Category: 3-LawSometimeCommentary

E20 - Detention Watch Network executive director Silky Shah has been organizing against ICE on the ground to fight throughout the agency’s entire 23-year existence. We are excited to welcome her and her unique perspective to Opening Arguments to discuss both the urgency and the hope of our current moment, the challenges faced by organizers and advocates, what lawyers can (and can’t) do in the face of a lawless system, and imagining life after ICE.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube!

1. Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition, Silky Shah (2024) 

2. “Congress Has Made ICE the Largest Law Enforcement Agency In The Country,” Silky Shah, Truthout (1/20/2025)

3. Detention Watch Network website

4. Donate directly to support Detention Watch Network

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It’s five years of Akhil and Andy on Amarica’s Constitution, and our friends are lining up to talk about it.  In typical fashion, it’s not just testimonials but reflections.  And we do a clip episode, but this time it’s not the justices, or the oral advocates, or the pundits, on the hot seat:  it’s us.  We look back at two episodes per year, playing our sometimes correct, sometimes wildly wrong predictions, and our sometimes prescient, sometimes widely ignored so-called insights.  It’s been quite a ride, and quite a recap - so much so that this part one of at least two.  And still, after five years, CLE credit remains available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

Melissa, Leah, and Kate kick off by discussing the functional suspension of the Constitution in Minneapolis and Trump’s targeting of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Then they dissect the arguments in a pair of cases that came before the Court last week about whether state laws barring trans girls and women from their schools’ sports teams violate the Constitution or Title IX. Finally, they break down new opinions from SCOTUS involving criminal law, the Fourth Amendment, and mail-in ballots.

Favorite things:

• Kate: You’ve heard about who ICE is recruiting. The truth is far worse. I’m the proof., Laura Jedeed (Slate); Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt; God of the Woods, Liz Moore; Ulysses at the Public Theater
• Leah: They Were Ordinary Germans. We Are Ordinary Americans., Shalom Auslander (NYT); What to know about the Insurrection Act, Steve Vladeck & Allison Gill (One First); Can Trump Actually Use the Insurrection Act? Steve Vladeck and Jennifer Rubin (The Contrarian)
• Melissa: Nuremberg; Ammel vs. Sinema; This guy

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OA1227 - Come play the worst ever round of the Connections game and figure out what on earth Tuskegee Alabama, the CDC, Southern Denmark University, and the West African country of Guinea-Bissau all have in common, as RFK Jr. continues his campaign of “just asking questions” that we already have the answer to.

• Black men untreated in Tuskegee syphilis study. Heller, J. (July 25, 1972; republished May 10, 2017). Associated Press.

• The untreated syphilis study at Tuskegee timeline. Centers for Disease Control. (September 4, 2024).

• 45 CFR 46 Protection of Human Subjects. (Department of Health and Human Services regulations to implement the National Research Act and create Institutional Review Board policies).

• Hepatitis B. World Health Organization (July 23, 2025).

• Should the U.S. model its vaccine policy on Denmark’s? Experts say we’re nothing alike. Godoy, M. (December 26, 2025). NPR.

• RFK Jr. overhauls childhood vaccine schedule to resemble Denmark’s in unprecedented move. Lovelace Jr., B., Edwards, E., Fattah, M., & Bendix, A. (January 5, 2026). NBC News.

• What is actually the emerging evidence about non-specific vaccine effects in randomized trials from the Bandim Health Project? Støvring, H., Ekstrøm, C.T., Schneider, J.W., & Strøm, C. (2025). Vaccine, 68, 1-4.

• Notice of award of a single source unsolicited grant to fund University of Southern Denmark (SDU). Department of Health and Human Services. (December 15, 2025).

• U.S. plan for $1.6m hepatitis B vaccine study in Africa called ‘highly unethical’. Schreiber, M. & Lay, K. (December 19, 2025). The Guardian.

• CDC awards $1.6 million for hepatitis B vaccine study by controversial Danish researchers. Szabo, L. (December 18, 2025). Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

• CDC funds controversial hepatitis B vaccine trial in African newborns. Offord, C. (December 18, 2025). Science Insider.

• Research ethics and compliance support. Southern Denmark University.

Further reading:

• Qiao, H. (2018). A brief introduction to institutional review boards in the United States. Pediatric Investigation, 2, 46-51.

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. International compilation of human research standards. https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/international/compilation-human-research-standards/index.html

• University of North Carolina. Nuremberg Code. https://research.unc.edu/human-research-ethics/resources/ccm3_019064/

• Torrance, R.J., Mormina, M., Sayeed, S., Kessel, A., Yoon, C.H., & Cislaghi, B. (2024). Is the U.N. receiving ethical approval for its research with human participants? Journal of Medical Ethics, 51, 1-4.

• Barchi, F. & Little, M.T. (2016). National ethics guidance in Sub-Saharan Africa on the collection and use of human biological specimens: A systematic review. BMC Medical Ethics, 17, 1-25.

