Rebuttal

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) **CONTENT WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF TORTURE** On March 15, 2025, President Trump announced the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua was conducting "irregular warfare" against the United States and that members would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Trump Administration quickly began deporting people allegedly affiliated with the gang—wi...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) An Alcatraz Island kidnapper is hired by the child he kidnapped 30 years later. Listen to Reb snatch the (kinda heartwarming but mostly traumatizing?) details of Waley v. United States (9th Cir. 1949). *** CLICK HERE to PREORDER Reb's book: The Book They Throw At You—A Sarcastic Lawyer's Guide* To The Unholy Chaos of Our Legal System, *God No, Not Actual Legal Advic...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Do cats have free speech rights? How did Blackie the Talking Cat cause this much (legal) trouble? Reb finds out in Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia (11th Cir. 1983). Follow @RebuttalPod on Instagram and Twitter! Follow @Rebmasel on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter! Huge shoutout to Alyssa, our new Rebuttal Podcast editor! *** 0:00 - Intro 2:35 - CASE BEGINS 6...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) The FBI threatens to put innocent people on the No Fly List unless they agree to become unpaid FBI informants spying on their (also innocent) communities. Why? Because the FBI pretty much guarantees that random, erroneous, overinclusive, islamophobic nominations to the No Fly List will be approved, and since the process is cloaked in secrecy, there wasn't a clear wa...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) What do Henry Ford's Model-T car, banning alcohol in the United States, and the FBI have in common? We needed all three to (1) catch American gangster John Dillinger and (2) make it federally legal to steal planes...FOR 26 YEARS. Learn how to legally steal a plane in 1926 and destroy evidence in 2007! Don't believe it? Well, the U.S. Supreme Court already does! List...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) At 10:27PM on December 3, 2024, South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol went live on television while his country was sleeping to declare martial law. His country fought back. After all was said and done, Yoon's martial law proclamation lasted only 6 and a half hours. Hawaii's lasted three years. Internment camps, forced labor, military tribunals, and a pause on all c...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Out of nowhere, your front door explodes. You see a man with a gun run through your door and up the stairs, firing shots at the police chasing after him. Luckily, you run for cover before a SWAT team begins their "protocol" to flush him out - explosives, toxic gasses, grenades, BearCat armored tanks, robots, and chemical weapons hit every inch of your home. Eventual...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Reb hits you with rapid fire summaries of 13 lawsuits filed in 2003 that are unhinged enough to make it on Rebuttal (the legal sanctuary of chaos and calamity, of course). *** 0:00 - Intro / Life update 4:16 - The Docked Dog Tail Case 8:55 - The Condom Soup Case 10:48 - Port-A-Potty Prison 12:32 - Depose The Parrot 13:59 - Suing The Casino Instead of Your Husband 15...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) A chicken farmer, World War II, and 150 suicidal chickens were the only ones up to the task to answer this question for the Supreme Court. No, I'm not joking. This is United States v. Causby (1946). Follow @RebuttalPod on Instagram and Twitter! Follow @Rebmasel on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter! *** 0:00 - Intro 00:40 - Case begins 3:00 - The Takings Clause 3:30 -...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Being a lawyer is a stressful job, and we all handle the anxiety of this high-pressure field in different ways. Some enjoy pilates, others indulge in junk food, a few find relief at the bottom of a liquor bottle. But in 2023, one lawyer's preferred method of "blowing off steam" made headlines. It read: "BREAKING: LAWYER SUSPENDED FOR POOPING IN A PRINGLES CAN AND TH...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) On December 31, 1918, Colonel Luke Lea of the 114th Field Artillery Regiment handed his commanding officer a request for leave from his post in Allied-occupied Luxembourg. He would not say where he was going or what he intended to do, though he assured the general he had nothing to worry about. General Spaulding called it the "strangest request for leave he had ever...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) In America, unaccompanied children are forced to represent themselves in immigration court. That's right. Children as young as infants to teenagers. Each year, thousands of immigrant children are placed into court proceedings in which government prosecutors seek to deport them unless those children can prove they have a right to stay in the United States. While the...