DiscoverWhat Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law
What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law
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What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law

Author: Roman Mars

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Professor Elizabeth Joh teaches Intro to Constitutional Law and most of the time this is a pretty straight forward job. But when Trump came into office, everything changed. During the four years of the Trump presidency, Professor Joh would check Twitter five minutes before each class to find out what the 45th President had said and how it jibes with 200 years of the judicial branch interpreting and ruling on the Constitution. Acclaimed podcaster Roman Mars (99% Invisible) was so anxious about all the norms and laws being tested in the Trump era that he asked his neighbor, Elizabeth, to explain what was going on in the world from a Constitutional law perspective. Even after Trump left office, there is still so much for Roman to learn. What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law is a weekly, fun, casual Con Law 101 class that uses the tumultuous activities of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to teach us all about the US Constitution.

All music for the show comes from Doomtree, an independent hip-hop collective and record label based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Comments (74)

ncooty

Israel and its advocates conflate politics with ethnicity and religion precisely so that they can dismiss every criticism of Israel as antisemitism. The U.S. abides and supports Israel's crimes, hate, racism, murder, invasions, etc. because many Americans belong to a similar magical book club.

Sep 26th
Reply (2)

ncooty

It is truly insane that some people are so dedicated to lowering the bar for the presidency.

Dec 22nd
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ncooty

@2:00: As is often the case, Prof. Joh seems to present a confused picture of the role of law by blurring the lines between (a) legislation and (b) common conceptualizations of morality. She often refers to common feelings that something is wrong (i.e., an intuitive sense of injustice) rather than referring to laws. Does she imagine courts are free-wheeling arbiters of morality? Many times, what she (like many uneducated people) casts as a bad judicial decision is better understood as a failure of legislation.

Feb 11th
Reply (1)

Hanaconda

I can see a legal solution here: all pork produced under lacking welfare standards must be labelled as "Unethical Pork" in order to be sold in California.

Jan 7th
Reply

ncooty

Part of what must be confounding about this case for conservatives is that is cuts against their core ethos of "might makes right", which often manifests as "one vote per dollar" vs. "one vote per person". Then again, they are masters of double-think: self-proclaimed victims of constraints on their oppression of others. In a way, this case is part of conservatives' long-running argument against the legitimacy of democracy (going back to Burke and the monarchists). That is, what makes California's law wrong in their view is that it relies on collective action, which they view as illegitimate.

Dec 3rd
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ncooty

Interesting discussion, but badly framed. Prof. Joh acts as if the court's (and the judicial branch's) mandate is to do what's best for the country. That is not the case. The mandate of the judicial branch is to interpret the laws, and, when the law is unclear, the 9th and 10th amendments require that deference be given to the states. This is a fundamental question about judicial philosophy, so it's frustrating that Prof. Joh seems to have fumbled it so badly.

Dec 3rd
Reply

吴超义

w

Aug 21st
Reply

ncooty

@28:20: Even Prof. Joh can't resist the idea of having different standards of justice for different people. What a shame.

Aug 18th
Reply

ncooty

The conservative justices are simply theocrats in robes. The nonsensical rationales in their decisions are all merely pretextual. For about 2 decades, only 1 party has had any regard whatsoever for good-faith governance in the public interest. Democrats fret over fairness, decorum, representation, harms, etc., while Republicans single-mindedly and zealously focus on taking as much as they can, as fast as they can (increasingly based on ludicrous beliefs). For Republicans, might makes right... to the point that restraint is viewed as weakness. They are and have always been monarchists--they want to rule, not rule of law. That said, Prof. Jo seems wrong to suggest we're in uncharted waters regarding differential state laws. We've had those throughout the country's existence (e.g., gambling, alcohol, speed limits, age of consent, marijuana, etc.). It's a shame that Democrats have yet again brought a threadbare Teddy bear to a nuclear exchange.

Jul 9th
Reply

ncooty

"Original intent" is as impractical, baseless, and stupid a judicial theory as one might concoct... so much so, it is hard to view it as anything other than pretext, given that it is also conveniently forgotten or supplanted by its advocates the moment it seems inconvenient. We need to stop pretending that engaging with these trolls or their bad-faith arguments is necessary for progress. We need to see them for what they are and deal with them accordingly.

Jun 10th
Reply

ncooty

@20:07: One of the critical shortcomings in our judicial system is the reliance on judges' abilities to become experts on any topic. In reality, they almost never know what they're talking about, and are instead gullible passengers of rhetoric, heuristics, and personal biases. Here, we hear a judge over-confidently showcase his own drastic ignorance. The AR-15 is not an ideal combat weapon (nor is the M16 on which it is based, nor is the M4 variant, nor is any weapon), but it is even more obviously a severely suboptimal CQB/ home-defense weapon. For the latter, depending on many factors, an MP5 or a 20 ga shotgun, for example, would be *far* better in nearly every way. People might disagree about which factors are relevant and which firearm would be "best" for different circumstances, but the dismaying things about this moronic jurist's comment are that (a) there seems to be no countervailing concern (e.g., what if sarin gas were great for home defense?) and (b) he's so baldly and

Jun 10th
Reply

ncooty

It seems as if the draft opinion is even less reasonable than I could've imagined. It borders on trolling, lacking even the pretense of thought or reason... or more to the point, showing contempt for them.

May 6th
Reply

ncooty

The conservative justices seem to be trying to be as stupid as possible. The threat of infection from close proximity is not a universal social threat. It is manifestly magnified in a workplace full of people versus many of the other places in society. As always, their arguments seem so thinly pretextual as to border on mere trolling... or flagrant idiocy.

Feb 3rd
Reply

Teddy

Like mother...like son.

Feb 2nd
Reply

ncooty

@5:03: Someone's religion is essential and unchangeable? (She was listing CRA categories, but trailed off before mentioning sex, which might now pose a similar question.) These laws are nearly always poorly formed and badly reasoned, especially because they over-specify the crimes, particularly according to the attributes of the victim. It's one more way to convince people that biology is identity and to divide society with identity-based politics.

Jun 1st
Reply (2)

ncooty

This entire discussion was full of false equivalences. In my opinion, this was one of the least intelligent discussions in this otherwise interesting series.

Mar 27th
Reply

ncooty

@21:28: Prof. Joh gave a fairly weak answer here, skirting the core issue. E.g., what if Capitol Police had video surveillance footage of a drive-by shooting at the Capitol? How is this meaningfully different from tracking license plates and vehicle descriptions?

Mar 27th
Reply

ncooty

@0:25: I think you mean it's hard to over-state. If it's an extreme case, then most words and descriptions under-state the situation, whereas even extreme language does not quite over-state it.

Mar 27th
Reply

ncooty

@20:21: This point should have been emphasized much more. Civil and criminal laws are not the standard for impeachment in the House or conviction in the Senate. As has been discussed before on this podcast, the vestigial phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" refers to any misconduct that violates the public trust. This was also part of Mueller's flaccid excuse for not making any claims about the criminality of Trump's conduct.

Jan 31st
Reply

DrRayTay

So glad you’re back. It’s been the longest month in history.

Jan 31st
Reply
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