Law and Disorder

Only Remnant listeners fluent in legalese should subject themselves to today’s discussion of Supreme Court ...

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Only Remnant listeners fluent in legalese should subject themselves to today’s discussion of Supreme Court jurisprudence, in which fan-favorite classical liberal Ilya Shapiro returns to claim his coveted gold jacket. Jonah and Ilya explore what the court’s conservative majority will mean for future cases and whether the conservative legal movement should adapt its philosophy in the wake of Bostock v. Clayton County. They also touch on some of the most controversial issues raised by recent Supreme Court decisions, including Arizona’s voting laws and free speech in public schools. David and Sarah, eat your heart out!

Show Notes:

– Ilya’s latest book, Supreme Disorder

– The mysterious shadow docket

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    Finally!!!! Common sense on Mahanoy school district v. B. L.

    Jonah is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT

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  2. Joe Curtis

    Hey Goldberg, turn your volume up, please.

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  3. GregS

    Ilya came across as someone who didn't know all the facts of the cheerleader case. Jonahs point that it seemed reasonable that the school would be able to make a code of conduct was valid. There *was* a code of conduct for the cheer team. One of the lower courts decided that the plaintiff didn't violate the code- and the school didn't appeal this finding. So the issue wasn't that the SC decided her actions weren't extreme enough - a lower court decided that her actions weren't disallowed by the code she had agreed to, but the school was trying to punish her anyway.

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  4. Andy Miller

    Jonah, so disappointed you missed out on questioning Mr. Shapiro on the primary responsibility of a school board member. Namely, the state of the football and basketball programs at the school, and the hiring and firing of the coaches of said programs. Remember, people only show up to school board meetings if they want the coach fired. Lol

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    Adicesa14

    Enjoyable, as always. It is always surprising that issues are so complex, and difficult to adjudicate. I suppose it is why the Supreme Court and (most?) Appeals Courts are panels.

    “Supreme Disorder” was a great read, even for a non-lawyer, like me. Good luck to Ilya on his local School Board quest. Regardless of outcome, congratulations for stepping-up.

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  6. PltDownGuy

    At around 2:40 - I like Ilya but I've never thought to compare him to the consecrated Host.

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    Gabrielle G

    “David French’s favorite case” 🤣

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    Seth B

    Mr. Shapiro was hiding the ball on the Arizona voting laws case. To hear him talk, one gets the sense that the claims of racial discrimination in AZ were preposterous. As it happens, I find most contemporary claims of race-based voter suppression overblown and even irresponsible. And yet... in this particular instance, a good case actually *can* be made for it. To hear that case laid out quite effectively by the Dispatch's own Sarah Isgur, listen to her discussion of Kagan's dissent in this SCOTUS case on a recent Advisory Opinions episode ("Why Bill Cosby is a Free Man").

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    1. Avatar photo
      Adicesa14

      The plaintiff’s complained about the Arizona law forbidding ballot-harvesting and voting in an unassigned voting place. Had the plaintiff’s case involved the assignment of voters to distant voting places rather than those nearby it probably would have been a different outcome. The plaintiffs ‘missed the boat,’ or their lawsuit was brought with different motives, perhaps a desire for National attention.

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      1. Maddmac

        Thank you Seth and Tony for addressing. On the comments thread for a separate article on the AZ decision comments, someone brought up the point that in a place like AZ where there are tribal communities, different options for gathering ballots should be made available. Also, I wish Jonah had pushed Ilya on the GA law further. I am concerned about the ability for the SOC to be removed and allows the state board to take over local election and put some random unelected person in charge, thereby unaccountable to voters.

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          Seth B

          Yes. As with Arizona, so with Georgia. Shapiro took the easy way out by addressing the weak "front-end" arguments against GA's law (those concerning voting *access*), but avoided any mention of what appear to be considerably more legitimate concerns about changes to the "back-end" of GA elections (vote *counting and certification*).