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) In 500 BC, corrupt judges were treated a little differently than the ones we have today. The punishments have changed, but one question remains the same: What do we do when judges can't stop taking bribes? Hold onto your birthday suit, Reb is slicing open The Judgment of Cambyses (~530 BC). (Side note: A 30-MINUTE EPISODE CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!) Follow @RebuttalPod on...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) A paid informant who should've been fired, a police officer who LOVES a good eraser, and a dad who can't stop bragging about his poor sons. Grab a bag of baking soda and a large Coke and hear Reb snitch on Albright v. Oliver (1994). Follow @RebuttalPod on Instagram and Twitter! Follow @Rebmasel on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter! *** 0:00 - Intro 2:26 - Legal mumbo j...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) What do you call a 6-week period in which you and a handful of very recent acquaintances get drunk every day at lunch, sleep through the afternoons, sell weed to each other, smoke weed with each other, and whip out a few bags of cocaine to snort when the time feels right? For a group of twelve people in Florida in 1987, they would call it jury duty. That’s right. Si...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) In the early hours of Saturday, May 15, 2010, Kalief Browder and a friend were returning home from a party in the Belmont section of the Bronx. He was 16 years old. Browder saw a police car driving toward them. More squad cars arrived, and soon Browder and his friend were squinting in the glare of a police spotlight. An officer said they had robbed a man. “I didn’t...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Do political assassinations even happen in the U.S. anymore? Apparently yes. Yes, they do. Get ready to change your middle name, sue Puerto Rico for speaking Spanish, move to a hog farm in Tennessee, and learn that write-in ballots never win (except for the rare, *bloody* exception). Reb brings a murder weapon to the voting booth in Tennessee v. Byron (Low Tax) Loop...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Beef between rappers keeps music alive and well. But what happens when a video of you lip syncing to rap lyrics at a party helps put you away for murder? Hear all about it with Reb at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Larry Jean Hart v. Texas (2024). Follow @RebuttalPod on Instagram and Twitter! Follow @Rebmasel on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter! *** 0:00 - Int...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Since Biblical times, self defense has been simple. Guard your castle. Retreat to the wall. Defend yourself. The U.S. stole its common law from the English, and the elements of self defense didn't change. Until.......Florida. Why did Florida change its slogan from the Sunshine State to the Kill At Will State? Aren't Stand Your Ground Laws a good thing? How old is th...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Humans have been digging moats, slingshotting arrows, poisoning food, and laying spikes for thousands of years — and modern day booby traps are still alive and well. But what do an Indiana Jones-inspired hot tub contraption and a haunted house’s 20-gauge shotgun have in common? Vengeance. This episode starts the engine for Episode 24’s deep dive into self-defense, "...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) There are 3 reasons one of the most important 4th Amendment rules in America exists as it does today: (1) Boxers in the criminal underworld, (2) A bomb in the house of famous boxing promoter Don King, and (3) Dollree "Dolly" Mapp - The young black woman who dated bad boys and stood up to an all-white police force in Baltimore...and won. What started as a mobster/box...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) We protect the witnesses from the public, but who protects the public from the witnesses? Peek behind the curtain of the Witness Protection Program and prepare to be shocked, afraid, and bamboozled. Take cover with Reb and start questioning everything and everyone in United States v. Wilson (1981). **CONTENT WARNING at 58:52 for violence against children** *** SOURC...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Most people would like to keep their heads. Thomas Donaldson isn't one of them. This mathematician and computer scientist wanted his cut off, and he wanted it to be done while he was still alive. Bring a warm jacket and follow Reb into the frozen head refrigerator for Donaldson v. Lungren (1992). INTRO/REB CHAT: 0:00-19:32 CASE STARTS: 19:32 *** Learn more about you...

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Breathing through chemical smoke has been described as “drowning on dry land.” When one imagines chemical warfare, they often imagine a striking image of filthy soldiers choking in trenches on the frontlines through thick fogs of yellow-green gas.  In 1993, the Convention on Chemical Weapons sought to end chemical warfare as we know it. 20 years later, the internati...

Plug your nose and cross your heart - a rotting corpse is on the stand. 1,126 years ago, Rome was going through Popes like napkins at a BBQ cook-off. Most of them were killed, tortured, maimed, spit on...by each other. Eventually, Desperate Housewives and the Catholic Church collided to exhume a body and strap him to a chair. Why did we put a dead body on trial in 897 AD...and again in 2013? Oh, a...