Stanford Legal

“The amount of chaos that’s been introduced into the federal health policy landscape is unprecedented,” says Michelle Mello, professor at Stanford Law School and the Stanford University School of Medicine. That turmoil, she explains, has left major gaps in expertise, trust, and leadership—and states are rushing to fill the void. In this episode of Stanford Legal , host Pamela S. Karlan talks with...

When the National Guard shows up in American cities, it’s usually after hurricanes, fires, or floods, not political fights. But recent federal deployments have changed the landscape and raised pressing questions about how far a president’s domestic military powers can go. In this episode of Stanford Legal , host Pam Karlan talks with Professor Bernadette Meyler about the growing use of the Nationa...

When politics drives prosecutions, what happens to the rule of law? Are we in uncharted waters? Stanford Legal host Professor Pamela Karlan sits down with her colleague criminal justice expert Robert Weisberg to unpack the extraordinary federal indictments of former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James—with more potentially on the way. Weisberg, the Edwin E. Huddles...

In April, President Trump declared a national emergency and assumed the power to levy tariffs, introducing uncertainty into global trading by reneging on previously negotiated agreements. One of the attorneys representing the challengers to the president’s decree in Trump v. VOS is Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell, a constitutional law expert and former Tenth Circuit judge. The case, which...

Frequent mass shootings are a distinctly American problem, with news of another tragic shooting grabbing our attention every few weeks. Yet policy change is stalled. In this episode, we focus on an important reason for the congressional paralysis—the gun lobby. John Donohue, one of the country’s leading experts on the empirical study of law and public policy, and Eric Baldwin, a research fellow at...

In this episode of Stanford Legal , host Professor Pamela Karlan interviews her Stanford Law School colleague Professor Lisa Larrimore Ouellette about actions by the Trump administration that Ouellette says are undermining scientific research and jeopardizing America’s longstanding global leadership in medicine and innovation. Drawing on an essay she penned for Just Security , Ouellette explains h...

At the urging of President Trump, the Texas legislature has launched a mid‑decade redistricting effort aimed at securing additional Republican seats in Congress. If successful, this effort could have far‑reaching implications for representation and governance—and spur other states to try the same. In this episode of Stanford Legal , two of Stanford Law School’s—and the nation’s—leading election la...

Trump-era executive orders, police hiring standards, and college admissions all converge in a decades-long debate over disparate impact, one of the most misunderstood yet consequential doctrines in civil rights law. In this episode of Stanford Legal , Professor Ralph Richard Banks, faculty director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice, joins host Professor Pamela Karlan for a deep dive into h...

In this episode of Stanford Legal , Professor Pam Karlan talks about the growing politicization of the Department of Justice under the Trump administration. Drawing on her experience in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division during both the Obama and Biden administrations, Karlan describes how recent loyalty tests, internal purges, and retaliatory transfers have hollowed out one of the nation’s most crit...

Amid escalating federal pressure on universities, Stanford Law School alum Greg Lukianoff, JD ’00, joins host Professor Pam Karlan for a sharp look at the free speech firestorms engulfing universities like Harvard and Columbia. First Amendment champion, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind , Lukianoff recently p...

In this episode, Stanford Law Professor Evelyn Douek, a First Amendment scholar and permanent U.S. resident, expands on her recent Atlantic essay, “Can I Teach the First Amendment If I Only Have a Green Card?” She reflects on the paradox of teaching constitutional protections for free speech while watching the U.S. government detain or revoke visas for foreign students and other non-citizen reside...

The LA Superior Court is the largest single unified trial court in the United States, serving the approximately 10 million residents of Los Angeles County—the cases it handles spanning a wide range of legal matters, from civil cases to criminal cases, family law, and juvenile matters. As the state and county have grown, so has demand on the legal system. Access to justice—the inability for America...

