What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

Professor Elizabeth Joh teaches Intro to Constitutional Law and most of the time this is a pretty straight forward job. But when Trump came into office, everything changed. During the four years of the Trump presidency, Professor Joh would check Twitter five minutes before each class to find out what the 45th President had said and how it jibes with 200 years of the judicial branch interpreting and ruling on the Constitution. Acclaimed podcaster Roman Mars (99% Invisible) was so anxious about all the norms and laws being tested in the Trump era that he asked his neighbor, Elizabeth, to explain what was going on in the world from a Constitutional law perspective. Even after Trump left office, there is still so much for Roman to learn. What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law is a weekly, fun, casual Con Law 101 class that uses the tumultuous activities of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to teach us all about the US Constitution. All music for the show comes from Doomtree, an independent hip-hop collective and record label based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Episodes

July 25, 2025 33 mins

The United States generally does not allow a standing army to be used against civilians. But Trump has been exploiting an exception to keep troops in Los Angeles to protect ICE agents, with terrifying implications.

Bad Faith President

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We heard you. The chorus of voices asking “where is Con Law? Where is Professor Elizabeth Joh to guide us through this madness? We need it now more than ever!” Well, here it is. We’re back with a special extra-long episode about Trump’s perverted use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process and how judges are trying to hold the administration accountable to the Constitution.

Plus, we announce the launch of The 9...

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November 4, 2024 34 mins

No matter what happens on Election Day, Trump and his allies have already put legal challenges in motion. Here’s what a nerdy agency, hanging chads, and zombie lawsuits can tell us about how all this could play out.

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October 29, 2024 32 mins

Falsely claiming there is a wave of violence perpetrated by migrants, Trump has threatened mass deportations under the broad and terrifying powers of the Alien Enemies Act.

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October 8, 2024 32 mins

The United States has a strange way of electing presidents.

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September 24, 2024 31 mins

Election deepfakes have the potential to change people's opinions about a presidential election in ways that can be harmful to democracy and the truth itself. But what does the Constitution say about regulating these manipulated images? One place to look: Hustler Magazine.

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September 10, 2024 31 mins

As students go back to school, colleges and universities across the country are preparing for the continuation of protests against the Israel-Hamas war—and claims by other students that the protests are violating their own civil rights. Institutions and courts are now weighing the question: whose free speech matters more?

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August 27, 2024 32 mins

What’s the connection between former President Donald Trump's attacks on the so-called “Deep State" and a tiny silvery fish? The Supreme Court, of course.

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August 14, 2024 2 mins

We’ve got a preview of a new miniseries for you called Not Built for This, created and hosted by Emmett FitzGerald. It’s a show about climate change, but not in the way you might think. It’s about how the complex systems that govern our lives are not designed for the tectonic changes that are coming our way. Because right now we’re all living in a world that was just Not Built for This

You can find Not Built for This in the 99% In...

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August 13, 2024 34 mins

In 1960, a man named Lawrence Robinson was sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating a California law that made it illegal to be addicted to narcotics. This summer, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order telling agencies to clear “dangerous” homeless encampments on state land. What links these two situations? The Eighth Amendment.

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July 30, 2024 26 mins

After an unprecedented several weeks in politics, some on the right are advancing far-fetched arguments to challenge Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, and a federal judge in Florida threw out the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump. 

Neither of these are based on established constitutional precedent.

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July 16, 2024 37 mins

The concept of presidential immunity is not explicitly stated anywhere in the Constitution. That hasn’t stopped the Supreme Court from essentially creating what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called "a law-free zone around the President."

What does this mean for the criminal cases against former President Trump? And what are the implications for the office of the presidency?

Note: this episode was recorded before the assassination attempt o...

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December 17, 2023 33 mins

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Disqualification Clause was adopted to ensure that former officials and soldiers in the Confederacy would be barred from serving in public office.

And for the first time in 153 years, an elected official has been disqualified for future office for his role in an insurrection: a New Mexico county commissioner who marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Voters have filed lawsuits against Trump,...

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November 1, 2023 31 mins

Gag orders are usually put in place to protect a defendant's right to a fair trial by limiting inflammatory statements. What happens when it's the defendant making the inflammatory statements and that defendant is a current candidate and former President of the United States?

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September 18, 2023 32 mins

On August 14, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced that the grand jury had returned a criminal indictment against Trump and eighteen other defendants for what they did in the days and weeks after the 2020 election. The story told by the indictment is that this group were part of a criminal enterprise that worked towards one singular goal: overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

One of the people ...

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May 31, 2023 30 mins

19th century "zombie" laws are shambling into the abortion debate. The Comstock Act of 1873 made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious,” “immoral,” or “indecent” material through the mail. Does that include abortion pills?

Comstock Zombies

 

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April 4, 2023 26 mins

On April 4th (that’s tomorrow as I record this) former President Trump is expected to be arraigned in a Manhattan court room. He was indicted by a New York grand jury last week but the exact charges against him remain unknown until he appears in court. On Thursday last week, Elizabeth Joh and I recorded an episode all about the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into Trump’s alleged hush money payments and the New York gra...

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New York's 3rd Congressional District elected a newcomer named George Santos in November of 2022. Since the election, it was revealed that Santos lied about nearly everything on his resume. What does the Constitution say about lies, punishing lies, and  punishing someone who lies to get elected? Time to find out!

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February 10, 2023 34 mins

It’s been established law that it is wrong for businesses to discriminate against customers because of their race or ethnic background, but what if a business owner refuses to serve someone because of their sexual orientation? And what if that business owner asserts that serving a gay customer violates their first amendment rights?

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November 26, 2022 31 mins

How the Dormant Commerce Clause tries to stop states from passing laws that put an undue burden on interstate commerce and what that means for states that wish to forward specific ethical agendas. Plus, what's going on with student debt relief: who filed a lawsuit against it and why.

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