 

Thanks again to everyone listening, and most especially those who have joined the community and support the show at patreon.com/law!

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Events in the news once again intersect with Professor Amar’s past work, as a little-known aspect of a clause in the Constitution has surprising relevance to the President’s fire-breathing response to a video from Senators and Representatives reminding our military and other officers of their lawful obligations. We trace other constitutionally newsworthy developments, on the filibuster and on the unitary executive.  And the Born Equal tour continues, with some interesting reflections on the genesis and rationale for some interesting aspects of the book.  CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

Leah, Melissa, and Kate dive into the raging legal battles over redistricting ahead of next year’s midterms, Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s massive oopsies in her prosecution of James Comey, developments with L’Affaire Epstein, and other assorted legal quagmires and outrages from the Trump administration. Then, Kate chats with University of Minnesota Law Professor Jill Hasday about her book We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality. Check out Leah’s review of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book, Listening to the Law, for the Los Angeles Review of Books here.

Favorite things:

• Kate: Lux, Rosalía; The Unraveling of the Justice Department, Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser (NYT); Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy; The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990, Jonathan Mahler
• Leah: Mature, Hilary Duff; The Pop-Tarts Bowl; Cupcakin’ Bake Shop in Berkeley
• Melissa: Judith Browne Dianis & Alexei Navalny win the inaugural Kettering Democracy Prize; Meghan’s Moment, Kaitlyn Greenidge (Harper's Bazaar); Meet the Veteran Who Chases ICE on a Scooter, Isabela Dias (Mother Jones)

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

• 3/6/26 – San Francisco
• 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

OA1210 - This week we welcome journalist and author John J. Lennon, who is calling in from New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility where he is serving 25 years to life for murder. Lennon’s extraordinary new book The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us tells his own story alongside that of three other men whose crimes were sensationalized by the media--including Manhattan “Preppy Killer” Robert Chambers--after they were convicted for murders which they unquestionably committed. It challenges us to consider what life is like for the subjects of these documentaries and re-enactments after the credits have rolled, and to ask what our national obsession with true crime is costing them--and all of us.

1. The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us, John J. Lennon (2025)

2. The New York Times review of The Tragedy of True Crime, Pamela Colloff (9/23/25)

3. “A Convicted Murderer’s Case for Gun Control,” John J. Lennon, The Atlantic (8/21/2013)

4. “The True Crime Stories You See on TV Are Leaving Out Something Big,” John J. Lennon, Slate (10/13/2025)

5. “When Your Crime Becomes a Dick Wolf Show,” John J. Lennon, Rolling Stone (7/19/2025)

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, who brings her extensive experience trying and supervising federal criminal cases to a discussion of what the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse can teach us about justice. She suggests that the Trump administration’s eleventh-hour switchback tactic of calling for investigations of only Democrats speaks volumes about how the Justice Department is functioning these days, proving that vindictive prosecutions are the only game in town, bonus if they also have the effect of power-washing the president’s shadow from the scandal. Next, they turn to the extraordinary scenes in a Virginia courtroom this week, as the DOJ’s case against former FBI director and Trump foe James Comey seemed ready  to fall apart at the seams. As this administration’s practice of political interference in legal proceedings is supercharged by dear leader’s “Dear Pam”  posts to “his” AG Pam Bondi, this conversation highlights why judicial integrity and the ever-expanding ranks of judges refusing to accept lies, are among the last best hopes for equal justice under the law in America. 

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OA1209 - Are you done with legal doomerism? Us too. Take some time away from doomscrolling and join Matt and Jenessa for Rapid Response Friday as we consider four stories of legal corruption and authoritarianism failing in the face of honest federal judges, and a footnote about how one brave prison nurse exposed even more corruption in Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s special treatment by the Trump administration.

1. Complaint in United States v. State of New York, Northern Dist. of NY (7/9/25)

2. New York’s motion to dismiss in U.S. v. New York (8/4/25) 

3. Judge Mae D’Agostino’s order granting plaintiff’s motion to dismiss in U.S. v. NY (11/17/25) 

4. Indictment of James Comey, Eastern Dist. of VA (9/25/25)

5. Judge William Fitzpatrick’s order granting disclosure of grand jury materials in U.S. v. Comey (EDVA)(11/20/25)

6. Judge Jeffrey Brown’s order in LULAC v. Abbot, Western Dist. of TX (11/18/25)

7. Decision on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s motion to dismiss in 9/11 litigation, Southern Dist. of NY (8/28/25)

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