Citizen's Guide to the Supreme Court

24/07/2024

This week's episode discusses Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the Supreme Court overruled the Chevron doctrine, but not before discussing the potential success of lawsuits challenging the change in the Democratic candidate for President, and later discussing the many mysteries of the open ocean. It's an action-packed episode, folks. Law starts from the beginning. http://citizensguidetothesupremecourt.libsyn.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-chevron?tdest_id=537876

02/07/2024

This week's episode covers Trump v. U.S., which deals with the Court's new test for Presidential Immunity, how that test applies to former President Donald Trump, and whether Brett can talk Nazim off a ledge over the whole thing. Law starts from the beginning. http://citizensguidetothesupremecourt.libsyn.com/trump-immunity-decision?tdest_id=537876

25/06/2024

This week's episode covers two criminal cases with bickering concurrences. Rahimi v. U.S., holding that the Second Amendment does not invalidate a law disarming someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order, shows that a lot can happen in two summers, while Smith v. Arizona, holding that an expert witness cannot testify about a report the expert did not prepare, shows that twenty years is still not enough time to decide what testimonial means. Law starts at (02:22). http://citizensguidetothesupremecourt.libsyn.com/50-shades-of-originalism?tdest_id=537876

17/06/2024

This week's episode covers the cases of FDA v. Doctor's for Hippocratic Medicine and Cargill v. Garland, which deal with big legal issues in small legal ways. The podcast starts by also discussing Big Sam Alito's recently foibles with judicial ethics and ends with a discussion on dance recital season. The law basically starts from the beginning if you'll indulge a small anecdote.

30/04/2024

This week's episode once again covers former President Donald Trump's cases before the Supreme Court, dealing mostly with Trump v. U.S. (whether a President has absolute immunity for criminal actions), but also covering Fischer v. U.S. (whether a statute meant to resolve evidence tampering can also be applied against January 6th Defendants). Brett and Nazim, always sensitive to your tolerance for Trump cases, also give you a crash course in the Confrontation Clause in the third act of this episode by covering Smith v. Arizona. Law starts at (05:43).

31/03/2024

This week's episode covers the most recent abortion case before the Supreme Court, which is less about the Constitution and more about Administrative law and the adversarial nature of the American legal system. Brett and Nazim discuss the basics underlying the decision and how to parse out the fairly one-sided oral argument.

25/03/2024

For Women's History month, and other reasons, one of the rare instances in which all the attorneys for the parties are women. Women represent about a third of the arguments in front of the Supreme Court, making it deeply ironic that the decision in this case could decrease the autonomy women are able to exert over their own bodies.

All three advocates arguing one of the term’s most closely watched cases over the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone are women, a rare occurrence at the US Supreme Court where male attorneys vastly outnumber their female counterparts.

05/03/2024

Time is a flat circle, folks. Fresh off the heels of two SCOTUS decisions, Brett and Nazim discuss the Supreme Court hearing Trump's Executive Immunity defense in Trump v. U.S., and the Supreme Court's holding in Trump v. Anderson which bars Colorado from removing Trump from the ballot. Next time we'll talk about something else. We promise. At least we hope. Law starts at (03:00) following some sweet Dune talk.

24/02/2024

There are some signs that this might put our former president in a bit of trouble. He needs to post the bond to appeal the judgment, and if he has the cash (like I remember him claiming he did at one point), that's not a problem. If he does not, he needs to get a loan, except no bank that does business in New York state can help him, due to the nature of the judgment, and all his New York assets are probably tied up in his New York businesses, which, I think, he can't access. That leaves assets outside that state. You'd think Mar-A-Lago might be able to help, but it might already be encumbered by a mortgage for large part of its value. So, we're basically asking banks if net-value of the former president is more than $350 million. The answer might suprise some of his supporters.

Also, the real chef's kiss of the judgment is 3 years of active scrutiny Trump's finances. I'd be surprised if that didn't reveal more interesting twists.

Correction: he has to post the bond if he wants to stop the collection process.

