Opening Arguments

OA1243 - The lawsuit that was supposed to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s obvious monopoly over live music throughout the U.S. has just ended in a settlement so surprising that even DOJ’s lead counsel didn’t know it was happening. Is this deal as bad as it looks?  What does it mean for the future of live entertainment, and what will happen if the dozens of states which joined the feds in t...

VR25 - This episode is dedicated to the memory of Cricket, the 14-month-old wirehaired pointer murdered in cold blood by Kristi Noem on an unknown date in a gravel pit in South Dakota. One week after Donald Trump took now-former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s job out to the gravel pit, Thomas, Lydia, and Matt get together for a post-mortem. After a brief amuse douche from Noem’s (ahem) closest adviso...

OA1242 - Ever heard of the “major questions doctrine”? Most lawyers sure hadn’t until a few years ago. So how did it get that important-sounding name? Where did it come from? What even is it? How can we call something a “doctrine” or a rule if we don’t have a clear rule statement to cite to? (Hint: You can’t). If you’ve been feeling like maybe this is all made up and the points don’t matter, you c...

OA1241 - This Rapid Response Friday:* everything you need to know to explain to anyone who will listen exactly why what the US is doing in Iran is illegal. We also review oral arguments in an unusual case involving the federal statute under which Hunter Biden was  recently convicted which has brought weed, guns, and Amy Coney Barrett’s illegal Ambien habit (?) before the Supreme Court at the same...

E24 - Today on Vapid Response Wednesday: the story of a wealthy family that lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to try to defend his sister after she was convicted of abusing and trafficking minors with (and for) Jeffrey Epstein. For this special episode we read through Ian Maxwell’s entire body of published work for The Spectator and unseriously consider some of the many questio...

OA1240 - Shaina Aber, Executive Director with Acacia Center for Justice, joins today to discuss immigration nonprofit work during Trump 2.0. Find all of the tools and programs we talked about at their website, Acacia Center for Justice .  

OA1239 - Did the Supreme Court just hand Donald Trump the biggest L in US presidential history? We go beyond the headlines to break down the first decision on the merits of any of the second Trump term’s policies. What is the deal with the “major questions doctrine” and why can’t the conservative justices agree about what it is and how to use it? Why did Neil Gorsuch choose this case to drop a len...

OA1238 - Dive in to an “old” case from the 90’s that secured a critical right for people with disabilities: The right to be free from unnecessary institutionalization. Learn about some of the more obscure portions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the different ways we can define discrimination, and what happens when a majority of  judges just cannot agree to sign on to an entire opinion. Ol...

OA1237 - The U.S. Department of Justice is not sending their best these days. From the problematic indictments of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for their coverage of the protest of a church in Minnesota whose pastor runs the local ICE field office to the unexpected dismissal of Mohsen Mohdawi’s deportation proceedings to a bizarre argument (and more good news) in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s cu...

E23 - For today's amuse douche : a savory sample of our favorite Harvard Law professor’s extremely normal 2015 explanation of his appearances in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs. We then take on an almost painfully normal 1997 Dersh LA Times oped in which the lawyer who would go on to secure one of the best plea deals a pedophile has ever received complains about all of those pesky age of consent law...

OA1236 - Elections grab bag! Election news has been accumulating, so Jenessa helps us get caught up on what’s going on. Who’s winning elections? What’s going on with redistricting? Heard something confusing about the mail? Trump back on his bullshit again? Good news, mixed news, debunking alleged bad news, bad news with plans for how to turn things around; we’ve got it all. Updates since we record...

OA1235 - Today on Rapid Response Friday: Matt’s still on island time, so it’s a good-news-only kind of day as we review (1) the historic termination of deportation proceedings against Tufts grad student Rumeysa Ozturk, (2) new judicial restraints on ICE, (3) a DC federal judge’s outstanding rebuke to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s attempt to deport 350,000 Haitians, and (4) a Republican revolt on Tru...

