In this episode of Democracy Matters, attorney and host Taylor Darcy sits down with renowned constitutional law scholar Professor Leah Litman—co-host of Strict Scrutiny and author of the new book Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.

Together, they examine the Supreme Court's growing legitimacy crisis and what it means for the rule of law, American democracy, and the future of civil rights. From the Dobbs decision to the recent immunity ruling, Professor Litman outlines how the Court increasingly acts like a political institution and what we can do about it.

This isn’t just an academic conversation. It’s a call to action.

Leah shares stories of hope from Michigan’s courts, insight into judicial strategy, and guidance for how everyday citizens can organize, protest, and vote toward reform. Whether you’re furious, fatigued, or helpless, this conversation will leave you more informed, empowered, and ready to act.

⏱️ Timestamps & Topics

00:00 – Intro & Leah Litman Bio

02:37 – Why legal reasoning matters more than ever

05:32 – The Court’s erosion of credibility and what’s at stake

08:04 – Who benefits from recent SCOTUS rulings?

12:41 – Is reform even realistic, or just a fantasy?

27:09 – What gives Leah hope about civic power

33:33 – Shadow docket decisions and real-world consequences

42:11 – One legal concept more people need to understand

43:41 – A civic call to action: “Doing nothing lets them win.”

45:28 – Final thoughts: Hope, action, and how to move forward

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

📖 LAWLESS: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes → https://amzn.to/44vGWRR

🎧 Strict Scrutiny podcast → https://strictscrutinypodcast.com

📚 Democracy Resources & How to Take Action → https://go.democracymatters.ai/fact-checking-guide

📍 Learn more about this show: https://www.democracymatters.ai

📬 Get the newsletter: https://democracymtrs.substack.com/

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• University of Michigan
• Strict Scrutiny
• Steve Bannon
• Trump administration
• Elon Musk
• EPA
• FDA

Foreign.

Today's guest is Professor Leah Lippman, constitutional law scholar at the University of Michigan, co host of the critically acclaimed Strict Scrutiny podcast, and one of the most insightful legal voices in the country.

She clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court, contributes regularly to major media outlets and just released her powerful new book, how the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, fringe theories and bad vibes.

We're honored to have her with us.

Welcome.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you for coming.

You know, the current state, I mean, the 24 hour news cycle is insane.

I almost, I said on Twitter the other day, it's like a minute news news cycle because you know, there's one big problem after another and it just seems to be cascading and it's, it's hard to keep up.

Right.

Like that's one of the def details that, you know, I follow a lot of anti authoritarianism like Ruth Ben Guy and Timothy Snyder and Heather Cox Richardson.

And so I listen to a lot of people.

It's one of the favorite parts of my, my thing.

And you, of course, I listen to Strict Scrutiny and you know, flooding the zone, you know, as Steve Bannon talked about, is a real issue and they are definitely doing that.

And I think as we discuss things that happen with Supreme Court, although they tend to be a little slower than the executive branch at the moment, they seem to be more enabling than what some of the recent decisions that came out were.

Horrifying is only one description that I can come up with.

So I guess ever since the DOPS decision being, I call it pretzel logic, that's just my version is that they looked at getting the outcome they wanted and then worked the law to get where they wanted.

And it was very disheartening as a practitioner to have someone that is looking at the results oriented as opposed to the logic that usually goes through most decisions that aren't results oriented.

So why should the average American care about how the court justifies its decisions?

I think they should care about how the court justifies its decisions because in some ways offering a justification is part of what affords the court legitimacy.

It's what's supposed to separate them from the other political branches.

When a congressional representative votes for a bill, they don't necessarily have to say, and this is why I'm voting for the bill.

And those reasons are that scrutinized as to whether they are coherent and whatnot.

The judges and justices are supposed to be doing something other than politics and explaining their Decisions is one of the ways that they are demonstrating, or supposed to be, that they are different than politicians in electoral politics.

I think their reasoning at the Supreme Court is also really important because their reasoning is supposed to be able to guide and provide consistency and reliability in the lower courts to private parties who are trying to plan their lives around what the law is, and to the different elected branches of state and federal government who are also trying to comply with the law, or at least we hope they are.

