In this emergency episode, Leah, Melissa and Kate break down the Supreme Court’s shadow docket order allowing Texas to use racist and Republican-skewed district maps in next year’s midterms.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
OA1213 - Thomas is back for an action-packed Rapid Response Friday! This week: we compare the letter that just earned the former President of Honduras a pardon of his conviction for definitely being involved with narcotrafficking against the Trump administration’s excuses for murder on the high seas of Venezuelans suspected to be involved with narcotrafficking--and if House Speaker Mike Johnson actually has a point in blaming Barack Obama for all of this. Matt then takes a quick look at Steve Bannon’s petition for review of his conviction for contempt of Congress by the Supreme Court and explains how “safe third country” agreements now give ICE the power to deport asylum seekers to Central America without a hearing on their claims.
Finally in today’s footnote, Matt shares an incredible story from his week: an astonishing beyond-Kafkaesque legal argument the government has ordered his client to respond to that you will have to hear to believe.
Today on Vapid Response Wednesday: weeks after designating “Antifa” a “domestic terror organization,” the White House hosted a panel of MAGA luminaries to update the President on the not-at-all-made-up threat to the nation posed by a thing which demonstrably does not exist. We begin with a short amuse douche, in which Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn is concerned about the extremely real Portland “Antifa hit list”--a thing which definitely exists exactly as described! Matt then explains why the war on “Antifa” is a threat to all of our civil liberties before we take a seat at the Antifa Round Table.
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!
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.
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!
Check out the OALinktreefor all the places to go and things to do!
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.
