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Explicit 
Ep. 45
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) released a verdict in Trump v. United States on July 1, 2024. Jay and Chris both listened to a bunch of podcasts about that decision.
Chris asked Jay if he had read the opinion. Jay had not. “It’s easy!” Chris said. Jay sighed, and tried. And then we spent over an hour trying to read the darn thing and arguing about it being easy to read. Join us, won’t you?
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Thanks to Chris for doing 99% of the audio editing for this episode!!
At ~15m Jay rants about hating this episode of this podcast: Advisory Opinions: Is ‘Text, History, and Tradition’ Alive and Well? Jay’s text rant in Discord:
My 2¢: This is a 90m podcast for legal scholars who have already deeply studied SCOTUS decisions (this year and historical), and want to hear Inside Baseball opinions about extremely subtle details, trends.
If you’re looking for lawyers to explain / summarize cases, or tell you why they matter, this isn’t the podcast for you. This podcast renders no opinions about whether any of the decisions were good or bad in any way.
If you want broad stroke ruminations on decades of variations of interpretations of originalism you’ll love this episode.
At the 30m mark I thought they were going to state an opinion:
The far left is saying Trump can shoot anybody now, and the far right is saying YAY Trump can shoot anybody now!
… but nope. Even with that teed up, they didn’t explain, comment, or express any opinion about whether any of that is good or bad or accurate. They say both are wrong. But don’t explain what is correct. They spent zero time explaining or discussing the insane societal implications. How do you not react at all when SCOTUS dissenting opinions are screaming that the sky is falling? You just go back to keeping score of which judges are on what side? Without explaining the sides? Or having any opinion on the sides? wtf? I was very frustrated listening to this.
I appreciate lawyers telling me why (in their opinion) a decision does nothing, or why the dissenting / majority opinion is wrong. I’m flabbergasted this podcast completely ignores those being diametrically opposed. Like the decisions do nothing / don’t matter. Like they’re just punching a clock at a nothing-matters factory.
Podcasts Jay did appreciate, on the same topic:
More timeline notes:
At ~1:03 we mention that Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (Arabic: أنور العولقي, romanized: Anwar al-’Awlaqī) was an American-Yemeni lecturer and jihadist who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike from the U.S. government.
SEC vs. Jarkesy et al. Decided June 27, 2024. Chris thinks this is the only SCOTUS opinion so far this year that matters, is surprised that the liberals aren’t supporting it.