And so when the Supreme Court issues decisions with reasoning that doesn't really follow or seems difficult to apply, that undermines, you know, not just the legitimacy of the court and its role as something different than just electoral politics, but also the reliability and stability that are supposed to be benefits of a system with the rule of law.

Yeah, and, and I think that, and there's, I teach in my, my class, my business law class that countries that have more consistency in their laws are actually more prosperous because business kisses, businesses can work within those, those frameworks and those paradigms that you don't get when it's, and I'm not trying to be redundant here, when it's lawless, right.

Like when it doesn't seem that that one decision is leading to anything else.

And so what happens is, is it's, I mean, the companies are chasing their tails, right?

Trying to figure out what is acceptable, what's not acceptable.

And when you have one rule for the government and another rule for the private entities, you know, it's terribly frustrating to have to deal with that type of logic.

You know, as we've seen more recently than most with Justice Alito and Justice Thomas and their billionaire club that they are wanting to be a part of?

What do you think are the, what do you think are the long term risks when the judicial legitimacy erodes?

Like, where are we headed with this?

There are many different ways this could play out.

I guess the one that might be top of people's minds is what happens when the court so damages its credibility and legitimacy that the prospect of enforcing the court's decisions becomes more difficult.

If we had a Supreme Court that had widespread buy in, you know, that the American public overwhelmingly viewed as legitimate, that political officials from across the political spectrum viewed as legitimate, that would be a court that would be harder to defy.

That would be a court whose judgment, you know, the public would call on officials to respect, that officials would feel compelled to respect.

And in this environment where you have an executive branch that is, in my view, pretty openly defying some lower court orders and Potentially flirting with the prospect of defying the Supreme Court.

What you can do in that situation is more difficult with a court that has spent down its reserves of credibility and legitimacy.

Right.

And I mean, there's a trust factor that I think goes into this quite a bit.

Right.

Like you're expecting the wisdom of the ages from the Supreme Court, not the consistency of a gnat.

And that's where we're currently at.

And it's frustrating because if you don't know, like, I was having a discussion with someone on Facebook the other day about the whole immigrant crisis and, and whatnot and the way that they're being treated and, and you know, we were Talking about the 14th amendment and all this other stuff, and it blew me away because some of people that I'm, I'm friends with, they, they literally believe that because Trump is doing what he's doing that it's legitimate, that, oh, well, nobody would let, would.

If it's not legitimate, nobody will let him, you know, get away with it.

Right.

But what they're not understanding is, is that the law is reactionary, not proactionary.

It doesn't, it doesn't.

Until there's a dispute or a controversy, the.

They don't make laws preemptively.

They see the holes, the chinks in the armor, so to speak, and then they make a law.

And with Congress being in the pro Trump category, we really have a trifecta of difficulty when it comes to that.

What would you say?

How does the court's behavior mirror or enable the larger right wing political project, especially under Trump?

Where to start?

So I guess I would begin by inviting people to think about whose interests were furthered and protected in the most recent Supreme Court term.

And to my mind, the groups that kind of came out ahead were those groups that happened to be aligned with the core Republican constituency, wealthy corporate interests, right wing reactionary groups, you know, particularly conservative religious groups, and then the aspiring strongman autocrat, you know, who is trying to exercise all of the power that he has as well as some of the power he does not to further the Republican Party's agendas.

You know, in the wealthy corporate interest bucket, the Supreme Court made it easier for fuel producers to challenge what the EPA is doing.

They also made it easier for groups challenging the EPA and FDA's decisions to pick which court they get to file their challenges in.

So that's some of the helping the wealthy corporate interests bucket.

Then you have the right wing reactionary groups.

The Supreme Court upheld a ban on gender affirming care for transgender minors out of Tennessee.

They upheld parents right to receive notice and opt their children out of instruction that they believe, you know, contradicts their religious teachings, their storybooks with LGBTQ characters.

And then you have the host of Supreme Court orders that have given the Trump administration their request for emergency relief to be free of their obligations to comply with lower court orders that have ruled against the Trump administration.

That all happened on the emergency or shadow docket where the court issue stays of these lower court decisions that are unfavorable to the Trump administration.

But those are the groups that got big wins and were able to change the law to get the Supreme Court to change the law.

And so those are kind of some high level overviews of how I think the court is enabling the modern Republican Party's agenda.

