Episodes

In our #12Months12Circuits series it’s time to drink an entire Fifth. Now, regular listeners will be very familiar with the Fifth Circuit’s waters and may hesitate from such an undertaking. But true fans of the federal courts of appeals should be pleased, as we take an even closer look than we have before at the ins-and-outs of the federal circuit for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. To help us we welcome on Jessica Underwood, a former Fifth Circuit clerk and now an attorney in Austin, Texas. ...

You may remember Roy Moore’s 2017 campaign in Alabama for the U.S. Senate in which a controversy arose as to his behavior at the Gadsden Mall several decades before. And, further, that there were allegations that he was banned from the mall because of his friendliness with teenage girls. Include one who at one point was “Santa’s little helper.” After losing that race, Moore brought a defamation suit against the purveyors of a political ad that mentioned these mall/teenage girl allegations in a c...

Live from the University of Michigan we bring you the latest in administrative law with some of the top scholars and practitioners in the field. It’s Short Circuit’s first time at the home of the Wolverines and the first time we focus the law of administration—and all the constitutional angles that go along with it. We hear from Professors Nicholas Bagley and Christopher Walker of Michigan Law and from Zachary Larsen, a Michigan attorney who specializes in administrative law. The cases include r...

John Wrench of IJ details the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that the federal ban on home distilling is unconstitutional. At least as the case was argued, which included the taxing power and the Necessary and Proper Clause, but not the Commerce Clause. Then, IJ’s Joe Gay discusses a Fourth Circuit case where the parents of a West Virginia student who attended a virtual school challenged the program’s vaccine mandate. The case raises interesting religious liberty and rational basis issues. And stay until...

Short Circuit traveled to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where the student Federalist Society chapter graciously hosted us and allowed us to present a live recording before their fellow law students. On the panel we were joined by professors Matthew Wiener and Mitchell Berman and Philadelphia lawyer Michael McGinley. On the podcast we give an overview of the Third Circuit as part of our #12Months12Circuits series and then dig into three recent Third Circuit cases. These include a...

Getting a jury is one of the most venerated constitutional rights Americans have. But if you’re before the Securities and Exchange Commission there’s been no veneration. Until now, as a recent Supreme Court case Jarkesy v. SEC has knocked the SEC back on its heels. So you’d think that other people before the SEC would be able to get their jury trials too. Unfortunately, though, to enforce that right you need to properly raise it—at least raise it in a way that’s good enough for the court you hap...

The Institute for Justice is once again taking a close look at civil forfeiture. One of IJ’s leaders in our civil forfeiture work, Dan Alban, joins us to outline our new report Policing for Profit 4. Some listeners may be familiar with previous editions but, as Dan explains, in this one there’s a lot of new information and analysis, especially how civil forfeiture works procedurally and how those procedures fail the Supreme Court’s mandate that they be “timely.” Dan also discusses a recent Sixth...

When the police ask you for an I.D., when do you have to hand it over? That depends on a lot of facts and a lot of law, including whether a state has a statute allowing an officer to make you hand the I.D. over. Mike Greenberg of IJ reports on a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court where a cop demanded a man watering flowers tell him who he was. The man said he was “Pastor Jennings” and lived across the street. That wasn’t good enough for the cop and after some escalation Paster Jennings (who r...

With a baker’s dozen of circuits it’s hard to pick a favorite. Or is it? We sit down with three lawyers and scholars to ask what their favorite circuit is and why. Ben Field of IJ gives us his choice and we also bring on professors Tom Metzloff of Duke and Dawn Chutkow of Cornell. You’ll hear their impressions on how the courts work, what makes them special, and some behind-the-scenes stories (and even a conspiracy theory). But before all that we have Ben dig into a recent Ninth Circuit case con...

Evan Lisull of IJ tells us of a guy on probation who seems to have been pretty clever with his living arrangements. The police often don’t need a warrant to search the residence of a person on probation. In this case from the Fourth Circuit, the guy owned two properties, one of which he seemed to have lived at and the other of which he allowed his girlfriend to live in. But the girlfriend didn’t just hang out there, she had a lease with him. That lease, it turned out, was key to the court ruling...

We welcome on Sam MacRoberts of the Kansas Justice Institute for an inspection of the Fourth Amendment. Sam is the General Counsel and Litigation Director of KJI where he does things like sue the government. So he’s a perfect fit for Short Circuit. Sam tells us of a case he recently litigated about how his state’s inspection laws went to the dogs. Specifically, clients of his who ran a very small dog training business at their home and had to deal with abrupt, last-minute inspections where the s...

[Note: This episode was down for a couple days but has been reposted. It originally dropped on March 6, 2026.] If you’ve ever wondered if a sniff is a search, IJ’s Rob Frommer has you covered on this week’s episode. Well, he has you covered in explaining how the law is all over the place on the subject. Rob tells the story of a couple who were sleeping in their car in a Mississippi parking lot when a cop saw they had an empty bottle of Fireball whisky in the back. This quickly led to a K-9 dog s...

