Advisory Opinions

Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris ruffled West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s feathers when she sat down with local television stations in his state to chat about Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill without first giving him a heads up. On today’s episode, our hosts break down why these sorts of intra-party kerfuffles matter and how they might shape the Biden administrati...

A federal judge on Tuesday granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request for a nationwide temporary restraining order blocking the Biden administration’s halt of a 100-day pause in deportations of noncitizens for 14 days. It’s safe to say our podcast hosts have some thoughts! Stick around to hear David and Sarah chat about an indictment against pro-Trump Twitter troll Ricky Vaughn in respons...

The Supreme Court “munsingweared” several cases in its Monday orders, including two Trump emoluments cases. After a deep dive into the legal history of munsingwear precedent—a modern mootness doctrine—David and Sarah discuss a Texas deportation case filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pretrial release conditions for those who were arrested during the January 6 Capitol siege, and a Supreme...

Can Joe Biden heal the rampant degree of polarization that’s currently plaguing our nation’s politics? “There is an element on the left side of the aisle that is every bit as hostile to their fellow citizens as there are on the right edges,” David tells Sarah on today’s episode. “But the thing is, Biden won the primary by specifically shunning that part of the Democratic base.” After their post-In...

Who will preside over soon-to-be-former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial after he leaves office? Will it be the Senate’s president pro tempore? The chief justice of the Supreme Court? None of the above? On today’s episode of Advisory Opinions, our hosts also dive into the nitty gritty details of Trump’s forthcoming—and second—impeachment trial before they discuss the latest updates in so...

This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, a free speech case that will determine whether former Georgia Gwinnett College student Chike Uzuegbunam is entitled to nominal damages from an unconstitutional government policy when that policy has since been changed. “Arguably there is no more important constitutional law case that has come up before the court in the...

In a break from our current news cycle, Advisory Opinions tackles “the more mundane issue of teenage girls complaining” in a discussion about Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L, one of the Supreme Court’s latest cert grants addressing the issue of off-campus student speech. Not to worry, our hosts also dig into the more pressing issues of the day. In an examination of the term “incitement,” David...

During a press conference on Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for President Trump’s removal from office. “Yesterday, the president of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America,” Pelosi said, shortly before demanding the invocation of the 25th Amendment. On today’s podcast, our hosts talk about the possibility of impeaching President Trump, the legal machinat...

After a holiday hiatus from podcasting, our hosts have quite a bit of news to catch up on. Did Trump commit election fraud during his phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger? Will Trump’s election conspiracy theorizing depress Republican turnout in Tuesday’s Georgia Senate races? What should we expect when Congress convenes on Wednesday to count the Electoral College votes? A...

On today’s holiday mailbag edition of the podcast, David and Sarah answer a series of listener questions ranging from legal history to college football. Do you have to admit guilt to accept a pardon? Are there any wrongfully decided Supreme Court cases that are still on the books? Is there a secular argument for prohibiting abortion or does restricting the practice entirely depend on adopting reli...

The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear a case concerning whether the NCAA’s eligibility rules for student compensation violate federal antitrust law. Should the NCAA have the right to create a universal regime of amateur athletics? Is this dispute more of a legislative problem? Or is it an antitrust problem that should be resolved by the courts? In their penultimate podcast before Christmas...

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit contesting the election results in four battleground states, ruling that “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.” What does the court’s order mean in plain English? Should the justices have said more? Why did Justices Alito and T...

On Wednesday, 17 state attorneys general filed amicus briefs in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit contesting the presidential election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. To make matters more interesting, President Donald Trump has said he will join the lawsuit and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has agreed to argue the case in front of the Supreme Court. Tune in to...

U.S. federal law’s “safe harbor deadline” means that most presidential election law cases will be resolved by tomorrow, December 8. Today, David and Sarah discuss what’s next for Trump loyalists who have an unshakable belief that the election was stolen. Stay tuned for a conversation about changes to the citizenship test, a 9th Circuit transgender bathroom case where cert was denied, parental and...

With the GOP’s Senate majority hanging by a thread, all eyes are on the Peach State and whether Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler can hold onto their seats in their January runoffs. But could all of these election conspiracy theories that are being circulated by conservative pundits and politicians ironically end up depressing turnout among GOP voters in these races? “Over last nigh...

Over Thanksgiving break, the Supreme Court struck down New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s strict coronavirus related occupancy limits to 10 or 25 worshipers in churches and synagogues located in orange and red zones in the state. In a 5-4 per curiam decision, the majority sided with Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel, who argued that Cuomo’s COVID-19 regulations treated houses of wors...

In Monday’s emergency episode of the podcast, David and Sarah bring us up to speed on the Trump legal team’s latest litigation drama, which has become nothing short of a clown show. One of the most puzzling aspects about all of this is the striking gap between the Trump campaign’s public rhetoric about widespread voter fraud during press conferences and its much more modest—albeit still meritless—...

Rudy Giuliani has come out of retirement for the first time in 28 years to litigate on behalf of the Trump campaign. To say his gears were a little rusty would be the understatement of the century: Giuliani walked into court this week and couldn’t remember the name of the judge, couldn’t remember the name of his opposing counsel, couldn’t remember the meaning of “opacity,” and couldn’t argue the p...

A segment of the right-wing public has morphed into a conspiracy theory machine that is—in David’s words—propagating baseless voter fraud allegations at “a geometric rate that [bears] increasingly no relationship to the real world at the same time as the actual claims in court are just evaporating.” Why are people on the right and the left so susceptible to electoral conspiracy theories? After Dav...

The Trump campaign is swinging for the fences in most of its litigation efforts in hopes that at least some of its legal arguments will be successful. But as our podcast hosts remind us, most of the president’s post-election lawsuits are unlikely to change the outcome even if the Trump campaign scores a few victories along the way. “The Trump administration could win, dunk on the opposition, hang...

Twitter is brewing with wildly unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud as election officials in battleground states continue to count ballots. For today’s myth busters edition of the podcast, David and Sarah discuss the nitty gritty details surrounding ballot-counting processes and whether the conspiratorial claims surrounding voter fraud allegations have any merit. “If voter fraud is a religion for...

It’s Election Day eve and our podcast hosts have their presidential race forecasting models at the ready. After a helpful breakdown on pivot counties in swing states, David and Sarah give us some punditry on the 15 Senate races they’re watching closely this cycle. “Generally speaking, the Senate and presidential numbers are getting closer together over the last few cycles, not farther apart,” Sara...

We’ve already seen record early turnout this election cycle. Our hosts have three major takeaways from the surge: 1) It means the polls are more likely to be accurate (the registered voter number is likely to reflect the actual voter number), 2) It means that we’re going to see interesting shift in how both candidates’ spend time on the campaign trail before Tuesday, 3) It means we have a record n...

Echelon Insights predicts that we will see record turnout this election cycle. How might a surge in, say, 2o million new voters this year affect the presidential race in battleground states? “If we’re talking the day after the election about why the polls were wrong,” Sarah warns on today’s episode, “it will be because of the extraordinary turnout, and [pollsters] were unable to figure out where t...

Still shocked by the grand polling meltdown of 2016, many Americans on both sides of the aisle are convinced that Biden’s double digit national polling lead is inaccurate and that Trump will somehow win the election in a landslide. This theory has three main hypotheses: 1) Trump is such a uniquely divisive candidate that his supporters lie to pollsters and say they plan to vote for Biden, 2) the l...