Camping Outside the Supreme Court

Today’s episode is the jackpot for Supreme Court bingo players, as our hosts play a ...

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Today’s episode is the jackpot for Supreme Court bingo players, as our hosts play a guessing game as to which justices will write some of the court’s most anticipated forthcoming opinions. Also on today’s episode, David and Sarah chat about two cases involving racial classification in the dispensation of government relief to “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers, and debate which Supreme Court cases AP U.S. history students should be required to commit to memory. Plus, Sarah shares a fun story about her experience camping outside of the Supreme Court building to hear oral arguments for D.C. v. Heller.

Show Notes:

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  1. Avatar photo
    Reed Benet

    I'm spreading the word about how good The Dispatch and particularly advisory opinions. Just sent that NYTimes versus US (Pentagon Papers) is one of the 15 need to know SCOTUS cases for the AP Government test to fellow Michigander and Marine Officer Daniel Ellsberg. My little brush with history.

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      Reed Benet

      Oh, and Sarah's comment of the tourist families choosing evening visits to the Lincoln Memorial rather than Disneyland got me misty eyed also. What a country! And it got me thinking also of Franklin's "A Republic, Ma'am, if you can keep it." The Dispatch is doing a great job leading us in that regard!

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  2. Joe Curtis

    Sarah, your story about families visiting the Lincoln Memorial with their children brought tears to my eyes. It, and your exuberant telling of it, reinforced my faith in and love for this country. Thank you for that.

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    Ben Connelly

    I thought that list of cases was quite lacking. Some of them did not deserve to be there. In terms of historically important cases, why were the following not on the list: Bakke, Smith, Miranda, Griswold, Korematsu, Plessy v Ferguson, Dred Scott. Especially those last two. Terrible decisions but extremely historically important.

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    Ethan Cordray

    I'll throw this out here like I did on the last episode: Schools are the State.

    Students have all of the same rights to be protected from their authority as all citizens have to be protected from the State. If those students' parents choose to grant the school additional parent-like authority, then the schools are acting as agents of the parents' legal authority (which MUST be revocable by the parents), but schools must still be circumscribed from abusing that authority exactly as parents are circumscribed from abusing their own children, and also exactly as the State is circumscribed from abusing its authority over all citizens.

    If the response to this argument is, "Schools can't properly function under those rules, " then perhaps the problem is that compulsory state schooling is irreconcilable with our American constitutional guarantees of individual liberty. That shouldn't be such a huge surprise, given that mass compulsory schooling was imported from Prussia long after our Republic's founding.

    Remove the compulsory requirement from public schooling and 90% of these problems go away.

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      Ben Connelly

      Man when I was a kid I would have been 100% on board. (Maybe I still am, I’d have to think about it.) When I was 7 or 8, I thought it was a travesty that children were still denied the right to vote.

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    Jason Gibson

    Independence day a great movie?????????? Did I hear that right????????

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    JohnF

    Just listened to the pod. I completely agree with Sarah's sentiment re: Angry cheerleader and BLM school flag. Why is this in Court? (let alone the Supreme Court). We have an overly-litigious society and there are many issues that should just be settled by rational adults.

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  7. Kurt S

    Enjoyed your conversation about required AP government required cases and what should be changed. As an AP Government teacher it is really hard to look at the 15 cases outside the curriculum and to determine why they are chosen. For example the McCulloch case and Lopez are used in a topic that focused on interpretations of federalism along with the 10th amendment and commerce clause. With multiple other legislation you have the option to use in order to help the students learn the fundamental topic. This topic is part of a unit on the foundations of democracy. I love the way the class is currently set up after the redesign because it is not okay just to know the one sentence summary that Sarah talked about her being able to do. It was a great analysis of a question that did not contain enough information to really answer.

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  8. Elliot

    Sarah, when you camped out for the Supreme Court, what did you wear? Did you spend the night on the street in DC in a suit??!!

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      Sarah Isgur staff-badge Staff

      Good question! It was very cold and rainy that night. So I was in a sweater, leggings, and tennis shoes--but I wore a long black coat over all of it so I looked quasi-professional as long as I kept it on.

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    Larry Seltzer

    My one time at a Supreme Court case:
    In the Fall 1981 term at University of Pennsylvania I took an undergrad Constitutional Law course with Professor Jeffrey Morris (https://www.tourolaw.edu/AboutTouroLaw/Bio/23), who had just completed a term as Warren Burger's aid for work with the Judicial Conference.
    As a class treat, he took us to the Supreme Court where we got a private tour, including the conference room. Later that day we attended the argument of Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209 (1982) (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/80-1082), which I remember primarily for William Kunstler arguing for the respondent. I'm not a big fan, but I remember thinking that he made the best arguments he could and made them well. He lost 6-3 in a fairly predictable criminal case lineup.

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      Larry Seltzer

      And they didn't have AP Government in my day, but I would have been all over it.

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  10. Meredith Vantress

    From the AP Government exam description -
    "Free-response question 3: SCOTUS Comparison presents students with a description of a non-required Supreme Court Case and its holding. This question assesses students’ ability to do the following:
    § Identify a similarity or difference between the non-required Supreme Court case and a specified
    Supreme Court case required in the course
    § Describe the details, reasoning, or holding of the required Supreme Court case specified in
    the question
    § Explain a similarity or difference in the reasoning or holding of the two Supreme Court cases
    § Explain how the reasoning or holding in the non-required Supreme Court case demonstrates
    a political principle, institution, process, policy, or behavior"

    This is what students have to do with the Supreme Court cases - it is not just multiple choice questions about it. Does this make you feel any better about the cases student need to know well?

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