And I think I also follow, let's see, Jill Winebanks and Joyce Vance White, who, you know, they talk about the judiciary is meant to be calling balls and strikes here.

They're not supposed to be putting their thumbs on the scale or elbows or entire bodies, as some days might seem.

And I think that that's what's striking about the current situation, is that how they're playing as though they're never going to be out of power again.

Right.

Like that we're always going to have a conservative majority in the Supreme Court or we're always going to have a conservative majority or run by the executive branch.

Same thing goes with Congress.

And Heather Cox Richardson was talking about how we're going down the path of authoritarianism, but we're not in full authoritarian state.

We still have our freedoms.

This podcast, the freedom of speech, the things that we have that we can still use.

We're not completely in authoritarianism land.

And I think it's very important to remember that as the big interests erode, the individual liberties, even things like besides due process, you know, our Miranda rights, things of that nature that have been eroded for years where it started out as what you have, and then they're cutting it, cutting it greatly now, how with all the doom and gloom that we have going on right now, especially politically, legally.

And my wife doesn't quite understand that politics and law are so intertwined with each other that she's like, why do you pay attention to it so much?

You don't understand that they are like brothers.

They're like twin brothers.

Right.

They're not quite the same, but they're pretty dang close to each other.

I mean, yes, politics isn't exactly law, but law and law isn't exactly.

Politics.

But if you don't conceptualize both of them together, you're really failing to meet the moment.

Right.

And so how do we talk about a court in a way that's empowering and not paralyzing?

Because it can be very difficult right now to, well, they serve for life term.

What can we do?

Right.

Yeah.

So I understand how talking about the current court, such as is, feels demoralizing, but I actually do think that is part of a strategy for building a movement.

If you think about the rise of the conservative or right wing legal movement, part of what they did is they identify, you know, what they thought was a common enemy, you know, the Supreme Court, which they viewed as too progressive and lost to them.

And they lobbied against and campaigned against the court and campaigned and organized, you know, on calls to change the court.

And they did so by basically committing themselves to being willing to vote over the long term to make that strategy happen and to exercise any and all political power they obtained in order to advance that goal.

So I understand the frust of not being able to do anything and snap our fingers, you know, in a single election cycle that will change an institution like the Court.

But the reality is, you know, the Supreme Court that we have today is the product of a several decades long movement and effort to take over the Court.

And if you want to change the court back, it's going to take something similar.

Now, I think if you want to look for encouraging signs, I mean, think about how quickly the views of the Democratic Party, Democratic base and Democratic politicians change over really a period of five to six years on the Supreme Court.

I mean, Joe Biden, you know, who used to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee at the end of his term, came out four Supreme Court reforms, you know, with term limits, ethics reform, as well as overruling the Court's immunity decision by constitutional amendment.

Joe Biden had to promise to appoint a Supreme Court commission to look into it.

So I think we are closer, or at least we were closer to doing things that could democratize or change an institution like the Supreme Court than people might realize.

And we just need to continue to build that movement, to educate people and educate people in part, to stay committed to that movement and to recognize that it's just going to take a while to accomplish something significant.

Being it for the long haul, not the immediacy of the moment, which is hard when you're being inundated with constant misinformation and disinformation, and it wears down, right?

Like, you get really tired of dealing with this.

And I'm sure, because you're in the mix of it, you know, in everything you're doing, you know, I'm sure you have to take your fair share of coffee breaks or swear breaks, whichever way you want to go with it.

So, you know, we, we talked about some judicial reform.

What is your opinion on some of the things that, that Biden suggested?

Well, so I think one of the tragic parts of the Biden Supreme Court Commission is he didn't actually allow the commission to endorse any reforms.

They just had the power to kind of write a book report that was like, oh, here are some things people talk about and then write some loose, unstructured thoughts about them.

The specific reforms that he endorsed toward the end of the term, term limits, you know, I think are a good idea to regularize Supreme Court appointments and to focus people's attention that in any particular election, you are electing a president who's going to select some number of Supreme Court justices and avoid strategic retirements or unexpected deaths resulting in sudden changes to the law.

But the reality is term limits are not actually going to change the Supreme Court we have now because term limits are not going to be applied to current Supreme Court justices.

So that means you're staring down a court where Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett are at the center of the court for the next several decades.

