Oral Argument

Oral Argument

By Joe Miller and Christian TurnerSociety & CultureEducationPhilosophy
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Oral Argument episodes

  • Episode 127: I Own My Fist

    When people say they can do whatever they want with their property, what do they mean? With Christopher Newman, we go back to first principles to think about property and copyright in new, and yet old, ways.

    This show’s links:

    • Christopher Newman’s faculty profile and writing
    • Christopher Newman, Vested Use-Privileges in Property and Copyright
    • Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning
    • Christian Turner, Legal Theory 101, Reading 3: Hohfeld
    • Tom Bell and Chris Newman discussing Bell’s book, Intellectual Privilege
    • Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency
    • Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council
    • Eric Claeys, Labor, Exclusion, and Flourishing in Property Law
    • Folsom v. Marsh and Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios
    • Christopher Newman, An Exclusive License Is Not an Assignment: Disentangling Divisibility and Transferability of Ownership in Copyright

      • Special Guest: Christopher Newman.

      1 hr 17 min
    • Episode 126: Permanently Banned

      We continue our discussion of the rights of non-citizens, this time with immigration scholar and award-winning fiddle player Jason Cade. We discuss Jason’s latest research into the judicial and administrative responses to of deportation. (Note that we recorded this a few hours before the 9th Circuit released its decision in Washington v. Trump.)

      This show’s links:

      • Jason Cade’s faculty profile and writing
      • Jason Cade, Judging Immigration Equity: Deportation and Proportionality in the Supreme Court
      • About IIRIRA (the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996)
      • About AEDPA (the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
      • James Fallows, Washington and the Contract with America
      • The White House’s summary of the Constitution and Bill of Rights
      • Yamataya v. Fisher (The Japanese Immigrant Case)
      • Arizona v. United States
      • Fifth Circuit, Texas v. United States
      • Padilla v. Kentucky
      • Fernanda Santos, She Showed Up Yearly to Meet Immigration Agents. Now They’ve Deported Her.
      • Michael Wishnie, Immigration Law and the Proportionality Requirement
      • Oral Argument 125: The Elephant
      • Washington v. Trump (released a few hours after this recording)
      • Hog-eyed Man

        • Special Guest: Jason Cade.

        1 hr 15 min
      • Episode 125: The Elephant

        Steve Vladeck returns to the show to talk with us about Due Process and immigration, Trump’s Executive Order on Muslim immigration, and the role of courts in war and quasi-war.

        This show’s links:

        • Steve Vladeck’s faculty profile and writing
        • The National Security Law Podcast
        • Steve Vladeck, The Supreme Court, the Trump Transition, and the Future of the Constitutional “Border” (a concise overview of the Supreme Court cases under discussion, also contains links to SCOTUSblog pages where you can find briefs)
        • The Immigration Executive Order with annotations by NPR reporters
        • Steve Vladeck, The Airport Cases: What Happened, and What’s Next?
        • Benjamin Wittes, Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: Trump’s Horrifying Executive Order on Refugees and Visas
        • ACLU’s compendium of documents in Loughalam v. Trump (the Boston case)
        • Tuaua v. United States
        • Boumediene v. Bush
        • Stephen Vladeck, The Suspension Clause as a Structural Right
        • The Obama White House Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations; see also commentary from Marty Lederman
        • Al-Aulaqi v. Obama (against the targeting) and Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta (Bivens claim)
        • In re Territo
        • Lebron v. Rumsfeld (Wilkinson) and Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Tech. (the Abu Ghraib case)
        • United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez
        • David Frum, How to Build an Autocracy

          • Special Guest: Steve Vladeck.

          1 hr 10 min
        • Episode 124: Sung Hero

          Just Christian and Joe talking a little about the outrageous first week of the new administration (refugees, emoluments, Russia, and more) and then opening up the mailbag. Nixonian firings, self-driving cars, and more. No other show notes this week!

          1 hr 22 min
        • Episode 123: Cruising Altitude

          Mike Madison is back to talk with us about knowledge commons, institutions, open-source software, citizen science, and the the basic problem of understanding how we cooperate.

          This show’s links:

          • Mike Madison’s website, writing, and blog
          • Oral Argument 90: We Are a Nation of Time-Shifters?
          • Michael Madison, Information Abundance and Knowledge Commons
          • About the institutional analysis and development framework
          • Elinor Ostrom, The Institutional Analysis and Development Framework and the Commons
          • Governing Knowledge Commons (Brett Frischmann, Michael Madison, and Katherine Strandburg, eds.)
          • The Knowlege Commons Research Framework
          • Workshop on Governing the Knowledge Commons
          • Christine Borgman, Big Data, Little Data, No Data
          • Matthys Levy, Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail

            • Special Guest: Mike Madison.

