Unwritten Law

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione is joined by NCLA Litigation Counsel Casey Norman to discuss Pheasant v. United States , a case asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether Congress can delegate the power to create criminal laws to federal agencies. The case began when a man riding a dirt bike on Bureau of Land Management land was charged with...

Did the government install tracking software on people’s phones without permission? In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione are joined by NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Peggy Little to discuss Wright v. Goldstein , a case challenging Massachusetts’ use of COVID contact-tracing technology that was allegedly installed automatically on Android phones without users’ knowle...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione and NCLA General Counsel Zhonette Brown discuss their work on Murthy v. Missouri , one of the most significant First Amendment cases in recent years. They explain how the case began, the discovery battles that revealed government “back-channel” communications with social media companies, the preliminary injunction, th...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione are joined by NCLA Litigation Counsel Andy Morris to discuss Newman v. Moore , a case asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether a federal judge can be effectively removed from hearing cases without meaningful judicial review. Judge Pauline Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione are joined by Senior Litigation Counsel Peggy Little to discuss Powell v. SEC , case that NCLA is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the SEC’s long-standing “gag rule.” The rule prohibits individuals who settle with the SEC from ever publicly denying the agency’s allegations—even if t...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione is joined by NCLA Staff Attorney Andreia Trifoi to discuss a major Fourth Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court involving the use of geofence warrants. Geofence warrants allow law enforcement to obtain location data from companies like Google identifying every device within a specific area during a defined peri...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione welcome Caitlin Moyna , Senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, to the podcast for the first time. The conversation focuses on the controversial “disparate impact” liability rule in housing law and HUD’s effort to rescind it. The rule allows liability for housing pra...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione are joined by NCLA General Counsel Zhonette Brown to discuss a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a major separation-of-powers case involving the Environmental Protection Agency. The case, Choice Refrigerants v. EPA , challenges how the agency implemented Cong...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione and NCLA President Mark Chenoweth are joined by Andy Morris to discuss the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision rejecting the claim that the President has unilateral authority to impose, raise, or lower tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The conversation unpacks Chief Justice Roberts’s majo...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione is joined by NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Kara Rollins to discuss Sripetch v. SEC , a securities law case scheduled to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in April. The case asks a critical question: must the Securities and Exchange Commission prove that investors suffered actual financial harm in order to obtai...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione mark the ten-year anniversary of what’s often called the Supreme Court’s “emergency docket”—sometimes labeled the “shadow docket”—and examine how it has reshaped constitutional litigation. Mark and John explain what the emergency docket is, how it differs from merits decisions, and why its...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione are joined by Russ Ryan to discuss a recent oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit challenging the federal government’s student loan payment and interest pause. The case, Mackinac Center for Public Policy v. U.S. Department of Education , focuses on the execut...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione are joined by NCLA Of Counsel Margot Cleveland to discuss one of NCLA’s most consequential ongoing cases: Davidson v. Adkins , a constitutional challenge to the SEC’s Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). The CAT requires broker-dealers to collect and transmit detailed data on virtually every stock trade in the United States, creating...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione discuss John’s recent oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Word v. Department of Energy . Bill Word and David Daquin both own a dishwasher and a washing machine that they want to replace. The U.S. Department of Energy has imposed regulations in 2012 and 2024...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione and NCLA President Mark Chenoweth discuss a major development in NCLA’s challenge to a federal rule requiring fishermen to pay for government monitors placed on their boats—despite no clear statutory authorization. After a district court upheld the rule using a theory that conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision i...

What happens when a state or local police officer violates someone’s constitutional rights—and courts say there’s no practical way to sue? In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione are joined by Casey Norman to discuss Mohamud v. Weyker (No. 25-760), now at the U.S. Supreme Court. NCLA’s amicus brief explains that multiple courts...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione break down the Supreme Court’s oral argument in Trump v. Cook , a case that puts presidential power, Federal Reserve independence, and the meaning of “for cause” removal squarely before the Court. The discussion explores why the Justices appeared unusually skeptical of the government’s position, how the case arrived on the emerge...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione are joined by Peggy Little , Senior Litigation Counsel at NCLA, to discuss one of the most consequential cases in the organization’s docket: Davidson, et al. v. Atkins , a constitutional challenge to the SEC’s Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) . The CAT is a massive nationwide database that collects and stores every stock trade made...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , John Vecchione and Mark Chenoweth unpack the latest chapter in Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce , a case that sits at the crossroads of administrative power, statutory interpretation, and life after Chevron deference . The conversation focuses on whether federal agencies can require regulated parties — here, commercial fishermen — to pay for government-...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione are joined by Peggy Little , Senior Litigation Counsel at NCLA, to discuss NCLA’s amicus brief in Media Matters v. Federal Trade Commission , currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The conversation focuses on the FTC’s use of civil investigative demands (CIDs) and a fundamental constitutional question: m...

Chevron deference may be gone—but is the Supreme Court quietly laying the groundwork for something even worse? In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione examine a recent Supreme Court decision that could dramatically reshape administrative law. Drawing on analysis by Will Yeatman, they discuss how the Court’s handling of VanDerStok risks giving agencies a powerful new sh...

As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Chief Justice of the United States reflects on America’s founding principles in his annual Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. But what does that report really say about the state of the Supreme Court today? In this episode of Unwritten Law , NCLA President Mark Chenoweth and Senior Litigation Counsel John...

In this episode of Unwritten Law, Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione dig into a major new essay by R.J. Pestritto, Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, titled “Government by the Unelected: How It Happened and How It Might Be Tamed.” https://dc.claremont.org/government-by-the-unelected-how-it-happened-and-how-it-might-be-tamed/ The discussion traces the intellectual and legal origins of th...

Why are the Little Sisters of the Poor still being dragged into court over the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate—years after the Supreme Court ruled in their favor? On this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione are joined by NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Andy Morris to discuss a newly filed amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Pennsyl...

In this episode of Unwritten Law , Mark Chenoweth and John Vecchione are joined by Andreia Trifoi to discuss NCLA’s constitutional challenge to the City of Marco Island’s use of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) — a surveillance system that records and stores the movements of every driver entering or leaving the island. Because Marco Island has only three bridges, residents are photographed...