So if you are concerned about whether the Supreme Court is going to allow voting rights legislation or, you know, a democratic administration to govern through the executive branch, term limits are not going to fix the problem, even if they might fix some of the underlying causes that got us to, you know, the Supreme Court that we have today.

You know, I'm also very sympathetic to the idea of an enforceable ethics code.

You know, the Supreme Court justices are immensely powerful.

I think it obviously creates at least an appearance of corruption for the super rich to be able to buy influence and access to the justices.

And I also think it creates the potential for the super rich to generate, like, an alternative ecosystem for the justices to inhabit where they are reaffirmed for reaching decisions and results that favor the interests of the mega rich and not exposed to a wider array of views or criticism.

I think that's all bad.

So very much on board with the idea of an enforceable ethics code overruling the immunity decision.

I absolutely think that that decision is egregious and I think a threat to a system that prides itself on the rule of law.

I mean, the entire idea of a system of a rule of law and government bylaws is that our officials are not above the law, that no man is above the law.

And yet the punchline of the immunity decision is, well, at least for the president, he is above the law in certain respects and certain matters.

And I think it's interesting that the, you know, there's a lot of lack of civic education on these topics, right?

Like, you know, people will side with the Supreme Court when it supports their views and then, you know, disregard them or call them their, you know, activist judges when they disagree with their, with their rulings and stuff.

And, you know, the.

I was talking with someone and I said, look, if you want, like we were talking about due process in the 14th, and I said, if you want the due process to not apply to immigrants, at least without the pretzel logic, we need a constitutional amendment to change the 14th amendment.

And my theory is we'll never have a constitutional amendment, not in my lifetime anyway, because of how divided we are.

It takes two thirds of Congress and three quarters of the states to do that.

And I just don't see that many states getting on board with any type of constitutional amendment sans significant change.

Right.

Like, I mean, it's, it's.

That might be what we're at, is that precipice of that change because of the severity of which they're.

They're in.

Right?

Like, everybody's happy until, you know, they're getting, when they're getting what they want, but then when everybody's miserable because of someone's actions.

That's how revolutions change.

That's how revolutions happen.

That's how evolutions happen.

Right?

We can, we can embrace those changes when.

That's when the, you know, the New Deal happened.

That's when World War II, after World War II, all of these amazing things happened after we had significant times of unrest.

And I think that, you know, the immunity decision is, was, it was so interesting because Dobby Dobbs precipitated the immunity decision quite fortuitously in the respect of the Supreme Court doing their own thing.

Not, obviously, they're different cases, but when Dobbs came down, I voiced my significant concern over that.

And there were quite a few social media influencers that were like, Chicken Little, the sky isn't falling, that type of thing.

And then when the immunity decision came out or when they worked their way through all of the other, some of the really bad decisions, it was one of those moments where I was right and I don't like saying that for the sake of saying it, but it was like, if you're looking at A plus B equals C, we were getting to see with the immunity.

So given what we is probably not now but say we're able to reclaim some of our things.

Do you think court reform is a realistic goal or more of a political distraction?

I mean, I don't know what I mean by realistic.

I happen to be someone who doesn't view politics as static.

So I don't know what the political landscape is going to look like four years from now or the next time, you know, a Democrat is in the White House and you have Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

I mean, I think it depends a little bit on whether the needle of public opinion shifts.

I think it depends a little bit on who our elected Democratic leaders are.

And I think all of that is contingent on people trying to make their voices heard, elevate this issue.

It also is going to depend on events that are outside of our control and what people's focus is on and what their priorities are.

So is it realistic?

It's a possibility, but I'm certainly not going to make a prediction either way to say it's definitely going to happen or it's definitely not going to happen, because again, and I guess this is a hopeful part of me, politics is just something that is susceptible to change, and politics changes when you do politics.

Right, right.

And that's, and that's such an important part is, is that the involvement is what we need.

We need more people.

I mean, the number of people that didn't vote in the last election was just like.

That broke my heart because more people didn't vote for either candidate than did vote for both candidates.

And it was, you know, I'm.

I'm sitting there screaming at the top of my lungs, go vote, go vote.

Go vote.

But I'm only one voice.

Which is one of the reasons why I started this pod, the channel was because I wanted to amplify my voice.