Donald Trump has made a desperate, last minute gamble to delay paying the massive fraud judgment.

18/02/2024

This *brilliant* insight shared by Michael Conklin:

Click on the article title to read more.

11/02/2024

Hawaii Supreme Court refuses to abide by SCOTUS decision in Heller on the individual right to bear arms by pointing out the mistakes in the reasoning and the facts.

The decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment.

10/02/2024

One of the threads of my reaction to the oral arguments about Colorado's order to bar Trump from their primaries was how many of the justices questions I would have liked to answer "but that's how you've been making these rulings!" Chipping away at the Fair Voting Act and allowing electoral college voters' votes to be controlled by states yields the kind of disenfranchisement that they seemed to fret about in this case.

Also, the doubts about whether the President's office is covered by the amendment, when even Trump's lawyer acknowledged that it would be weird to omit it, and when the senators discussing the amendment shortly before it passed agreed that it was covered, seems odd.

The main doubt the justices held on to did seem the concern over what might happen if this option was opened: yes, some states would probably try to bar other candidates from their ballots, but the courts are relatively good at fact-finding, and can use those skills to determine whether there was an insurrection triggering the 14th amendment. This is a problem with a clear solution. It feels like the justices simply don't want to be involved in that solution.

Throughout arguments in Anderson, the justices purported to be experts at staying in their lane and avoiding interference with the political process.

24/01/2024

Oh-em-gee! A constitutional standoff!

The Supreme Court told Texas governor Abbott to allow the federal border patrol agents to do their job. And Abbott seems to be sticking out his tongue in response.

15/01/2024

Steamboat Willie may be in the public domain, but Disney is still dead serious about copyright.

Horror filmmakers everywhere are LOVING that Steamboat Willie is in the public domain! Written and Directed by: Quinton BuxtonStarring: Matt LintonCharlie Lu...

14/01/2024

This week's episode covers Trump v. Anderson, which asks whether Colorado can prevent Donald Trump from being on the Presidential ballot due to the 14th Amendment. Considering how insane this case is, your boys discuss the lower decision to determine how the Supreme Court will likely reverse this, while discussing history, January 6th, and Colorado statutes. Law starts from the beginning.

17/12/2023

Well hello there. The podcast returns for a discussion on executive immunity (United States v. Trump), double jeopardy and the insanity defense (McElrath v. Georgia) and the second amendment's application to domestic violence crimes (Rahimni v. U.S.). Other topics discussed include breakfast foods, Fortnight, and what 2024 may bring to the brains of legal scholars. Law starts at (08:30) http://citizensguidetothesupremecourt.libsyn.com/trump-double-jeopardy-and-guns?tdest_id=537876

03/09/2023

Sorry about the scarce posts here and the even scarcer release of episodes on the our various podcast streams. Both Brett and Nazim had professional developments that they're focusing on, at the moment. We will be back, but we just don't know exactly when. It may take several months, or even a year.

30/08/2023

The process that allowed homosexual men to be exempt from the otherwise-mandatory Turkish military service required very graphic documentation, as some folks who went through it attested.

In Turkey, pink certificate (Turkish: Pembe tezkere) is the colloquial name for a military discharge certificate given to those who are discharged or considered exempt from military service due to their sexual orientation. The Turkish Armed Forces Health Regulation, under Article 17 of "Mental Healt...

29/08/2023

"Pollock's work is based on the promise that the optimal level of copyright drops as the costs of producing creative work go down. As it has grown simpler to print books, record music, and edit films using new digital tools, the production and reproduction costs for creative work in have dropped substantially, but actual copyright law has only increased."

A Cambridge researcher says that, according to economic calculations, the …

27/08/2023

A Georgia false elector is trying to move his case from state to federal court, despite the fact that the electors are managed by state laws. One of his arguments is that he just broke the law a little bit:

"the State indicted Mr. Still for attending a single meeting, on a single day, during which he followed advice of counsel and politicians who have been at it way longer than he has."

