I’m going to have a post on Monday inspired by one of my favorite podcasts on (mostly) constitutional law. These are podcasts that follow the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) and most of the time, they focus on constitutional cases. But sometimes they cover cases or situations that involve contracts, and they have provided blog fodder for me in the past, so I feel like I should return the favor by promoting them. If I did so in Monday’s post, it would get too long, so Friday Frivolity seems like the right place.
#1 What Trump Can Teach us About Con Law with Elizabeth Joh and Roman Mars
This is an easy #1. It never fails to be informative and fun. Because the set up is that Elizabeth Joh explains stuff to her cohost, non-lawyer Roman Mars, the show is pitched at a very approachable level. Still, I learn new things from every episode. While the show more or less assumes an anti-Trump bias, it generally shows that the novel issues that have arisen during the Trump Presidency do not have easy solutions. Usually, the set-up is some obscure past event or legal precedent that raises the question: Is that legal? Often, the answer with respect to the past precedent is, “Well, they got away with it back then,” and the past precedent sets the stage for something that the Trump Administration is trying to do now. The podcast provides a great compendium establishing that we are not a nation of laws but a nation of legal norms, and abandoning those norms can be jarring, bewildering, and disorienting. I hope that Professor Joh will make this into a book one day. I would love to teach it.
#2 Divided Argument with Will Baude and Dan Epps
This is probably the podcast that most often provides me with blog fodder, because Divided Argument delves into SCOTUS cases that others ignore, and often those cases involve contracts. For example, I have referenced past episodes here, here, here, here, and here. I will be referencing them again on Monday. The name of the podcast is supposed to indicated that the two hosts represent different political perspectives, but both can surprise you. I believe Will describes himself as a formalist, a positivist, an originalist, and a legal realist. My gloss is that his realism is more descriptive than normative. He is a non-MAGA conservative, but he’s a real conservative. If you want a sympathetic but not uncritical explanation of the Roberts Court — Will is especially drawn to Justices Barrett and Thomas — Will is a great source. Dan’s theoretical commitments are harder to pin down, and he is just as apt to be critical of the Court’s left-leaning Justices as the conservatives.
#3 Talking Feds with Harry Litman
This podcast is a nice supplement for me, as the guests tend to be practitioners, journalists, and politicians. Academics rarely show up on the show, although plenty of the guests no doubt do some adjunct teaching. Although the main focus is the Department of Justice, many of the guests are non-lawyers. The political perspective is stridently anti-Trump but otherwise non-partisan — that is, it includes both Democrats and former Republicans and takes us back to a time when people on opposite sides of the political divide could engage in civil discussion about legal and political developments.
#4 Strict Scrutiny with Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw
This is my favorite source for immediate reactions to SCOTUS’s dockets. The ability of the three hosts to read and respond to the latest decisions from our nation’s highest court never ceases to amaze me. This podcast has also inspired even more Blog posts that Divided Argument, I think; for example here, here, here, here, and here. I go to Strict Scrutiny first to get a first sense of what has happened at SCOTUS, Melissa Murray and Leah Litman are especially gifted when it comes to pithy summations of the decisions of what they call the “YOLO Court,” which features “no law, just vibes.” Post-Dobbs, this podcast features a lot of gallows humor. I love hearing from law professors who share my political outlook, but Divided Argument is a good antidote to the lure of the echo chamber.
#5 Amarica’s Constitution with Akhil Reed Amar in conversation with Andrew Lipka
Akhil Amar is one of our most wide-ranging, prolific, and influential constitutional law scholars. His friend and co-host is a non-lawyer who has absorbed a great deal of legal doctrine through his years of conversation with Professor Amar, but the show is mostly a vehicle through which Professor Amar can share his decades of accumulated wisdom on constitutional law and SCOTUS. As you will learn from the show, Professor Amar is the constitutional originalist perhaps most cited by SCOTUS, and he can be cited by both conservatives and liberals, in majority opinions, concurrences, and dissents. He usually agrees with the outcomes in the most contentious constitutional cases, but almost never completely agrees with the way the Court got there. If you have ten minutes to hear why, listen to this podcast, but don’t expect Professor Amar to keep it to ten minutes.