I wanted to be able to speak to people, educate them, help them understand, you know, basically Civics 101 without the, the, the sitting in a classroom, so to speak.

And I think it's so important that we, we help people understand these things, to empower them.

Right.

Like there's, there's such a point that when you're feeling lost and with the delusion of information that you feel, what can I possibly do?

Right.

And I think letting them know how the government actually runs rather than guessing or rather than Playing the telephone game with how the government runs and the laws and whatnot can give them a sense of, oh, here, we can do this, we can protest.

We can do that type of thing.

What do you think?

How can educators, lawyers and civic leaders work together to rebuild trust in the law and justice itself?

So I guess when you say, like, rebuilding trust in the law itself and justice, a part of me thinks that's not really the responsibility of educators.

Like, trust is earned, and that requires our courts and our judges to act in trustworthy ways.

So on some level, I don't think the responsibility is on public educators and people to shore up the trustworthiness of an institution that is behaving in untrustworthy ways.

And so in that light, I guess I would say the responsibilities, in some ways, public education and information, ensuring people are informed so that they can register their dissatisfaction if they have that, with institutions like the courts that are behaving in untrustworthy ways and eventually rebuild those institutions, institutions so that they are acting in ways that deserve respect and deserve trust.

So I guess I don't know if that means fighting or quibbling with the premise a little bit, but I just don't view it as my job to convince people that the court is doing great.

Yeah.

And I can respect that.

I guess what I was trying to get was like, for instance, we're practitioners and we're involved in the law, and I think more along the lines of, while we aren't, you know, we're educators, but we're also citizens.

And so I think, how can we help?

You know, guide, I guess, would be the better word than build trust.

Right.

Because when you're dealing with this uncertainty and you're in.

That's the overwhelming premise that my friends, when they come to me and talk to me about what's going on in the world, the uncertainty, it's like, well, can they really do that?

And I'm like, well, okay, can they do it legally or can they do it?

There's a very, very, very big difference between those two things.

And I think it's important to help educate them what is and what can be.

Right?

Because when trust, you know, it's always.

It always blows my mind how much.

It's like we can see that the sky is blue and we have people telling us the sky's red.

And part of, I think, building that, for me, anyway, building that trust is telling them the sky's blue again, right?

Telling the law, telling them based on.

Okay, currently the Constitution says this, right?

And even admitting when we're wrong, right?

Because we're not perfect.

We make mistakes.

That's just how it is.

And admitting like, okay, well if I was on the supreme, you know, if I was making this decision, that's where I would go.

But Supreme Court makes its own choices, right?

And is that, do we agree with them?

No.

I mean, I remember in law school sitting there going, I don't like this decision, but I can respect the court because they got there and it was logical and rational and I understood it.

But now we have this situation where it's really hard to respect decisions when they're using their outcome determinative or pretzel logic to get there.

And I think part of, for me anyway, building that trust backup is not that it's my responsibility, but more like as someone who is concerned, I want to give them the hope that says that it won't always be like this.

We won't always have people that are putting party over country or party over law.

We'll have people that are like, no, I disagree, but the law says this.

I've got the rational that goes with that.

So you don't just diagnose the problems in lawless, you also sound the alarm.

So what gives you hope right now?

So what gives me hope right now are maybe a few things.

One is seeing the changes in state and local courts in particular that have been the focus of community efforts, organizing efforts that have encouraged people to focus on the court.

So I live in Michigan.

Our state Supreme Court used to be one of the more conservative state supreme courts in the country.

Our former chief justice was a high ranking legal official in Reagan's Department of Justice, you know, that authored among other things, a document basically outlining how the federal courts and the Constitution could be used to advance their, you know, social conservative policy.

And so that used to be our state Supreme Court.

We now have a 6 to 1, you know, progressive Democratic majority on our state Supreme Court.

And in part because we do that court ensured that the people of Michigan were allowed to vote on whether to amend our state constitution to protect reproductive freedom.

After Dobbs, you know, our Board of Elections split, you know, along partisan lines where the Republican appointees refused to certify the reproductive for freedom, reproductive freedom for all ballot initiative, even though it had received a record number of signatures because they said the spacing on the petitions was too close and therefore misleading.

You know, they were literally trying to disenfranchise millions of Michiganders on kind of a ticky tack foul.