Litigation is a risky business. Borrowing tens of millions of dollars to win a lawsuit is even more risky. And it turns out makes settling a case especially difficult. Patrick Eckler, Chicago attorney and co-host of the Podium and Panel Podcast, rejoins us to detail a wild Seventh Circuit story about an antitrust chicken (and pork and beef) lawsuit that got a bit spicy. Anyone who has tried to settle a case will want to give a listen—and then to do exactly not what happened. Patrick also explain...

In Colorado marijuana is legal under state law. In Kansas it is not. This had led Kansan police officers to stop a lot of cars with out-of-state plates. And after they stop the cars they come up with tactics to prolong the stops to buy time to look for weed. One of these tactics is the “Kansas Two-Step.” A lawsuit, on behalf of innocent people caught up in these stops, challenged the whole scheme, leading to a big-time injunction against the police. But, as IJ’s Jared McClain explains, on appeal...

An all-star conversation among Stanford professors, recorded live before Stanford students, about originalism and how it interacts with recent cases from the federal courts of appeals. Anya Bidwell hosts Jud Campbell, Jonathan Gienapp, and Orin Kerr on topics such as what originalism is, how to think about the Fourth Amendment when making originalist arguments, what levels of generality have to do with how courts are approaching history, what is the state of play after Bruen, and how everything ...

If you own rights to movies or shows and would prefer them to not end up on YouTube for free this is an episode for you. Dan Knepper of IJ explains how the owner of some classic Mexican films tried to deal with the problem of the films ending up on YouTube. A recent Eleventh Circuit opinion tackled the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and how YouTube tries to deal with the problem of users putting copyrighted material on its site when they don’t have permission. As you might imagine it is a compl...

IJ’s John Wrench journeys to New Orleans to chat with some legal scholars on their recent work on all kinds of IJ-adjacent questions, especially as they relate to the American Founding. This includes economic liberty at the Founding, legal interpretation at the Founding, and “history and tradition” and constitutional rights. Between sessions at the Association of American Law Schools conference John reconnoiters with Kenneth Rosen of the University of Alabama and separately with Jonathan Green o...

Lovers of municipal crime and corruption—and internal affairs departments not doing their jobs—may enjoy the stories this week from Detroit and Baltimore. First, Kirby Thomas West of IJ reports on a Sixth Circuit case where a towing company was a little too good at finding cars to tow after they had been stolen. It turns out the towing company was in contact with a ring of car thieves, who would give it a head’s up after a theft, allowing it to then cash in on towing fees from the city. The comp...

When you pay your bail money it’s a good practice to get a receipt. A woman in Mississippi found that out the hard way when she was arrested on pretty shaky grounds and then told she had to pay up or stay in jail. Her sister paid the $1,300+ the next day and then a long time later was never told to come back to court. She then sued for civil rights violations. But then the government claimed she had been found “guilty” and that money she paid had in fact been payment of the resulting fine. What?...

What does qualified immunity have to do with Joan of Arc? Released on the anniversary of the start of her trial, this episode examines that question—from “the French perspective”—with two tales of qualified immunity. First, IJ’s Tahmineh Dehbozorgi presents a case from the Sixth Circuit where a police officer punched a mental hospital patient into a wall. The court concludes the punch violated the Constitution—but was it “clearly established”? The court says no, leaving the victim with no remedy...

IJ’s Anya Bidwell interviews two civil rights lawyers for a wide-ranging conversation about what it’s like to litigate on behalf of people behind bars. She welcomes on Sam Weiss of Rights Behind Bars and Elizabeth Cruikshank of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) to hear stories of qualified immunity, prison conditions, prisoners making their way in the court system without lawyers, and many other topics. To begin with we hear the story of what it was like for Sam, wi...

In the early days of the COVID pandemic, a county in Florida thought it was a good idea to keep people off of the beach. Even if they owned it. The beach owners were not able to access their beaches for weeks—although local police could. And did. The owners went to court and now, years later, the Eleventh Circuit has ruled that that was a taking under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. IJ’s An Altik takes us beachcombing. But first, Diana Simpson of IJ walks us through a fascinating c...

Starting with a few lines from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, we are joined by two gentlemen of the stage, James Joseph, the first Assistant Director for IJ’s clinic at the University of Chicago, and Bob McNamara, IJ’s Deputy Director of Litigation. Both have theater backgrounds and both discuss how the skills you learn in theater play into being a good lawyer. It’s not just gesticulating to the jury, explains James, it’s also understanding how people act, how they respond to subtle clues, and mo...

The U.S. government seized over $600,000 from a business, tried to forfeit the money, never filed criminal charges against anyone, and then three years later said “nevermind!” and dismissed the case and gave the money back. At the same time, the business was trying to find out what was in the original warrant applications for the seizure. Is the case over, or can the business keep working to see what the secret documents say? Dan Alban of IJ gives us the scoop in this case from the Sixth Circuit...