Episodes

Vote early. But maybe don’t vote often? That’s the bottom line from Short Circuit’s biannual election special. With the 2026 General Election only days away, IJ’s Diana Simpson and your host bring you some of the latest cases from the federal courts of appeals on elections and political speech. There’s a polling place full of rulings on speech and paperwork burdens, what you can say about who can vote, the Founder’s fondness for anonymous pamphlets, the motor voter law, the Purcell principle, pr...

John Wrench is joined by Diana Simpson and Patrick Jaicomo to discuss the truly frightful! Like, what to make of the Supreme Court’s latest refusal to address whether the government needs to pay innocent people when it destroys or damages their property, and what can be distilled from the justices’ insistence on further “percolation” of the issue? Speaking of which, the Court will weigh in on a challenge to the federal ban on distilling spirits at home; might it rein in horrifyingly broad interp...

Short Circuit visited the Tenth Circuit Bench and Bar Conference in Colorado Springs. Between gin and tonics at the Broadmoor hotel we heard from a number of Tenth Circuit experts about some interesting circuit cases and what makes their court a Perfect Tenth. You’ll hear about qualified immunity, gun rights, prisoner conditions litigation, the continuing ramifications of the McGirt decision for the federal courts in Oklahoma, law students arguing on appeal, and what goes on at the Tenth Circuit...

If you’ve ever seen the 1971 flick “The French Connection” you may know a bit about hiding illegal drugs inside the bodies of cars. Someone else had the same background knowledge and so had installed a secret compartment in his minivan. The problem for him was the police already had a warrant to search his home and while they were executing the warrant they took his van. After taking it away they got another warrant and found the drugs and then took the van through civil forfeiture. The defendan...

Our annual Supreme Court term preview, this year from Wake Forest Law and released today, First Monday, the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term. IJ’s Justin Pearson is joined by colleague Paul Avelar and Professor Wilson Parker of Wake Forest. After a bit of SCOTUS trivia they preview two cases—about fair trials and guns—and then two cert petitions—about electronic searches and guns. Along the way you’ll learn about a few other cases coming the Court’s way, letting all of us get our kicks ...

We’ve all seen the ads for prediction markets, like Kalshi, and some of us have even placed bets with them. But are they actually “bets”? That is, are they gambling? The Ninth Circuit addressed this issue as it relates to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and said that at least on the land of a tribe that operated its own gaming, what Kalshi does is gambling and is not allowed. IJ’s Kirby Thomas West takes us into the wild world of predicting vs. gambling and the related issues of whether federal...

We focus on a district court case that has appellate court explanatory power. As our special guest Professor Robert Steinbuch says, if you reside in Arkansas you must be living in a cave if you haven’t heard of the Malinowski matter. The lawsuit concerns the tragic death of a man who was shot by the police in a raid after he shot first. His widow alleges the man did not know the people breaking into their house were police as they did not properly announce themselves. Because the police were ATF...

Say a gaggle of police with military-grade toys fire a boatload of tear gas into a home and then run in and break a bunch of stuff, all the while looking for a fugitive with no connection to the family that lives there. Do the police have to pay for the damage? That’s an issue that’s at the Supreme Court’s doorstep in a couple of IJ cert petitions. And along with those IJ has just issued a report about how many claims are actually made against the police for the destruction of property, how many...

Time for The Big One. So many have so many takes on the Ninth Circuit that, as part of our #12Months12Circuits series, we at IJ had to add our own. It’s the mega-circuit that encompasses all of the West Coast, much of the Mountain West, Alaska, Hawaii, and even Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. IJ’s Paul Avelar, who lives in the circuit, and Ben Field, who clerked there, share some details and war stories about the circuit that’s just too darn big. After that they analyze a couple recent, v...

Another circuit recognizes a there’s a First Amendment right to record the police. In this case, a “First Amendment auditor” stood on a public sidewalk and recorded the outside of a police station for six-and-a-half minutes. That’s protected, says the Second Circuit. So far, so good. But, explains IJ’s Jared McClain, the fact the right exists wasn’t exactly clear to the officers who asked the “auditor” for his ID. So it was OK for them to interrogated him and arrest him when he refused to produc...

In our #12Months12Circuits series a nation turns its lonely eyes to the heartland. The true middle of America. The Eighth Circuit. We’re joined by true Eighth Circuit expert Aaron Van Oort, who has argued twenty-five times before that court and been a part of many other appeals. Aaron, who is based in Minneapolis, offers his advice about what makes the circuit stand out and where it’s going. He’s joined in that endeavor by IJ’s Sam Gedge, who clerked on the Eighth. Then, after some fun Eighth Ci...

Tragedy and comedy, from the Fifth Circuit and then from the Tenth. First, Patrick Jaicomo of IJ describes how the police in Laredo, Texas mistakenly shot an innocent man. The plaintiff, who was hit in the abdomen but lived, was escaping a house where the real suspect was terrorizing his family. He grabbed the suspect’s gun, ran out of the house, held the weapon above his head and screamed “I’m not the shooter!” However, a cop claimed he didn’t hear the man and shot anyway. Patrick explains the ...

