Law firms are threatened with draconian penalties, with scarcely disguised vengeful and politically destructive motive. Universities are dragged on the carpet, with demands that they forfeit their academic freedom, choice in hiring, and internal mission priorities. What’s going on here? What is likely to happen in Court? Are the firms and universities defensible on constitutional grounds as well as because of procedural and statutory reasons? We bring on Vik Amar, former Dean at the Law School at University of Illinois, Urbana, and author of recent articles on both these crises. And while we are at it, we take a look at the forthcoming Supreme Court oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case, which superficially is about nationwide injunctions. Is that really what it’s about, and in any case, is there more than that there? Three of our current crises in one sweeping conversation. CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.
Opening Arguments - Meet the Absolute Heroes Behind CourtListener.com
OA1152 - We are pleased to welcome Mike Lissner, the Executive Director and CTO of the Free Law Project to discuss his outstanding work in bringing federal court filings out from behind the PACER paywall, how just a few people with good ideas can fill in the gaps left by government services, and why he hasn’t created an Article III Hot or Not with his vast library of judicial portraits (but how you could).
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.
Opening Arguments - Meet the Absolute Heroes Behind CourtListener.com
OA1152 - We are pleased to welcome Mike Lissner, the Executive Director and CTO of the Free Law Project to discuss his outstanding work in bringing federal court filings out from behind the PACER paywall, how just a few people with good ideas can fill in the gaps left by government services, and why he hasn’t created an Article III Hot or Not with his vast library of judicial portraits (but how you could).
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.
Strict Scrutiny - Are Trump Administration Officials in Criminal Contempt?
Leah, Melissa and Kate join forces to dig through the Trump administration’s latest affronts to the law and the possibility that its officials could be held in criminal contempt. They also react in real time to the Court’s decision to take up the question of birthright citizenship and cheer Harvard’s stand against the administration. Finally, they take a look at what’s in front of SCOTUS this week, including a new opportunity for the conservative majority to use the EPA as a punching bag and its latest foray into the culture wars.
Hosts’ favorite things:
- Melissa: White Potus (SNL); Good Dirt, Charmaine Wilkerson; Hacks (Max); Confessions of a Female Founder (with Reshma Saujani)
- Kate: So You Want to be a Dissident Julia Angwin & Ami Fields-Meyer (New Yorker); Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service, Michael Lewis; Just Security (Substack); Judge Wilkinson’s opinion for the 4th circuit on the Abrego Garcia case; Catalina, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Leah: Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance, Ari Richter; The Vibe Shifts Against The Right, Michelle Goldberg (NYT); Harvard’s new website
- Also mentioned this episode: The Supreme Court threatens to bring “Don’t Say Gay” to every classroom in America, Ian Millhiser (Vox); Five Questions About Domestic Use of the Military, Steve Vladek (One First)
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
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Playing Chicken With the Constitution
Ever since March 15, when three flights carrying hundreds of men who had been afforded zero due process left United States airspace and landed in El Salvador, American democracy has been hurtling toward an internal conflict that the federal judiciary would very much prefer to avoid, but just keeps getting more unavoidable. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Mark Joseph Stern is joined by Leah Litman for the first half of the show. They discuss how, faced with a Trump administration that claims the ability to rewrite the Constitution on the fly, denies the ability to follow court orders, and dangles the possibility of extending its lawlessness to renditioning American citizens to a foreign prison, the federal judiciary this week did what the Supreme Court failed to do last week: explicitly call out the regime’s lawless actions. Aptly, Leah’s new book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, comes out on May 13 and they discuss how the highest court’s enabling of Trump and MAGA more broadly has brought us to the constitutional precipice.
Next: In the six months since the re-election of Donald Trump, abortion and reproductive rights have been squished way below the fold, news-wise, obscured by an ever-mounting pile of terrifying headlines. But outside of the public glare, the legal landscape of reproductive rights has been shifting. Dahlia Lithwick talks to Mary Ziegler about her book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction. Together, they examine how notions of fetal and embryonic personhood are fueling punitive actions against women, physicians, and those who provide or seek healthcare related to reproduction.
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Opening Arguments - Just When We Thought Big Law Could Not Be More Pathetic
OA1151 - We’re (kind of) live from New York! Thomas, Matt, and OA regular Liz Skeen meet up in person for the first time on Liz’s home turf to review the state of the law three months into the second Trump administration. We begin with a brief update on some recent developments in Trump’s war against Biglaw before turning to some encouraging developments in two of the most significant federal civil cases of our lifetimes. Finally, Matt cedes today’s footnote to a New York minute from Liz about a welcome legal setback for Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign.
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Letters from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sent to major law firms demanding data on DEI hiring policies (3/17/2025)
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DC District Court Judge James Boasberg’s 46-page findings of probable cause for criminal contempt against defendants in JGG v Trump (4/16/2015)
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Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson’s order in JGG v. Trump (4/17/2025)
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.
Opening Arguments - Just When We Thought Big Law Could Not Be More Pathetic
OA1151 - We’re (kind of) live from New York! Thomas, Matt, and OA regular Liz Skeen meet up in person for the first time on Liz’s home turf to review the state of the law three months into the second Trump administration. We begin with a brief update on some recent developments in Trump’s war against Biglaw before turning to some encouraging developments in two of the most significant federal civil cases of our lifetimes. Finally, Matt cedes today’s footnote to a New York minute from Liz about a welcome legal setback for Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign.
-
Letters from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sent to major law firms demanding data on DEI hiring policies (3/17/2025)
-
DC District Court Judge James Boasberg’s 46-page findings of probable cause for criminal contempt against defendants in JGG v Trump (4/16/2015)
-
Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson’s order in JGG v. Trump (4/17/2025)
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.
Opening Arguments - T3BE66: Drowning in Camera Repair Debt
It's Thomas Takes the Bar Exam question 66! Heather's here to break down the answer to T3BE65, and Lydia jumps in (because of reasons we explain in the show) to help us congratulate the winners and tackle the question for T3BE66.
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.
Divided Argument - Vaxxed and Relaxed
We have another short administrative law episode, analyzing the Supreme Court's decision about e-cigarettes in FDA v. Wages and White Lion. But first we field some listener pushback about facial challenges in administrative law, and discuss the shadow docket ruling, and ensuing fallout, in Noem v. Abrego Garcia.
Amarica's Constitution - Equality, Emergencies, Exception, and Easter
Deportations, the administration’s preferred tactic du jour, appear to many as extreme, inadvisable, and often cruel. Are they unconstitutional? What framework can we use to determine the rights of citizens versus aliens, even if legal, even if permanent resident? What kind of process is “due” for the various groups? Where can we locate the origins in our history, and how do they interact with some of the great themes of the Constitution, including the guarantees of the Bill of Rights, and the rights of “persons” as expressed in the 14th Amendment? The case of Mahmoud Khalil offers a set of facts that shed light on these questions, as do other deportations; we start with this one.