Mechanical / Animal
We're in triage mode as the Court clears its end-of-term backlog. We run through the week's opinion dump before focusing on two cases that look unrelated but turn on the same question: when may a state rewrite background property law to limit a constitutional right? In Wolford v. Lopez , the Court s...
Alcoholic Originalism
The big opinions are starting to drop, and we're doing our best to keep pace. We first discuss Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections , which concerns religious liberty, the scope of Congress's power to create remedies against individuals under the Spending Clause, and whether there's any red...
Watch Snobs
We open with the usual grab bag—the "foot fault" pun buried in a Justice Thomas opinion, reading Justice Alito's clerk-hiring tea leaves, and a detour into the metaphysics of conditional resignations and whether you can be confirmed to a vacancy that doesn't exist yet. Then to the merits: Keathley v...
Impregnable Citadel of Technicality
After puzzling over an interesting follow-up question about Pitchford v. Cain, we unpack a summary vacatur in Whitton v. Dixon . We then spend a while breaking down the latest developments in Allen v. Milligan line, in which we discuss the future of the Purcell principle and whether the Court should...
Smooth Stone in the River
The Court has been busy, and we somehow manage to cover a number of developments with unpredictable efficiency. We talk about the Court's latest summary reversal on the "party presentation principle"; Justice Kavanaugh's vindication of his law journal student note in Pitchford v. Cain ; Rutherford a...
Ninja Court Packing
Live from the American Law Institute with Pam Karlan, we untangle a chaotic stretch of the interim docket—the Alabama redistricting GVR, Virginia's denied stay, and the mifepristone cases—then turn to executive power and the Term's big looming decisions.
Majordoma
We dissect the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision and its sweeping narrowing of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, exploring how it could reshape redistricting, weaken majority‑minority districts, and intensify debates over race and partisanship in elections. We unpack the Court’s reason...
Even Eve-ier
We cover leaked SCOTUS memos, shadow docket reversals, Sotomayor's Kavanaugh apology, and a contractor preemption case narrowing an infamous Scalia opinion.
Backup backup backup backup argument
We recap and reflect on the oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara (the birthright citizenship case) and then analyze the Court's recent decision in Chiles v. Salazar, about the First Amendment limits on Colorado's conversion therapy ban. We also confront the taboo question: Are judicial opinions too lo...