            1 hr 17 min
          • Episode 122: Choose Your Own Adventure

            Jeremy Sheff joins us to discuss a successful project to create a free and open Property Law casebook. Students of the world unite! You have only your restrictive licenses to lose. (Jeremy worked on this project with the incomparable Stephen Clowney, James Grimmelmann, Michael Grynberg, and Rebecca Tushnet.)

            This show’s links:

            • Jeremy Sheff’s faculty profile, website, and writing
            • Open Source Property: A Free Casebook
            • Oral Argument 20: Twelve Billion Dollars (the one about casebooks)

              • Special Guest: Jeremy Sheff.

              1 hr 7 min
            • Episode 121: 90,000 Local Governments

              Home for the holidays, back in Oral Argument World Headquarters, with property, land use, and local government law scholar Nestor Davidson. We discuss the fascinating, important, and under-theorized world of the thousands of local “administrative states” that shape our everyday lives.

              This show’s links:

              • Nestor Davidson’s faculty profile and writing
              • Oral Argument 23: Rex Sunstein (guest Ethan Leib) (discussing Nestor Davidson and Ethan Leib, Regleprudence – at OIRA and Beyond)
              • Nestor Davidson, Localist Administrative Law
              • N.Y. Statewide Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Health & Mental Hygiene
              • Kosalka v. Town of Georgetown
              • Aaron Saiger, Local Government as a Choice of Agency Forum
              • Carol Rose, Planning and Dealing: Piecemeal Land Controls as a Problem of Local Legitimacy

                • Special Guest: Nestor Davidson.

                57 min
              • Episode 120: Unbound

                In our remote recording location and with returning election-law expert Lori Ringhand, we talk about the election. The electoral college, the moral and legal roles of electors, disputed elections in the House, crises, civil wars. Oh my. (Back in OA World Headquarters for next week’s show.)

                This show’s links:

                • Lori Ringhand’s faculty profile and writing
                • The Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (including a link to some superseding language of the Twentieth Amendment)
                • Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68
                • Rick Hasen’s link to California’s brief against unbinding California’s Electors
                • Geoffrey Stone, Electors Against Trump Are Faithful Not Faithless
                • Lawrence Lessig, The Constitution lets the electoral college choose the winner. They should choose Clinton.; Orin Kerr, The Electoral College Shouldn’t Choose Clinton: A Response to Lessig; Lawrence Lessig, A Response to Professor Kerr; Orin Kerr, A Reply to Professor Lessig on the Electoral College
                • Rick Hasen, Lessig Urges Faithless Electors Vote for Clinton, Pointing to Popular Vote in a Contest Not Based on Popular Vote; Lawrence Lessig, Rick Hasen: “But Not to Ignore It…”: What Is “It”?; Mike Parsons, On “Hamilton Electors” and the Lessig/Hasen Debate
                • Lawrence Lessig, The Equal Protection Argument Against “Winner Take All” in the Electoral College; Lawrence Lessig, On the Equal Protect Clause Argument and the National Popular Vote Project
                • Dahlia Lithwick and David Cohen, Buck Up, Democrats, and Fight Like Republicans
                • David Corn, A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump
                • John Broich, How US Journalists Normalized the Rise of Hitler and Mussolini (citing Dorothy Thompson’s 1935 observation: “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance.”)

                  • Special Guest: Lori Ringhand.

                  1 hr 25 min
                • Episode 119: Consistently Inconsistent

                  In an alternate studio, with alternate equipment and chairs, striving to get back in the groove, blowing out the rust, we make our return to the interweb-waves. (Please forgive some of the audio dips and quiet portions.) No particular agenda, but we wind up responding to some long-ago feedback about the stagecraft of judicial proceedings.

                  This show’s links:

                  • First Mondays
                  • Oral Argument 79: He Said It Peabody Well
                  • The Supreme Court of the UK
                  • Jay Wexler’s SCOTUS Humor
                  • Oral Argument 31: Knee Defender
                  • Plato, The Republic and, yep, r/plato
                  • Texas v. Johnson
                    • 1 hr 1 min
                  • Episode 118: Harmonization Costs

                    And now for something completely different. Not being up to talking again about current events, we have a great chat with David Ziff, who has bravely and beautifully written in defense of the Bluebook. Once again, we do battle over legal citation.

                    This show’s links:

                    • David Ziff’s faculty profile and writing
                    • Politically Re-Active, Facing the Future with CNN’s Jake Tapper
                    • David Ziff, The Worst System of Citation Except for All the Others
                    • Oral Argument 91: Baby Blue (guest Chris Sprigman) and Oral Argument 88: The Blue Line
                    • Brian Garner, The Bluebook's 20th Edition Prompts Many Musings from Bryan Garner
                    • Rockwell Graphic Systems v. DEV Industries

                      • Special Guest: David Ziff.

                      1 hr 8 min

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                    A podcast about law, law school, legal theory, and other nerdy things that interest us.