And our progressive Supreme Court, you know, order The Board of Elections?

No.

Like, no, you got to put that on the ballot.

You got to let people vote.

I look at the outcome of the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, you know, where the people of Wisconsin rejected an effort by Elon Musk to buy another, you know, political seat and control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

So I think when you get people to engage and when you convey to them this is why courts matter to your life, the courts can do better, and we build better courts.

So that's one thing that gives me hope.

The second thing that gives me hope have been the engagement and attendance at recent protests involving the Trump administration, most recently the no Kings protests.

I know there are other ones planned in the near future, but I think affirming and recognizing that a majority of the American people is opposed to what the Trump administration is doing by way of mass deportations, you know, ignoring due process and just pointless cruelty to so many individuals and the dismantling of the federal government, I think that has been encouraging as well.

So those are two things that I would say give me hope right now.

Good.

I.

And I think it's, you know, that's so important that we're holding on to.

I also follow Mary Trump, and she talks about, you know, that we need microcosms of hope.

You know, we need moments.

She has a thing on her live where she talks about mental health moment or something like that, where she brings on some cute video or something of that nature.

And it's just a moment to be like.

Like, okay, there is still good.

Right?

Because with the information that's coming, it can be very depressing very quickly.

And what we don't want is people tuning out.

That's rest, but don't quit.

Right.

That's where in this fight for how.

To keep it sustainable.

Yeah.

And that's the thing is take a break, but don't give up.

Right.

That's where we need to be now.

Mallory McMorrow.

Is she in Michigan?

Because she's a state senator.

She is currently a state senator running for a United States senator.

Nice.

She's someone I want to get on here, too.

She is very impressive.

I've followed her.

Just absolutely outstanding.

I'm a big fan of hers.

You know, it's interesting.

So just to give you a little bit of context, I was born in a conservative home, and I grew up with conservative values and processes.

And actually, through law, through undergrad and law school, I evolved to become a progressive.

And it fit more with who I was as a person, by far, because of the Differences of pro life versus pro choice.

I always found it interesting, and this is something that I don't get to voice a lot of times, is that why is the Conservative Party, that's supposed to be the party of limited government, being involved in the most intimate portions of our lives.

Right.

Like you would think smaller government would mean out of the bedroom, out of people's bodies, paying, you know, do what you're gonna do, not making more laws about people's bodies and about, you know, people's bedrooms and choices and things that have nothing to do with the actual law.

And this type of dissonance that existed when they say they're pro life and then they don't support any policies or very few policies that are actually life policies.

That was part of it.

That brought me back to.

From the Conservative.

Oh, we don't want the government to.

Well, no.

Why can't the government be a force for good?

Why can't the government do the right thing?

And one of the things I talk about in my class, because it is a business class, but I also inject a lot of sociological principles into it because that's my undergrad.

You know, I talk about toxic capitalism that, you know, capitalism is fine up to the point that it hurts people.

Right.

And that's.

And government should be a check on that.

It should be.

We're not there right now, but point is, is we shouldn't have a government and business be so aligned with each other that they can run roughshod all over our people.

Right.

Like, we're hurting people.

We're hurting everybody but the billionaires and the millionaires.

And that's not a sustainable system.

Right.

Like, we know trickle down economics does not work, but, you know, it's great for the people at the top.

It's not so great for the people that are not at the top.

And that includes 99% of our population.

So, you know, as we're discussing these types of things, let's talk about what Supreme Court ruling this term surprised you the most.

I don't know if I was really surprised by any of them.

In some ways, the decision on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions was surprising in the sense that it was shocking to me that the Supreme Court did not take that as an opportunity to show its independence and show that it was not just in the bag for Donald Trump by using the case as an opportunity to, if it was going to limit nationwide injunctions.

Also say, this executive order is obviously illegal.

And so the lack of judgment and, you know, inability to understand the broader political context of the decision was surprising to me.

Other than that, I think what the Supreme Court has done on the shadow docket has been shocking in the kind of behavior they have enabled.

So the one case that I usually point to is a case about what are called third car, a case about what are called third country removals, Department of Homeland Security versus dvd.

