Opening Arguments

OA1173 - More people have been to space than practice space law, and Professor Michelle Hanlon is one of its most important modern pioneers. Professor Hanlon joins to talk Star Trek captains, preserving historic sites on the Moon, and why she believes the mass privatization of space is--at least if properly regulated--the only way forward. Prof. Michelle Hanlon’s University of Mississippi faculty...

OA1172 - It’s been two weeks since the Supreme Court decided that babies in only half of the US get to be born as citizens. We try to make sense of what they left behind in one of the most important shadow docket cases in history, and how concerned Samuel Alito should really be that the actual text of the 14th Amendment might still prevail in the end. Matt also considers how likely it is that Zohr...

Professor Heather Varanini is here to get us ready for the Bar Exam with the next question! If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate T3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there! Check out the...

OA1171 - Today's episode is a nice, fun departure from the doom and gloom. Oral arguments in a recent SCOTUS case went terribly wrong. And for once, it wasn't the court itself that was looking like a clown show. The case was AJT v Osseo and it involved disability rights. So naturally, I had to invite everyone's favorite disability rights advocate and all around all-star, Dr. Jenessa Seymour!  

Hey folks, I'm taking a little time off! Hope you enjoy this SIO in the meantime. Thank you! Part 1: The Legal Stuff Dr. Jenessa Seymour is here to break down something that even our moms are spreading on social media: a group in New York claims to have uncovered discrepancies in the vote count for the 2024 election, and they're suing over it! Dr. Seymour hits ALL of the expert boxes for this one...

OA1170 - This Rapid Response Friday it’s Boh-vey (yes that is how you pronounce it, probably) all day--as in former Trump defense attorney and current Trump henchman Emil Bove, now up for a seat formerly occupied by Samuel Alito on the Third Circuit. Matt ties together several different stories from the news--from January 6th to the Eric Adams prosecution to DOJ’s deportations in violation of cour...

If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate T3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there! Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! This content is CAN credentialed, whi...

OA1169 - We had our first live video QnA of the new era! It was so good that I really thought more folks should hear it. Thank you to all who attended and we look forward to the next one! If you'd prefer to watch it, it's available on YouTube .  

OA1168 - Did the Karen Read trial just become the most expensive drunk driving prosecution in US history? We then briefly discuss legal issues around the arrest by ICE of New York mayoral candidate Brad Landry, and Matt fills in the most important missing detail of a story which nearly the entire media got wrong this week. And in our main story: the Supreme Court has struck an expected but thoroug...

T3BE74 First an exciting announcement! We're bringing back the original Q&A format where everyone can hang out for the livestream, but patrons get the extra special opportunity to ask questions in advance! Be sure to join us on YouTube on Sunday, June 22nd , at 3pm Pacific/6pm Eastern ! If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that h...

OA1167 - Georgetown law student Mari Latibashvili is the co-founder of the GU Law Coalition for Justice, which recently made national headlines by organizing law students to refuse interviews and job offers from law firms which have given in to the Trump administration’s war on the legal profession. We discuss (among other things) this remarkably successful campaign, what life in law school has be...

OA1166 - We consider the legal realities behind this week's most important stories, from the unprecedented statutory justification for Trump sending troops into California to why a wrongfully-deported man’s return to the US is--bad, actually? Matt then serves up a digestif of a note en bas de page about one of the most audacious counterfeiters in French history and how they were brought down with...

T3BE73 If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky,  follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate T3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there! Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! This content is CAN credentia...

OA1165 - Anna Chu is the Executive Director at We the Action, a nonprofit that recently collaborated with labor and democracy partners like the American Federation of Government Employees and Democracy Forward, to launch Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network . This Network connects federal workers who are being illegally terminated to pro bono legal services to help them understand their...

OA1164 - After a brief conversation from the front lines about the chaotic state of US immigration enforcement as of June 2025, we examine three unusual recent 9-0 decisions authored by three of our favorite Supreme Court justices. Join us behind the headlines to learn why Matt agrees that stopping a lawsuit against gun manufacturers, potentially opening the door to dumbass “reverse discrimination...

T3BE72 If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate T3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there! Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! This content is CAN credential...

OA1163 - No really. That's a real stat. It may actually be WORSE than that. So uh... how in the hell? Professor Valena Beety is here to break it down. She's done a ton of great work in this area, and has a new legal research paper, "Unfit": Gender, Ableism and Reproductive Wrongful Convictions by Valena Elizabeth Beety , which goes into this and much more! Content note: this episode does involve d...

OA1162 - It’s all good news from our favorite branch of government today! We review recent judicial wins in everything from illegal deportations to tariffs to the Trump administration’s wars on international students,  private law firms, and common-sense understandings of the expression “foreign policy.” Plus, Matt shares a footnote from the front lines of Trump’s mass deportation efforts to expla...

T3BE71 If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate T3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there! Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! This content is CAN credential...

OA1161 - Micah Herskind is an activist, Harvard law student, and most recently a co-editor of the essay collection No Cop City, No Cop World with Mariah Parker and Kamau Franklin. We welcome Micah on to discuss his experience with Atlanta’s Stop Cop City movement and the lessons which activists and advocates around the US can learn from it in these times of mass dissent in the face of American aut...

OA1160 - Sheryl Weikal is an Illinois trial lawyer with a name-your own-price practice representing marginalized people facing eviction, foreclosure, discrimination, and incarceration--which is all incredibly cool unto itself, but she also has a story like no one else you’ve heard. Sheryl won an incredible victory three years ago against the Illinois state bar for trans attorneys throughout the st...

T3BE70 - As is typical for Wednesdays these days, we've got some Lydia and Thomas nonsense to kick off the show, but Heather swiftly swoops in to save us from ourselves, reveal the answer to last week's T3BE69 (nice), and set up the question for T3BE70. If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with...

OA1159 - We are so pleased to have Temple Law Professor Rachel López on the show to discuss her work in shining light and digitally preserving court records related to the trials following the Guatemalan Civil War. Not only is the archiving of this material so important to those impacted by the government regime over the 30 year conflict, it also demonstrates early examples of transitional justice...

OA1158 - We start off with some patron questions about what to do when ICE comes to your neighborhood, the one thing that the world’s most annoying white libertarians got right, and how to best exercise the very few rights US citizens have coming back into the country. Then in our main story: This week the Supreme Court heard arguments over birthright citizenship--or did it? Matt explains how they...

After some Thomas-Lydia nonsense and updates, Heather gives us the answer to question 68, a fiendishly difficult real property one. Did you get the right answer? Then we get a new question 69! If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs , find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the approp...