VR22 - Matt reports in just a few miles from--and this is true--Epstein Island to provide a recap of his recent visit to Minnesota days after Alex Pretti’s murder for the first major gathering of state legislators joining forces to stop federal overreach since 1814. How are the people of Minneapolis and their elected leaders holding up on the front lines of the Department of Homeland Security’s wa...

Take a break from the downfall of democracy and instead get outraged at the deep injustice of a year-long feud over a bronze medal in women’s gymnastics. This story’s got everything: bravery, racism, the best and the worst of sportsmanship, bad blood that’s been brewing since the Cold War, and, somehow, the Swiss Federal Court. Come for the weird gymnastics scoring rules, stay for the legal analys...

OA1233 - We are not conspiracy theorist type people. But... yeah man I don't know. But also, so much more in these files to talk about. If you know anything about the federal government’s 2007 plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein you know that it was bad. But newly-released documents from the Epstein files show that it was actually much worse than that! Thanks to a newly-released legal memo, a draft ind...

E21 - CONTENT WARNING / TRIGGER WARNING: references to child sex abuse, child  sex abuse  materials, survivor accounts Watch this episode on YouTube ! The Epstein Files have been released--or have they? Days after the Department of Justice’s delayed and poorly-redacted release of millions of new documents connected with the world’s most infamous sex trafficker, we sit down for a first look at what...

OA1232 - Hey OA-ers, this episode was a Gavel Gavel bonus, but we wanted to be sure everyone was updated on what's going on with the Luigi Mangione trials. New York public defender Liz Skeen is here to break it all down! And since the judge made some rulings on 1/30, I've got an update for ya! Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

OA1231 - The DHS funding battle is important, but really can't accomplish what you might hope it can. When it comes to the Fed, ALL OF A SUDDEN the court cares about the real world effects of their decisions. And a figure skating related footnote!  

Part 2 of 2. OA 1230 - Seeing all the obstacles to holding government officials accountable, Congress created Section 1983, allowing citizens to sue for money damages for violations of their civil rights. We cover how that works, the one weird trick it uses to get around state sovereign immunity, and how that accidentally created the infamous qualified immunity doctrine that has made police seemin...

Part 1 of 2. OA 1229 - What happens when a government worker does you wrong? How is it different to prosecute and sue them? When does qualified immunity come in to play? We discuss the steps involved in prosecuting and suing someone for a simple battery, and how that differs for a regular person versus a state actor. We cover how and when defenses can be raised, federal and state sovereign immunit...

OA1228 - On this week's Rapid Response Friday: we take on all of your legal questions about this whole Greenland thing--including how a 1916 diplomatic treaty with Denmark also enabled some of Jeffrey Epstein’s worst crimes. Also discussed: what it took to finally force Lindsay Halligan to stop telling everyone that she was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and how a Minnesot...

E20 - Detention Watch Network executive director Silky Shah has been organizing against ICE on the ground to fight throughout the agency’s entire 23-year existence. We are excited to welcome her and her unique perspective to Opening Arguments to discuss both the urgency and the hope of our current moment, the challenges faced by organizers and advocates, what lawyers can (and can’t) do in the face...

OA1227 - Come play the worst ever round of the Connections game and figure out what on earth Tuskegee Alabama, the CDC, Southern Denmark University, and the West African country of Guinea-Bissau all have in common, as RFK Jr. continues his campaign of “just asking questions” that we already have the answer to. Black men untreated in Tuskegee syphilis study . Heller, J. (July 25, 1972; republished...

OA1226 - We begin with a review of the unprecedented lawsuit that Minnesota has filed against ICE with the extreme leftist radical demand that they obey the law and U.S. Constitution. How much power do states have to limit federal operations, and what are the chances a court order might put some guardrails on the largest enforcement operation in ICE history? We then consider the legal and politica...

E19 - In the wake of Renee Nicole Good's murder, we've seen a terrible number of bad takes: from the events of that day, the overall purpose of I.C.E., and what the law says about where we go from here. Matt, Thomas, and Lydia come together to start with perhaps the biggest douchebag in the United States as part of our amuse douche (TM), followed by a pair of articles touching on why the Left was...