That's a case about whether the administration can send people to countries other than their countries of nationality, other than their countries of origin, places they might not have ever been to, might not at all be familiar with, without providing them notice or the opportunity to challenge their potential deportation to those places where they might face risks of torture, kidnapping, death, violence.

You know, the administration tried to send people to Libya where, you know, individuals who are imprisoned are at risk of being sold into slavery and being trafficked.

They sent people to South Sudan, a country on the verge of civil war, where the Department of State has withdrawn all but its essential personnel because of the risk of violence.

And the Supreme Court blocked two lower court decisions that had just told the federal government, look, if you're going to do this, didn't block the federal government from doing so.

It just said, if you're going to do this, you need to provide people with notice and give them the opportunity to assert, if I am sent there, I will face risks of violence or torture.

That's all.

And still that was too much for the Supreme Court.

Right.

You know, one thing I was going to ask you that.

Why do you think the Supreme Court is so willing to give up its power?

Like we're supposed to have three co.

Equal branches of government with, you know, the obvious money being a, A bigger factor in Congress.

I always tell my students it's, you know, yeah, they're equal, but, you know, who controls the purse strings, maybe a little more equal.

Right?

I mean, Congress is, you know, doing its thing.

Not a topic.

But why do you think supreme court's so like, sure, executive branch, do what you want, or almost that it's pretty close.

Also, I think that they are steadily disempowering the lower federal courts, but they don't view that as undermining their own authority.

If you take the nationwide injunction case, I mean, in that case, during the oral argument, you had Justice Barrett saying, well, of course you, administration would respect our Supreme Court decision and our ability to settle an issue throughout the country begrudgingly kind of suggested maybe, yes.

You know, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately in that opinion to say, well, look, the upshot of today's decision is that instead of lower courts deciding all of this, we Supreme Court will do so, and that's the way it should be.

So I think they view their decisions as empowering themselves to decide what the scope of executive power is and what the separation of powers entails and minimizing the role of lower federal courts in that process.

Sure.

But then you also get John Roberts, who is, you know, complaining about how backed up they were at the end of the term because of things that they put themselves in the situation of.

As though, like, the whole nationwide injunction isn't going to hurt them even more.

Right.

Because now it's going to, I mean, the court system's already insanely backed up.

I mean, people, when I tell them, when I, when we've got a case and I say it might be two to five years before we get a resolution on this.

Right.

And they look at me with a little dumbfounded look.

They're like, wait, what?

And I was like, that's just.

And that's just a state court.

That's, you know, every court's different.

And they get incredulous about it.

Like, what do you mean it's going to be two to five years?

Well, that's the statute.

Statute.

Like, I'm sorry.

And judges, you know, will just kind of do their thing.

And so, you know, adding that there's no more nationwide injunctions, which I do find it a little interesting that they didn't do this under Biden, but they did under Trump, even though they did plenty of nationwide injunctions against Biden.

But that's a different topic.

And it just, it kind of blows me away that how often, you know, they, they're doing these types of things that are making the justice system less functional, less beneficial and not just for themselves, but also for, well, I should say not just for other people, but for themselves as well, with having so many cases, because now we're going to have to get injunctions.

It's going to be like injunction of Rama, right?

In Congress, there's like vote a Rama or something like that.

Now it's going to be injunction of.

For all of the people that are going to need to file.

There was something else that someone caught on.

I was following on social media, and they were talking about between the big beautiful bill or the big billionaire bailout bill, whichever way you want to call it, and the.

What was it?

It was.

Oh, and the injunction issue, where they were tying the two together.

That with the, you know, with the normal injunction or you have to.

Injunction or my brain just hit Normally, you have to post bond.

Right.

In order for.

Well, you don't have to.

That's kind of been like a discretionary decision.

That decision, or, I mean, that provision was actually taken out of the Senate version of the bbb, the requirement to.

Yeah.

Post bond before you can actually hold people in contempt for violating a court order.

Okay.

Because I know that someone was talking about that if you had to post bond for this, and I mean, this was a hypothetical, obviously, that pretty much only the rich would be able to do that.

Right.

Because of the supposed harm that they would incur because of it.

And it was just a theory someone was talking about.

But it was interesting to see the two kind of working in that capacity to.

To limit justice.

And I'm grateful that got stripped.

Go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna say.

I mean, that was a risk.