Create alerts, search for and browse the latest court opinions, PACER documents, judges, and oral arguments. Updated automatically with the latest court documents. An initiative of Free Law Project.

26/08/2023

"This executive summary is part of a report that has been produced by a group of expert scientists convened by the Royal Society, independently from the UK Government or that of any other country. [...]
One of the most important lessons from this pandemic is that it proved possible to influence the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic by means of the rapid development, evaluation and implementation at scale of specific treatments and vaccines. The effective application of NPIs ‘buys time’ to allow the development, evaluation and manufacturing of such therapies and vaccines at scale. So there is every reason to think that the application of combinations of NPIs will be important in future pandemics, particularly at early stages with novel pathogens when there are knowledge gaps and when therapeutics and vaccines are
not yet available."

Royal Society review looks at non-pharmaceutical interventions when applied in packages of several measures

25/08/2023

"Today Bolts is publishing a new state-by-state resource that plunges into the weeds of these critical judicial powers. For each of 54 courts—accounting for the highest court in all 50 states, two of which have two separate high courts, plus Puerto Rico and D.C.—we cover every nook and cranny of how they are organized, what functions they serve, and rules for judicial selection.

But here we also wanted to take a step back. Why should we care about state supreme courts? What types of cases do they even hear? And what do we know about the balance of power between liberals and conservatives foothold on these courts across the country?"

Why these courts matter, how they work, and the levers for changing them: Bolts answers your questions on these powerful institutions.

24/08/2023

It's weird how prison-rape is often referenced as a thing that "should" happen in prison.

For American women and nonbinary people held in women’s prisons, sexual violence by state actors is, and has always been, part of imprisonment. For centuries wi

21/08/2023

This case is interesting because the judge gave the defendant a TON of leeway due to the defendant's cancer, including micromanaging the jailors and sanctioning them for failing to produce medical records that they had produced. After which the judge release the defendant to house arrest and granted leave to leave the house at any time during the day without notice.

Judge kinda had this coming, and will probably be very angry if this guy is captured.

Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S.

20/08/2023

When a judge orders lawyers to attend a Christian advocacy group's seminars, it's an expression of biases that the judge may have kept secret before the recent spate of pro-Christian rulings from the Supreme Court.

A court watchdog has filed a complaint against the federal judge who ordered “religious-liberty training” for a trio of Southwest Airlines lawyers.

19/08/2023

"American policymakers have long waged a costly, punitive, racist, and ineffective drug war that casts certain drug use as immoral and those that engage in it as deviant criminals. [...] The drug war has been a failure on all counts. American taxpayers have invested trillions of dollars in the war, yet the United States continues to witness record-setting numbers of drug overdose deaths every year. The public rhetoric concerning drug use has notably changed in recent years. [...] Our assessment of these policies demonstrates that the War on Drugs is not over. It has merely been retooled, recalibrated, and reframed."

American policymakers have long waged a costly, punitive, racist, and ineffective drug war that casts certain drug use as immoral and those that engage in it as

18/08/2023

In part, the History and Tradition test in Dobbs is bad law because it breaks with precedent so strongly that judges are in unexplored territory when trying to apply it.

Confusion over the US Supreme Court’s last gun rights ruling is likely to persist even after the justices decide a new Second Amendment case next term.

17/08/2023

The headline isn't great, but the article is better. Justice Sotomayor's disclosures are getting attention because she's been more transparent than her peers. I'm guessing her peers are simply better at hiding their income. This is a problem.

Sonia Sotomayor’s latest controversy could be worse — but it’s far from okay.

16/08/2023

While this is just a default judgment (meaning the case was not thoroughly litigated), it would be nice to see this kind of online harassment (racist threats) punished.

Ruling sets legal precedent for companies to recover costs from harassment campaigns.

15/08/2023

Although they still put a considerable burden on plaintiffs, the US has some of the strongest civil protections against lies. It's nice to see them deployed in defense of democracy.

How defamation litigation helped save democracy