On February 19 of this year, President Donald Trump issued one of his first executive orders, Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, leaving no doubt his aim to reduce its size and scope . As DOGE got to work firing federal workers—and cutting entire agencies, the president also fired heads of agencies—Democratic and Republican— cleaning house of leadership not deemed on side.  As EO...

Since ChatGPT came on the scene, numerous incidents have surfaced involving attorneys submitting court filings riddled with AI-generated hallucinations—plausible-sounding case citations that purport to support key legal propositions but are, in fact, entirely fictitious. As sanctions against attorneys mount, it seems clear there are a few kinks in the tech. Even AI tools designed specifically for...

On March 6, President Trump issued the executive order “Addressing Risk from Perkins Coie LLP,” essentially preventing the firm from doing business with the federal government, stripping its staff of security clearances. It was the first of several presidential orders aimed at law firms that represented clients and/or employed attorneys at odds with Trump. At the same time, Trump and members of hi...

Joining Pam for this week's episode is Stanford Law Professor Alan Sykes, a leading expert on the application of economics to legal problems whose most recent scholarship is focused on international economic relations. In short, he is an international trade and law expert—and the right person to help us understand today's chaos. The discussion covers the credibility of the United States in interna...

Do asylum seekers in the U.S. have rights? Can the U.S. government forcibly deport them to a prison in El Salvador without due process? What about green card holders attending college? Since taking office, President Trump has focused on legal and undocumented immigrants alike, from Venezuelan asylum seekers to visa and green card college students—invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport some, and...

How do we prevent or catch mismanagement, corruption, and waste of taxpayers' dollars in federal agencies? On January 24, 2025, days into his second administration, President Trump fired Inspectors General from 17 different federal agencies, including the Department of Labor. If no one is watching, does that mean there's nothing to see? In this episode Pam Karlan is joined by Glenn Fine, a former...

International Law expert Allen Weiner joins Pam for a comprehensive overview of the legal challenges and humanitarian concerns in one of the world's most contentious regions, looking at the Israel/Gaza conflict and the delicate balance between military strategy and civilian safety. Allen and Pam explore the principles of proportionality in warfare, highlighting the legal and ethical considerations...

A coalition of privacy defenders led by Lex Lumina and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit on February 11 asking a federal court to stop the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from disclosing millions of Americans’ private, sensitive information to Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). As the federal government is the nation’s largest employer, the r...

What are the legal implications of the unprecedented mass pardoning of the January 6th rioters? What does it say about American rule of law?  President Biden’s DOJ prosecuted nearly 1,600 of the January 6, 2021, rioters—many for acts of shocking violence against police and government offices. On January 20, newly sworn-in President Trump, in one of his first official acts, issued a sweeping grant...

Criminal law expert and Stanford Law Professor David Sklansky joins Pam Karlan to discuss his book Criminal Justice in Divided America: Police, Punishment, and the Future of Our Democracy , published in January. In this episode, they explore what he sees as the failures of America’s criminal justice system—from overly harsh sentences and prosecutorial abuses to the under-utilization of the jury sy...

In this episode, Pam Karlan is joined by Stanford Law School Professor David Sklansky, a leading criminal law expert, for a wide-ranging discussion of Smith’s report, the evidence against the president-elect, and more. In the early hours of January 14, 2024 the Department of Justice released its long-awaited election interference report against President-elect Donald Trump. It was a long and windi...

The fires in Los Angeles, fueled by drought and the notorious Santa Ana winds, have wreaked devastation on the largest county in the United States, taking at least 10 lives and destroying thousands of structures as of January 10—with much of the Los Angeles metropolis, suburban neighborhoods like Pasadena and Pacific Palisades engulfed in smoke, and tens of thousands of residents without homes. In...

Just weeks before he was elected president of the United States, during a conversation at the Economic Club of Chicago, Donald Trump declared, “The most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’ And it’s my favorite word.” As the president-elect takes to the bully pulpit, leaders of nations threatened with new tariffs are calling Trump or even flying down to Mar-a-Lago, as Canadian President T...