• Salhia, B. & Olaiya, V. (2020). Historical perspectives on ethical and regulatory aspects of human participants research: Implications for oncology clinical trials in Africa. JCO Global Oncology, 6, 959-965.

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President Trump REALLY wants to invoke the Insurrection Act. He’s fallen hard for this 200-year-old law that would allow him to deploy active duty military to enforce civilian law on American streets. On this week’s Amicus podcast, co-host Mark Joseph Stern is joined by Professor Steve Vladeck, a nationally recognized expert on the Supreme Court, federal courts, national security law, and military justice. They discuss what’s been stopping Trump from invoking the act so far, why he has no legal authority to do so right now, and what happens if he does it anyway.

Next, Mark talks to Julia Gegenheimer, former special litigation counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section, and now a special litigation counsel at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. Julia and Mark discuss the remaining paths to justice after the killing of Renee Good and examine what happens when the DOJ abandons its duty to seek accountability and vindicate civil rights. 

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We didn't get the tariffs decision this week, but we discuss two of the opinions we did get -- Bost v. Illinois Board of Elections, a decision about standing and election law, and Case v. Montana, a rare Fourth Amendment case -- in a remarkably efficient episode (after a brief detour into Grok's jurisprudence and the announcement of a major gift to the Constitutional Law Institute).

OA1226 - We begin with a review of the unprecedented lawsuit that Minnesota has filed against ICE with the extreme leftist radical demand that they obey the law and U.S. Constitution. How much power do states have to limit federal operations, and what are the chances a court order might put some guardrails on the largest enforcement operation in ICE history? We then consider the legal and political merits of articles of impeachment filed against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Finally: we honor the passing of civil rights hero Claudette Colvin, whose bravery as a 15-year-old on a Montgomery, Alabama bus nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat put the final nail into the “separate but equal” justification for racial segregation established by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1. State of Minnesota v. Noem, complaint filed 1/12/2026

2. “House Resolution 935: Impeaching Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense for the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors,” Rep. Shri Thaneder (12/9/2025)

3. “House Resolution 944: Impeaching Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services  for high crimes and misdemeanors,” Rep. Haley Stevens (12/10/2025)

4. “House Resolution ___: Impeaching Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” Rep. Robin Kelly (1/13/2026)

5. “Firm Tied to Kristin Noem Secretly Got Money from $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts,” ProPublica (11/14/2025)

6. “Impeachment: The Constitution’s Fiduciary Meaning of ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors,’” Robert G. Natelson, The Federalist Society (6/19/2018)

7. “Claudette Colvin, who refused to move seats on a bus at start of civil rights movement, dies” (NPR, 1/13/2026) 

8. Browder v. Gayle, 142 F.Supp. 707 (1956)(aff’d per curiam by U.S. Supreme Court 12/20/1956)

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E19 - In the wake of Renee Nicole Good's murder, we've seen a terrible number of bad takes: from the events of that day, the overall purpose of I.C.E., and what the law says about where we go from here. Matt, Thomas, and Lydia come together to start with perhaps the biggest douchebag in the United States as part of our amuse douche (TM), followed by a pair of articles touching on why the Left was wrong about ICE in 2018 and is apparently at fault to this day for all horrors committed by ICE (eyeroll). Finally, we finish it up with questions from our amazing patrons!

Watch this episode on YouTube!

• "Abolishing ICE is a very bad idea" (Nate Bruggeman & Ben Rohrbaugh, The Philadelphia Inquirer), 3/23/2018

• "The Problem Isn't ICE. It's ICE Watch." (Dan McLaughlin, National Review), 1/10/2026

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A powerful and aggressive central government sends unwanted forces in huge numbers to a city where the residents oppose and resent this policy.  The undertrained forces unleash violence against the population in the form of an obviously wrongful death.  Minneapolis, yes - but also a seeming repeat of an important American historic event, that shaped a nation’s core beliefs, later reflected in the Declaration and the Constitution.  We tell those stories, and look at the values and basic laws that emerged from them; bring to light important Supreme Court cases  - and bring all this to Minneapolis for examination of how they apply, 250 years later.  CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

OA1225 - Jenessa is here to dig deeper into Van Buren v. United States as we explore the implications and meaning when legislative deliverables, legal analysis, work industry, and general common sense push and pull in different directions. We had a lot of questions and comments on the original Van Buren episode from the community, so we thought it would be fun to spend some more time and battle it out!

• Reviving Lenity - Daniel Harawa, SCOTUSBlog (Dec 26, 2025)

• US v Rodriguez, 628 F.3d 1258 (11th Cir. 2010)

• US v Nosal, 676 F.3d 754 (9th Cir. 2012)

• US v Nosal, 844 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2016)

Further reading:

W. Cagney McCormick, The Computer Fraud & Abuse Act: Failing to Evolve with the Digital Age, 16 SMU SCI. & TECH. L. REV. 481 (2013).

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