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It's OA Bar Prep with Heather! First we get the answer to last week's Mario Kart easement question, and then we get question 46 - The Fraudulent Flight to Florida
Right now, the best place to play (if you aren't a patron...) is at reddit.com/r/openargs!
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It's 200 episodes for Amarica's Constitution, and we mark the occasion by bringing you a key expert for an in-depth exploration of a breaking development. Ruth Marcus, long-time Washington Post columnist, editor, Pulitzer Prize nominee, and insider, joins us to explore the inexplicable: the last-minute decision by the Post and its owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, to withhold what would have been an endorsement for Vice President Harris for election to the Presidency. What goes on in an editorial board? What is the role of the owner? What are the alternatives for editors, columnists, and reporters? Was Bezos intimidated by Trump? What does all this mean for the nation? We have the perfect means to explore this shocker: a frank and unhurried inquiry with our friend, Ruth Marcus. What a way to mark our bicentennial. CLE credit is available from podcast.njsba.com.
After an emergency intro looking at the Fifth Circuit’s bonkers mail-in ballot decision, the ladies do a deep dive on two books. First, they speak with New York Times correspondents Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias about The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America. Then, David Pozen of Columbia Law School joins to talk about The Constitution of the War on Drugs, his book about how the war on drugs influenced the constitutional law we have today.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
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
OA1081.
We're taking a broad survey of the 2024 elections, starting with the many, many 2020 election deniers who are still in--and seeking--public office. How many of these people are still around, and how many are up for re-election? What kinds of threats to democracy are still built into the system and how could we do better? What would real reform look like, and what is it going to take to get there?
“The Story of Election Denial in America," ElectionDeniers. org
“At least 30 election deniers and 2020 fake electors serving as Trump electors this year,” CNN (10/17/2024)
Fifth Circuit’s decision in Lamb v Wetzel (10/25/24)
“A Comprehensive Look at the Freedom to Vote Act,” Jonathan Diaz, Campaign Legal Center (9/17/21)
Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!
If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!
It’s easy to dismiss nativist rhetoric as mere Trumpy “locker room talk.” But when it comes to immigration, deportation and even detention, rhetoric about foreigners and violent invaders is actually a legal long game. Toward the end of the summer of 2023, Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, noticed that rightwing anti immigration groups and the Trump campaign had started talking in earnest about using a very old law with a very dark history, in order to do very chilling things to immigrants. She started researching the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the sole operative part of the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts. By October 2024, Donald Trump was invoking the statute in most of his stump speeches, saying he intends to use it to carry out the mass deportations of non-citizens, without due process and with domestic law enforcement deployed to full effect. We are already seeing Texas trying to use the language of “foreign invasion” to achieve exactly these ends. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick asks Katherine Yon Ebright to help the rest of us catch up with her deep dive on this dangerous law, and to explain why we should take the threats to use it literally and seriously.
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OA1080 - As a weary nation watches the world's richest man try to buy a federal election in plain sight, we stop to consider the question which has so long plagued Elon Musk: There's gotta be a crime here, right? Somewhere?
There has been plenty of debate this week about the legality of Musk’s $1 million daily lottery for registered US voters in swing states, but there is something far more insidious going on in this story beyond the headlines. Matt explains how the Federal Elections Commission has recently taken the Supreme Court’s perfectly good joke way too far before we consider what the rapidly evolving rules around super PACs could mean for the future of fair elections in the United States.
Finally, we drop a seasonal footnote to discuss how some Massachusetts 8th graders recently helped to close out a 332-year-old criminal case.
“Judge Aileen Cannon, who tossed Trump's classified docs case, on list of proposed candidates for attorney general” ABC News (10/22/2024)
“Elon Musk’s Big Business and Conflicts of Interest With the U.S. Government” The New York Times (10/20/2024)
The Illusion of Independence: How Unregulated Coordination is Undermining Our Democracy, and What Can Be Done to Stop It, The Campaign Legal Center (11/30/2023)
FEC Advisory Opinion 2024-01 (3/20/2024)
FEC Vice Chair Ellen Weintraub’s dissent from Advisory Opinion 2024-07 (addressing Lindsay Graham campaign’s question re: super PAC campaign fundraising coordination)
Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!
If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!
We are approaching our 200th episode and completing our 4th year of “Amarica’s Constitution,” and it seems appropriate to take stock. By coincidence, the Yale Law School is celebrating its own anniversary, and these things come together as Akhil is part of a big event and presents a “big idea” that sounds like a strange saying: “the Constitution is a thing.” We explain, elaborate, and celebrate a little bit. We look back, and we look ahead to some real excitement over the next few months (besides the election, that is). CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.
It's OA Bar Prep with Heather! First we get the answer to last week's pizza predicament, and then we get question 45 - the case of the uneasy easement!
Right now, the best place to play (if you aren't a patron...) is at reddit.com/r/openargs!
If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!
Melissa, Kate, and Leah recap October at the Supreme Court, diving into the sewage-infested waters of City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency. What did clean water ever do to Brett Kavanaugh? Also recapped: cases about the judicial review of immigration visas and veterans benefits. Finally, the hosts finish off with a peek at what’s going on in state courts around the country.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
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
OA1079 - An OA Spooktacular! But also a normal episode.
We continue our ongoing series on fascism and the law with a fresh perspective on a familiar American legal horror story. Matt explains the terrifying legal context surrounding the 1692 Court of Oyer and Terminar which sentenced dozens of innocent Massachusetts colonists to hang for the extremely real felony of practicing witchcraft--and an unexpected defense strategy which could have spared them. What can the most terrifying run of wrongful executions in US history teach us about the dangers of governance by rumor, paranoia, and conspiracy theories 332 years later?
SOURCES:
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Mary Beth Norton (2003)
“Salem Witchcraft Trials Research Guide,” Congregational Library (2024)(links to primary sources)
18 USC 611 (voting by aliens)
Order granting preliminary injunction against Oklahoma’s anti-Sharia law amendment in Awad v. Ziriax et al, W.Dist. of OK (2010)(later upheld by 10th Circuit
Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!
If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!