We often hear of the right to speak. But what about the right to listen? The Ninth Circuit just reaffirmed that listeners have First Amendment rights too and that, like speakers, they can challenge censorship in court. Justin Pearson of IJ reports on a case he himself is litigating on behalf of both a listener and a speaker against the federal government. The feds ban truthful information about healthy foods via its labeling laws. Justin’s clients either want to learn information about healthy f...

Florida, man. Always fun when we touch base with the latest culture war issues in the Sunshine State. Which usually means we’re talking about the Eleventh Circuit. Which is what IJ’s Keith Neely does concerning the “Stope Woke Act,” the state’s attempt to prohibit the endorsement of certain “woke” views in, as applied in this case, its public universities. The court ruled the law was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination when it comes to higher education. To get there, though, it had to weav...

Tim Sandefur joins us to discuss his latest (and tenth!) book “Proclaiming Liberty,” all about the Declaration of Independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and a whole lot more that is hard to fit into a subtitle. We discuss the “pre-history” of the Revolution from English constitutionalism and the Glorious Revolution of a century before, the role each man played in creating American constitutionalism, why the Declaration was written the way it was, and why it is “law.” Among many other iss...

If you like stories of co-workers showing up at your door at night and threatening you and your family then we have the episode for you. This happened to a federal employee in Virginia. Shaken by the experience, he and his family then sued. The thing is, because his co-workers were also federal employees, and the threats seemed to be work related, he had to use the Federal Tort Claims Act. As IJ’s John Korevec explains, that meant he had a lot of roadblocks. And while some of those roadblocks kn...

An old friend rejoins the show, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020. It’s been trotting around the federal courts of appeals for a few years now, truing to outrun the private nondelegation doctrine. The latest showing was at the Fifth Circuit a few weeks ago. Rebecca Furdek of the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty joins us to survey the field and provide the odds on what may end up being a photo finish at the Supreme Court. Then we shift from horses to zombies with IJ’s Marco V...

If you like the drama of local politics you’ll love this story, told by IJ’s Christian Lansinger, from the Sixth Circuit. A colorful and controversial elected official was accused of not living in the city she represented, leading to an effort to remove her. In response she did prove she “lived” there—although “barely”—and then separately sued for First Amendment retaliation. Part of her claim related back to some comments she made about going together “like cocaine and waffles” before a Confede...

Happy America’s 250th! To celebrate, we’re doing things the IJ Way, tying in the events of 1776 to something that emerged a few years later and that we at IJ work with every day today: judicial review. Therefore, although we’re jumping on the bandwagon and doing an “America at 250” episode like everyone else, this one focuses on something most people aren’t talking about for the anniversary—and certainly weren’t discussing in 1776. But one thing Americans were discussing that year, in addition ...

If someone sues you for money you get to defend yourself in court. Right? Not really if you sign a confession of judgment, a contract where you waive defenses to a later collection action. A county in Iowa had a policy of making prisoners sign confessions of judgment when they were released if they owed money to the jail. That seems like it might have due process problems. Does it? Well, we don’t know yet but the Eighth Circuit recently ruled that the released prisoners have standing to move for...

After an arrest, is the decision on whether a defendant can get out on bond while their prosecution proceeds a “critical stage’? In the Eighth Circuit it’s hard to know because the court threw out a case asking that question due to a lack of standing. IJ’s Jimmy Odell, a former public defender, details this challenge to an Arkansas court’s practice of not appointing public defenders until after the bond decision has been made. It raises highly important Sixth Amendment questions but also illustr...

A wild, and tragic, story from the Fifth Circuit with a bit of good (yet confusing) news at the end. IJ’s Diana Simpson tells us of a woman who feared her ex-boyfriend was going to harm her, so she called his probation officer. The officer assured the woman that they’d arrest him but then didn’t bother to do so. That resulted in a brutal assault. Does she have a claim against the federal government under those facts? Turns out she does, which we learn after bobbing and weaving around the various...

We welcome back a treasured many-times guest, the first time since he’s left IJ. Brian Morris served in our merry band of libertarian litigators for many years before recently moving to Chicago. He rejoins us to detail a recent Fourth Circuit decision that his now-colleagues litigated about making right a pair of wrongful convictions where two brothers spent almost 20 years behind bars. The case involves hearsay and how the testimony of a long-dead witness can be used in a later civil rights law...

In the wild days of June 2020 you may remember how a group of protestors took over a few city blocks in Seattle, and how the police simply abandoned the area for a few weeks. That meant some businesses in that area suffered property damage and a massive loss of revenue. Now, years later, the businesses’ claims for damages were just ruled on at the Ninth Circuit. How did they do? Not well. As IJ’s Robert Fellner explains, there is no duty for the police to protect you from the crimes of others. W...