Category: 3-LawSometimeCommentary

On February 25, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued their 5-3 opinion in Glossip v. Oklahoma. The Court held that the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony under Napue v. Illinois. and the Court has the jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

Please join us in discussing the decision and its future implications.

Featuring:
Zack Smith, Legal Fellow and Manager, Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program, The Heritage Foundation

Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code OPENING at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/opening

OA1145 and T3BE65 - Lydia joins this Wild Card Wednesday to discuss the awful, inhumane HHS layoffs. Workers were lined up around the block to wait hours to find out if they were fired or not. These are human beings. The people responsible for this should be imprisoned.

(awkward transition) and then it's time for a bar exam question!

If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs, find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate t3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there!

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

This content is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org.

President Trump likes being president.  He doesn’t like the 22nd amendment so much, and has spoken, with increasing seriousness, of his conviction that he could remain president beyond the end of his second term.  Various pundits have weighed in, some dismissively, others with grave declarations that Trump can accomplish this through constitutional contortions of one sort of another.  Professor Amar, it turns out, has thought and written about this decades ago.  We will take you through all the history; all the constitutional provisions - beyond the 22nd amendment alone; all the supposed workarounds,; and present you with a definitive understanding of the matter.  Look to our episode number - 222 - for a preview of where we think it will come out.  CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

We are back with an unexpectedly concise episode focused on last week's "ghost guns" decision, Bondi v. Vanderstok. But first we talk about the calls to reconsider the Court's Confrontation Clause doctrine and also return to the number of votes needed to call for the views of the Solicitor General (CVSG).

We are back with an unexpectedly concise episode focused on last week's "ghost guns" decision, Bondi v. Vanderstok. But first we talk about the calls to reconsider the Court's Confrontation Clause doctrine and also return to the number of votes needed to call for the views of the Solicitor General (CVSG).

*** Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code OPENING at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/opening ***

OA1144 - Professor Jack Lerner joins us for a follow up to OA1055 as we dive deeper into case law surrounding the usage of rap music in litigation, including discussion of the fight for lyrics to be admitted as evidence in the Young Thug trial in Fulton County, Georgia, and what mechanisms are being explored to address this at the state level in places like New York.

• End Rap on Trial

• Rap on Trial: A Brief History (6/4/2024)

• Rap on Trial: A Legal Guide, Second Edition (2024)

  • Case Compendium

  • Brief Bank

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

This content is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org.

Jon Lovett joins Leah and Melissa to talk about what’s at stake in this week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election and what it was like campaigning for Susan Crawford in Madison and Milwaukee. Then, the ladies run through a busy week of argument recaps, opinions, and legal news, covering the relitigation of the Voting Rights Act, the sunsetting of the administrative state, and that text chain.

Hosts’ favorite things this week:

• Leah: After Dobbs, David Cohen & Carol Jaffe; Mayhem, Lady Gaga; Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh; Wrexford & Sloane mystery series by Andrea Penrose; Lawsuits by Wilmer & Jenner challenging wildly unconstitutional executive orders; Judge Howell’s order rejecting the request for her to recuse in the challenge to the EO targeting the Perkins Coie order
• Melissa: Last week’s episode of Strict Scrutiny; A Season of Light, Julie Iromuanya; The Note, Alafair Burke; Yacht Rock: The Dockumentary (Max); Gwyneth and Meghan on Instagram; New Phone; Houthis? (Christian Schneider on X); Text STOP to opt out of war plans (Leta McCullough Seletsky on Bluesky)

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

• 6/12 – NYC
• 10/4 – Chicago

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

The Trumpian inversion of reality was threaded into so many areas of the law and active litigation this week.

Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia Lithwick to discuss the apparent evaporation of judicial patience for Trump lawyers simultaneously claiming that a signal chat was not classified or subject to record preservation rules, AND the flights to El Salvador that were  filmed for posterity on arrival at a prison were in fact state secrets. Together, they also think through the likelihood of the Supreme Court stepping into the Alien Enemies Act case at this early stage by just taking the Trump administration at its word that those summary renditions were totally legal and constitutionally correct. 

Next, Dahlia Lithwick talks to Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, about another Trumpian inversion of reality: his executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”, which in fact is not about election integrity, but instead an extension of the Big Lie election theory that could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*** Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code OPENING at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/opening ***

OA1143 - In the past month, Donald Trump has issued a series of truly fascist orders targeting some of the country’s best-known law firms for crimes ranging from hiring people Trump doesn’t like personally to doing some favors for special counsel Jack Smith to flagrantly hiring non-white non-men. What is actually in these orders, and how bad is it that one of leading litigation firms in the country gave in to Trump’s demands without  a fight? And what will it mean for the already-overloaded immigration court system when they start going after immigration lawyers as they have also promised? Former NYC Biglaw associate (and current NYC public defender) Liz Skeen joins to help us to understand this uniquely un-American moment in American legal history.

(UPDATE: This episode was recorded shortly before news broke about the Trump administration taking action against major US law firms Wilmer Hale and Skadden Arps.)

• Addressing Risks From Jenner & Block (3/25/25)

• Addressing Remedial Action by Paul Weiss (3/25/25)

• Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court (3/22/25)

• Addressing Risks From Paul, Weiss (3/14/25)

• Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLC (3/6/25)

• Suspension of Security Clearances and Evaluation of Government Contracts (Covington & Burling LLP)(2/25/25)

• “Complicity in the Perversion of Justice: The Role of Lawyers in Eroding the Rule of Law in the Third Reich,” Cythnia Fountaine, St. Mary’s Journal of Legal Ethics (2020) 

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

We’re a bit late this week, because following our recent conversation with Justice Breyer, we had the opportunity to speak at length with Judge William Pryor, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, former Alabama Attorney General, and an important member of the Judicial Conference the “national policymaking body for the federal courts.” Judge Pryor has had a colorful career, having effectively prosecuted another judge for misconduct, had a contentious confirmation hearing, clerked for a titan among judges in Judge Wisdom, and served at the highest level short of the Supreme Court for many years.  We discuss a wide range of matters from judicial safety, to the importance of following Court orders, to enforcing civil rights laws, and much more.  The discussion took place in two parts;  with an audience of undergraduates, and then with an audience of Yale Law School students, many from the Federalist Society chapter at Yale; this produced a great variety of topics. We also have timely information on a new EverScholar program where registration is about to open; be among the first to know about this!  CLE credit is available from podcast.njsba.com.