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    Stevenkongju9

    Is it just me or are the volume levels for Jonah and Ilya very different. I had to keep turning my volume up when Jonah spoke and down when Ilya spoke.

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      Jason Gibson

      totally agree..........i listen to all dispatch podcasts while in the shower every morning. And when Jonah spoke I had to turn the water off...............then quickly back on lest Ilya destroy my eardrums

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    2. GregS

      Jonahs got a bad mic and he doesn't stay at a consistent distance from it. It's an ongoing issue.

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  10. DocHeartless

    I'm going to happily use the "No dumb questions . . ." line in my classes -- that is awesome.

    Forgive me, but I must rant -- this issue is near and dear to my heart.

    As a teacher of history for 25 years I beg you, please, PLEASE, can everyone stop and think for a second about what you are asking for when you nod along to (1:15:05) the idea that state legislatures, or local parents and school boards should "legislate curriculum."

    My god, guys, how boring would you like to make school for your children? I am telling you, this leads nowhere positive. Get legislatures, school boards, parents, administrators into this business of micromanaging curriculum and you won't achieve anything that you think you are trying to achieve. You won't make them better citizens, you won't make them less racist, you won't make them love and appreciate the founders, you won't make them brilliant thinkers. What you will do is take all the spontaneity, discussion, critical thinking, and discussion out of a classroom. We work so hard to grab the attention of our students, but this crap is what we fight against all the time! How many conservatives send their kids to private schools so that they can have more creative and thought-provoking classrooms? Shouldn't we help public schools to do the same?

    This type of thinking is what leads to "reforms" where teachers have to write their precise lesson planned content, plus objectives, plus standards, plus methodologies, plus page references, and whatever else minutia up on the board for every class in minute detail. Teachers spend hours and hours of every week managing all the many legislative hurdles that can get them in hot water, rather than grading papers, preparing fascinating lectures, or interacting with students in more interesting ways in class. Heaven forfend you might deviate from any one of the dozens of mandatory prescriptions for every day. It'd be terrible if some student asks an actual question and you fall behind, or an administrator walks by while your class is engaged in some spirited disagreement. Then you didn't talk about Washington's third battle victory -- you must hate America!!

    Think about it -- do you want your kids to be able to debate hot button topics in classes so they can learn to think? How about we actually talk about the immense problems with critical race theory in a class some day? How about a teacher talks about Walmart and the free market, and then the class gets into a fairly heated discussion over the pros and cons of creative destruction of capitalism? How about seniors read Atlantic articles about sexual assault on college campuses and debate evidentiary norms and the presumption of innocence. Nah, we can't do any of that because what state legislature is going to include that in their curriculum (incidentally, all of those examples were passionately enjoyable topics in my high school history classes over the years that have gotten squashed because of parental/admin craziness)?

    You know the proverb, "A people get the government they deserve." Well, you are setting up the nation to get the safe-space, trigger-warning-obsessed, straight-jacketed, boring and dry educational system it deserves. The answer here isn't difficult. Train teachers, hire good ones, give them a fair amount of reasonable freedom, fire the ones that create big problems. Otherwise, don't hurt the creativity of hundreds of thousands of classrooms in the desperate and vain effort to avert a dozen problems. Deal with the problems individually and encourage enjoyable and thought provoking classrooms.

    End of rant, but one more quick point: Parents, politicians, and administrators are constantly obsessed over content in history classes. If you don't teach this data point you are failing the country, or teach this other data point and you're brain washing the youth. My god, please run this little experiment for yourself. Find a unit of content where there's a fair amount of memorization of raw material. Students take some basic assessment in class that they study for a few days before. Then give them a pop quiz on the exact same material just 6 months later. You will be shocked and depressed at how little they retain. They remember the advanced thinking moments, the discussions, the presentations, the papers, the "I never thought about it that way" moments, all of which are difficult to create and pull off, but they are very easy to squash.

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