On the other hand, courts have wide latitude to set the amount of bond, so they could set the amount of bond at, like, a dollar.

And even had it gone into effect, you know, not much might have happened.

Right.

It's just interesting how they're trying to orchestrate things.

And I guess that's kind of the disturbing part of this.

I mean.

I mean, the fact that Mitch McConnell was able to orchestrate basically two extra seats on the Supreme Court for Trump was only slightly.

Definitely majorly disgusting.

Right.

I mean, it's frustrating when you're like, okay, well, you should be playing by the rules, but yet you get to play by your own rules.

Right.

And I think that whether you want to argue the legitimacy of the court or not, it just.

The fact that he was putting the thumb on the scale for Trump on both of those instances is like, wait, that's not how it's supposed to be.

Right.

We're supposed to have.

This is how it's supposed to be.

And it goes against most of our human natures to want to have justice.

Right.

We want to see that if we agree to follow rules or if we make rules, that we all agree to follow them.

That's the whole point.

I think a lot of people.

That's one of the things that disenfranchises people and causes cynicism among us, because we're hoping that our leaders are making good choices on our behalf, and we see them blatantly not what's better for the party rather than for the country, you know, and that's disturbing.

Last couple of questions real quick.

What's one legal concept you wish more people understood?

Oh, gosh, one legal concept.

Standing versus merits.

So to understand when the Supreme Court is not actually deciding the underlying merits about whether something is legal, but is instead saying this case isn't the right case to do so.

Because these plaintiffs aren't the right plaintiffs.

Right.

Yeah.

Because didn't they mess with the whole dentist and abortion care thing?

That was just like they didn't want to.

They had a group of dentists that were coming, I can't remember what case.

I'm sorry, there's so many.

It was FDA alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

So this was the challenge to one of the drugs in the medication abortion protocol.

And yes, the Supreme Court said the specific plaintiffs who had initially filed the case, a group of anti abortion doctors and dentists, they didn't have standing.

But what is waiting in the lower federal court is the motion by some Republican led states to intervene in the case and see whether they can revive the challenge and roll back the availability of medication abortion, if not completely ban it.

So yeah, I think understanding what the Supreme Court does and doesn't decide through vehicles like standing would be important.

Sure.

Okay, let's see.

What would be your civic call to action for listeners who feel hopeless right now?

Doing nothing lets them win.

Yeah, that's so important.

Doing nothing lets them win.

What are some things that, you know, you mentioned the no Kings rally and I attended here in San Diego and it was my first rally actually.

And it was one of those moments where you're like, where are you going to be in history?

Right?

Like, where are you going to, where are you going to stand?

Your voice?

I have six small children at home and my wife was like, don't get in trouble.

And I'm like, look, if anybody's going to get in trouble, it isn't going to be me.

I'm not going to instigate anything.

I'm not going out there to cause trouble.

And it turned out, I mean it was completely the, it was funny.

We were walking by the police officers and they were just like chilling on their motorcycles, like, just like doo to do, not caring.

And they basically got paid to sit there.

There was no issues whatsoever.

It was really a beautiful moment.

And that gave, gave me hope actually for the first time since the election was I saw people coming together and making choices that said I care more about my country than I do my personal comfort.

I care more about the country than I do about my safety.

At some points, Louisiana kind of was a little bit before that, which we can talk about that different time.

But the idea that all protests that we're all lawless because we're protesting.

No, we're exercising our First Amendment rights.

And I think that's so important that we recognize that the things that they're trying to take from us are our rights.

They're not just suggestions.

Right.

They're part of our law.

They're not just a when we feel like it.

Right Sort of thing.

And I think it's important.

Institutional rights are supposed to be right.

They are supposed to be.

And this idea that, you know, we could just because it's inconvenient for them that we should stop just goes against my very nature of right and wrong.

So, Leah, it has been great having you on.

Sincerely, I appreciate it.

Do you have any last final thoughts you'd like to share with my listeners?

I would just say, you know, share this podcast or what you learn from this podcast with friends, you know, people who are already part of your community.

I think that's one of the most important things we can do right now, is just try to broaden, you know, the messaging and information that gets out.

Out.

I agree completely.

Thank you again so much and hopefully we'll talk soon.

Sounds great.

Take care.

Yeah, thanks.

Bye.