Opening Arguments

OA1204 - As House Speaker Mike Johnson continues to pretend that he doesn’t have to seat Democrat Adelita Grijalva well over a month after she was elected to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional district, we take a closer look at the last time that Congress refused to swear someone in and what the Warren Court had to say about it. Who was Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, why was the House so intent on excluding him in 1966,...

OA1203 - Happy Halloween! We take shelter from a year of ghoulish legal news in the COURTHOUSE OF HORROR, a cabinet of macabre legal curiosities including:

1. “SO I TRADEMARKED AN AXE MURDERER”: The historic Lizzie Borden House takes a whack at a nearby coffee shop

2. “THE BONE DETECTOR”: Recent patent bar survivor Jenessa Seymour brings us the unbelievable story of the spookiest--and silliest!--lie dete...

OA1202 - We are pleased to welcome American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick for this unique conversation between a practitioner and a policy expert. The AIC is one of the country's leading sources of information and advocacy on US immigration matters, and Aaron watches and comments on these issues like no one else out there right now. Topics include, among many other things, how the Trump administration kee...

OA1201 - This Rapid Response Friday, Matt and Jenessa play a few rounds of “Can They REALLY Do That?”, with topics including:

1. The legal mechanism and filings behind Trump’s $230 million demand for DOJ having the audacity for investigating him for crimes that he did

2. Arizona’s lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson asking a DC federal court to require him to seat incoming Congresswoman Adelita Gr...

VR11 - Today on Vapid Response Wednesday: Thomas, Lydia, and Matt review some of the worst takes to last weekend’s 2700+ “No Kings” events around the U.S. But first, we savor an instant classic of an amuse douche: a recent video of a real-life encounter between a drunk-driving ICE officer and actual law enforcement. We then learn why the National Review is definitely not mad about the No Kings events going...

OA1199 - Voting rights expert Jenessa Seymour takes us through this week’s oral arguments in one of the most important cases before the Supreme Court this term: Louisiana v. Callais, which has the potential to end some of the most important protections in the Voting Rights Act and allow states to openly racially gerrymander their electoral districts. Also discussed: a related New York state case which may ...

It’s Vapid Response Wednesday, and Thomas, Lydia, and Matt are back to take apart more bad-faith nonsense from some of the worst people in public life. First up: The Atlantic's Caitlyn Flanagan on why it is totally fine that her good friend Bari Weiss is taking over one of the most prestigious news organizations in the United States after running a glorified blog which has been liberated from any reasonabl...

OA1198 - In this very special episode, Matt catches up with his Constitutional law professor for the first time in 23 years!  We follow up with our closer look at the science behind Brown v Board (OA1186) with University of Michigan Law professor Michelle Adams, who takes us through the fascinating and ultimately tragic story of how the promise of Brown ended twenty years later in the struggle to overcome ...

OA1197 - The National Guard is being federalized and sent into cities that the President doesn’t like against the explicit will of state governors and local populations. Matt covers as much as we know from the legal developments around this ongoing national emergency, and Jenessa shares some good news which is already coming out of NY’s recent recently-enhanced equal protection amendment. Finally, i...

We welcome CNN anchor Jake Tapper to discuss his latest book Race Against Terror, a nonfiction legal thriller set in the long-ago world of 2011 in which the U.S. Department of Justice is dedicated to vigorously defending national security through strict adherence to due process and the rule of law. Also discussed: the current state of the media, why the world needed a book about Joe Biden’s mental decline which was released within ...

OA1196 - This week in our continuing Still Good Law series, Matt and Jenessa take on the 1963 Supreme Court case which is still believed to hold the record for angering the most Americans at the same time: 1963’s Engel v. Vitale. Find out why a decision which even the Warren Court’s conservative justices did not see as particularly controversial to keep New York school administrators from publicly making o...

OA1195 - How much of the federal government has actually shut down, and why? We explore the truth behind the spin, and Matt breaks the exclusive story of how at least one part of the executive branch appears to be illegally operating at full capacity.

We then then connect some of the most fast-moving stories of the past few weeks to bring out the terrifying relationship between the obvious legal issues aro...

OA1193 - Could Tylenol sue RFK Jr. for libel? Does the pressure the FCC put on Disney/ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel constitute a First Amendment violation? Is the Trump administration really going to charge rural hospitals $100,000 for the privilege of being able to hire foreign doctors? In today’s Rapid Response Friday we answer all of these recent patron questions and more, and Jenessa shares a personal footn...

We watched the newly-released final episode of HBO’s The Case Against Adnan Syed, and we have questions.  Are the producers really trying to pin the murder of Hae Min Lee on a Black man with obvious mental health issues who was already cleared as a suspect--and did they really need to show the world a fully-nude photo of him to make that case? What is the story that they are trying to tell here, and just how far off is it from the ...

OA1192 - This week in Still Good Law: Katz v. U.S., the 1967 Warren Court case which on its face decided that the Fourth Amendment may apply to a public phone booth. But that’s hardly all: the federal prosecution of nationally-famous bookie Charles Katz also completely changed the entire framework for how U.S. courts understand and interpret the law of searches and seizures and completely upended the conce...

OA1191 - In today’s Rapid Response Friday, we examine some of the legal questions raised as the Trump administration throws as much political capital as possible behind the recent assassination of Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk and their implications for the future of the First Amendment rights they claim to revere Kirk for championing. Is there any legal basis for Trump to designate a “domestic ter...

VR 7 - Part 1 of 2. Vapid Response Wednesday has been blessed with a surplus of truly awful takes in the days following the murder of MAGA luminary Charlie Kirk. After a brief reminder of who this man actually was in his own words, we go on to see who has achieved honors in categories ranging from Worst Obituary to Most Pretentious Response and beyond. (Next up: more of the worst, but also some of the best responses to this moment....