Coale Mind

So your law firm has reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic.  Great! What should your space look like now?  When your lease runs out, where should your firm be based?  If it has one "office" now, should it continue to do so?  How do you get people to come to the office--if you want them to at all?  And what should a home office look like now? These are hard questions, and every professiona...

Can the school board remove "that book" - whatever it may be - from the high school library?  This episode reviews the First Amendment's guidelines on that issue, established by the Supreme Court's one case in the area, in 1982. It examined whether the school board's :(impermissible) motive to restrict student access to a particular message was the reason for a book's...

By popular demand, the nationally respected jury consultant Jason Bloom returns to "Coale Mind" after his  insightful interview last year about the restart of jury trials after the 2020 quarantines. In this episode, he discusses the insights from the continued return of jury trials.   He describes how, across the country, prospective jurors are more eager to be selected and serve on juri...

To start the New Year off right, I interview Valerie Beck, one of the world’s leading experts on the business of -- chocolate. Seriously! Through her business, Chocolate Uplift , Valerie serves as a consultant to craft chocolate makers all over the world. For many years before that, she was CEO of a tour company that offered “chocolate tours” of the many fascinating places where chocolate is made....

This is the first half of my presentation to Professor Rory Ryan's Federal Courts class at Baylor Law School, about SB8, on November 23, 2021. The presentation addresses four issues raised in the litigation about the law: (1) sovereign immunity as defined by Ex Parte Young , (2) standing (both to sue about SB8, and under it), (3) whether Texas avoided "state action" (and with it, th...

This is the second half of my presentation to Professor Rory Ryan's Federal Courts class at Baylor Law School, about SB8, on November 23, 2021. The presentation addresses four issues raised in the litigation about the law: (1) sovereign immunity as defined by Ex Parte Young , (2) standing (both to sue about SB8, and under it), (3) whether Texas avoided "state action" (and with it, t...

Celebrate Thanksgiving this year with "Coale Mind," which examines the legal underpinnings of our country's national holidays. Somewhat surprisingly, they are grounded in a fairly obscure part of the U.S. Code that sets vacation policy for federal employees, rather than one of the more well-known portions of that Code or the Constitution. From there, I examine some interesting lesso...

In 1895, the Supreme Court affirmed a contempt conviction against Eugene Debs, the leader of a nationwide strike by railroad workers. The conviction arose from a federal-court injunction, obtained by federal prosecutors to prevent private actors from infringing on activity protected by the U.S. Constitution. Both the United States and the State of Texas rely on that opinion, In re Debs , in the on...

This episode reviews the new Texas law (Tex. Educ. Code sec. 28.0022(a)(4)(A), (C)) about teaching "Critical Race Theory" in the state school system. My special guest is my friend of more than thirty years, Dr. Michael Hester of the University of West Georgia, who teaches in its communications school, coaches the debate team, and serves as a special advisor to the university's Chief...

A few weeks ago, I considered whether the new Texas abortion statute, the "Texas Heartbeat Act," violated the "Separation of Powers" Clause of the Texas Constitution of 1876. This week I examined whether the Heartbeat Act may violate the "Open Courts Clause," another unique feature of the 1876 state constitution, which also has no direct equivalent in the U.S. Constit...

"Treason!" cry former President Trump and supporters, criticizing calls made by General Mark Milley to his counterparts in China and other countries during the waning days of the Trump Administration. This episode considers the validity of that claim, both under the Constitution's definition of "treason," as well as general principles about civilian-military relationships...

I talk "the state of the State" with Matt Rinaldi, the new statewide chair of the Texas Republican Party.  We succinctly talk about the Governor's emergency powers, the power grid, border security, SB8 -- and, a special bonus topic that you must listen all the way to the end to hear! 

Building on an insightful op-ed in today's  Boston Globe  about the Supreme Court's 1981  Grendel's Den  case, this episode considers whether the Heartbeat Act's delegation of enforcement authority to millions of private citizens may violate the Texas Constitution's separation-of-powers  clause -- a clause that does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. 

In this episode I interview my old friend Chrysta Casteneda, a well-known oil-and-gas litigator in Texas who ran for a position on Texas's powerful Railroad Commission in 2020.  She describes why the "lights went out" in Texas in February 2021 as several things went wrong at once, and examines whether we have done enough to protect ourselves against another epic failure of our elect...

Welcome to the second year of Coale Mind! In a previous episode of this podcast, I questioned whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – the federal appellate court for Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi – may have grown more conservative than the U.S. Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice Roberts. In particular, I looked at two Fifth Circuit cases that the Supreme Cour...

Various speakers associated with the "Q" phenomenon have recently claimed that Donald Trump can be "reinstated" as President, based on the hoped-for outcome of ongoing "audits" of 2020 election ballots in battleground states. This episode reviews the relevant text of the Constitution, noting that (1) voters choose Presidential electors, not candidates, and (2) the 20t...

Special guest! Jason Bloom, one of the nation’s leading jury consultants, talks about his experiences with jury selection during the COVID-19 pandemic. From that foundation, he and I talk about issues likely to arise as jury trials return to reopening courthouses across the country. They include: - A surprising eagerness of people to show up and serve on juries, in part driven by widespread feelin...

The Constitution protects economic liberty,  but only against regulations that lack a rational foundation in a legitimate governmental interest.  Two recent cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit show how slippery this principle can be in practice. The underlying principle is alive and well, but "rationality" is a fairly easy burden for a regulator to satisfy.  In one...

Despite the disappearance of the shadowy "Q," and the failure of the long-promised "Storm" to occur, followers of "QAnon" still hold out hope. Some believe that President Trump will return to power on March 4, 2021, in the reversal of an 1871 that turned the US into a "corporation" (spoiler alert--it didn't). Another view is that "NESARA," a s...

In just the first few weeks of his Administration, President Biden has issued 20-plus executive orders--a noticeably faster pace than his immediate predecessors. What exactly is his authority to issue such orders? And what are the limits on it? This episode of Coale Mind examines the text and structure of the Constitution to identify some answers--both substantive, and procedural. 

The Senate plans to begin a second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Can it do so under the Constitution? This episode looks at the Constitution's text, evidence of the framer's intent, two historical impeachment cases, and the Constitution's structure. It concludes that the answer is likely a matter of political will and consensus, which the two historical examples  (former Senato...

The pardon provision in Article II of the Constitution is broad -- but so are other clauses that describe other aspects of the Presidency. This episode of Coale Mind reviews those terms of the Constitution, and considers how our debate about them reflects our society's broader debate about what we want the United States to be. 

Sixth Street in Austin is one of the nation's most famous "party streets." But is also the location of a Texas-style showdown between the governor, on the one hand, and the local mayor and county judge, on the other, about the regulation of bars and restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. This episode looks at the laws underlying their dispute (which just reached the Texas Supreme...

The Supreme Court's recent rejection of the  Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit has produced some muttering on the far right wing about the concept of secession. This episode examines Texas v. White , the 1869 Supreme Court case that held -- once and for all -- that a state cannot secede from the United States. The case arose from shady dealings by the Confederate government of Texas involving mil...

The Presidential election of 1876 was spectacularly fouled up. Three states certified dueling slates of electors; Congress resolved the resulting confusion with a political compromise about the end of Reconstruction, and then passed laws to try to avoid a similar crisis in future years. While we have been lucky since 1876 to not have another election with so many technical problems, the laws passe...