Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast

Welcome back, devoted listeners, and say hello to season eight of Digging a Hole , where we’ve got an extraordinarily stacked lineup just waiting in the wings. To make up for the cold, cold months where you had to get your legal theory fix from reading articles (boring) or attending faculty workshops (ugh), we’re kicking off the season with a mammoth episode about a mammoth book. Today’s guest is...

Like George Santos’s tenure in Washington and Tim Scott’s rousing presidential campaign, all good things must come to an end, and so we wave goodbye to season seven of Digging a Hole . Our last guest of this season needs no introduction: according to our team of in-house scientists, if you stacked a penny for each citation he’s received, the tower of pennies would reach almost 1,000 feet high (whi...

It’s the last month of the year and soon (but not yet!), it’ll be the last podcast of the season. We had a lot of people write in about our last episode and so this Christmas, on behalf of all of you, we’ll ask Santa for more Digging a Hole . But before we leave out some milk and cookies, we’ve still got some great episodes for you. Today, we’ve got a pre-recorded episode that – can you believe it...

Listeners – our apologies. We’ve given you interesting topic after interesting topic, distinguished guest after distinguished guest. But we’ve strayed from the promise of the podcast, which is legal theory, and legal theory means arguing ad nauseam about whether we’re positivists or normativists. For a recent intervention in that debate, we’re delighted to bring you today’s guest, William Baude, t...

Squarely in the heart of the Trump administration, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published a book titled How Democracies Die which proved enormously popular. Celebrities read it. Obama read it. Most people you know probably pretended to have read it. Five years later, Levitsky and Ziblatt are back with a sequel of sorts, arguing that in the United States, democracy might never have been fully...

As the Supreme Court moves forward with its administrative state agenda, we thought we’d get in on the action and make sure we understand what exactly that agenda even is . Lucky for us, we’ve got some friends who can shed light on that matter. On today’s episode, we’re joined by Emma Kaufman, Professor of Law at New York University Law School, to discuss her paper, co-authored with previous pod g...

After a long summer vacation, we’re thrilled to be back for season seven of Digging a Hole ! Just a couple of weeks ago we were baking; now we’re surviving storm after storm, quivering and quaking. Climate change, huh? Here on the pod to discuss their forthcoming paper on how environmental law can help get us out of our existential crisis, “ The Greens' Dilemma: Building Tomorrow's Climate...

As Punxsutawney Phil to winter are we to summer; and today, we celebrate a very special end-of-season episode. Sam is joined by guest co-host Noah Rosenblum, Assistant Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, to discuss work by our very own David Schleicher. David’s new book, In a Bad State : Responding to State and Local Budget Crises , which is both a romp through the American hist...

The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and David’s back on the pod. More importantly, we’re thrilled this week to be joined by Julie Suk, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law in New York City, to discuss her new book After Misogyny : How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It . After Misogyny , like much of Professor Suk’s scholarship, including her first book, is impre...

This episode, we swap out one legend of legal theory for another. Goodbye David, hello to our guest – the one and only Duncan Kennedy! As part of a course he’s teaching at Yale Law School, Foundations of American Legal Thought, Sam interviewed Professor Kennedy in front of a live audience on March 8, 2023. Professor Kennedy, the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Emeritus, at Harvard Law S...

This week, we’re joined by dual-wielding complex and aggregate litigation and law of democracy scholar Samuel Issacharoff to discuss his new book Democracy Unmoored : Populism and the Corruption of Popular Sovereignty . Sam Issacharoff, the Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU Law and one of our leading democratic theorists, has written extensively on the role of courts...

Another episode, another student of David and Sam’s on the podcast. Except this time, we have a current student instead of a former one! In this episode, a joint Lillian Goldman Law Library book talk- Digging a Hole production that took place in front of a live audience on January 23, 2023, we interview Yale Law student Jake Mazeitis and Wick Cary Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma...

Happy new year and welcome to season six of Digging a Hole ! We’re kicking this season off with a bang as Sam welcomes one of his former students – Timothy Shenk! Tim Shenk is an Assistant Professor in History at George Washington University and a prolific public writer who you may have read in the New York Times , Jacobin , or Dissent . More importantly for us, Professor Shenk is the author of th...

It’s time for an election recap! We’re joined by Greg Sargent, who covers elections for the Washington Post and who slides into Sam’s DMs regularly. We recorded this episode on Friday, November 11th as election returns are still coming in, but it’s clear that the “red wave” did not transpire. It looks like Democrats will hold the Senate and they have a small hope of retaining the House. What lesso...

In a matter dear to Sam and Dave’s livelihoods, we have a timely podcast to discuss Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. There is no one better to get into the weeds of this issue than Kate Klonick. Kate is an Associate Professor of Law at St. John’s University Law School and a Visiting School at Harvard University’s Rebooting Social Media Initiative. She is a leading expert on social media companies, co...

This week we have Jacob Grumbach on the pod! Jake is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and the producer of fantastic Twitter content @JakeMGrumbach. His new book Laboratories against Democracy discusses the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics. To begin, Jake walks us through the three consequences. First, national partisan and...

Professor Gary Gerstle enters the arena to join our ongoing debate about neoliberalism. Gary, a leading historian of the United States, is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus and Paul Mellon Director of Research in American History at the University of Cambridge. On today’s episode, we discuss his brilliant new book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the Worl...

Another podcast, another Metropolitan movie reference. This time we are joined by our colleague and friend, Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law at Yale Law School. We give you a sneak peak of Professor Zhang’s new book The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions , which comes out in November. Taisu starts by explaining why understanding the Qing dynasty is a...

We are thrilled to welcome Professors Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan to the podcast to discuss their groundbreaking new book on immigration in America! Ran is the Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Economics at Stanford and Leah is a Professor of Economics at Princeton, where she also serves as the Director of the Industrial Relations Section. They are on the forefront of economic researc...

Much like 2000s fashion – we’re back! The long wait is over. Digging a Hole’s new season is here! After a summer of landmark Supreme Court cases, we are excited to start the season with Mary Ziegler, one of the nation’s leading experts and historians of U.S. abortion politics. Professor Ziegler is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California Davis School of Law. She...

For the last episode of the season, Digging a Hole hosted its first live show in front of a live student audience! David interviewed two current Yale Law School students – Nina Oishi and Caroline Grueskin – about recent papers they’ve written. We started by asking Nina about her recent paper “Rating Racial Equity: Examining BlackRock and Goldman’s New Racial Equity Initiatives in the Municipal Bon...

On this week’s pod, Dave welcomes one of his former professors – Rick Pildes! Professor Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University Law School, an appointee to President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, and a contributor to the New York Times . He’s a leading scholar on the legal issues concerning democracy, and in this episode, w...

This week, Digging a Hole explores global legal theory and history to match up with Sam’s European adventures! We are lucky to be joined by two of our Yale colleagues, Lauren Benton, Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law, and Rohit De, Associate Professor of History and Associate Research Scholar in Law. We begin by discussing global legal theory and the way that thinking about...

This week we have an emergency podcast episode on the war in Ukraine. We’re joined by our two colleagues and leading international law scholars – Oona Hathaway, the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, and Scott Shapiro, the Chalres F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School. In this conversation, which took place...

On this week’s pod we have Osita Nwanevu , contributing editor at The New Republic , columnist at The Guardian , and author of the forthcoming book The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding ! In the interview, Osita discusses many of the major issues around media institutions today. Somehow David relates journalism to both roasted vegetables and dessert, so we eit...