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Advisory Opinions

The Dispatch

News, Politics, Government

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sarah Isgur returns to her home state of Texas to join a panel of leading constitutional scholars for a deep dive into the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the term. Alongside experts Jonathan Adler, Daniel Epps, and Frederick Lawrence, she examines key cases and explores the growing influence of politicians and the media on how the court is viewed by the public. The Agenda:—Is there a play in the joints between religion clauses and the First Amendment?—Why is it called United States. v Skrmetti?—The Fifth Circuit is the new Ninth Circuit—Will the court rein in excesses of state criminal justice? This episode is brought to you by Burford Capital, the leading global finance firm focused on law. Burford helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a $7.2 billion portfolio and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost, risk, or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com/ao. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Advisory Opinions is presented by Burford Capital, the leading finance firm focused on law.
0:06.0	Ready?
0:07.0	I was born ready. All right. Thank you, Jeff and Bobby for those wonderful introductions. And thank you to the National Constitution Center for giving us the Texas A&M Center on the Structural Constitution this opportunity to partner with you. Thank you for all of you being here tonight.
0:40.1	We're really excited to get started talking about the Supreme Court. So for our first panel, we have 45 minutes, and I could definitely spend 45 minutes just giving you the highlights of everybody's resumes.
0:51.6	I'm going to try to do it faster than that.
0:59.1	And then we're going to move on to, we're sort of like the classic Supreme Court review panel.
0:59.6	So we're going to be talking about some of the sort of big top line merits cases from this
1:05.4	year.
1:05.7	And we will leave questions about the shadow or emergency docket and what it is and what's
1:10.6	been going on there for
1:11.7	mostly the next panel, I would think. Okay, so first we are joined by Frederick Lawrence.
1:18.4	He is the secretary and CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and he is a distinguished lecture
1:24.6	at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also the previous
1:28.2	president of Brandeis University and dean of the George Washington University Law School.
1:34.1	So we are really honored to have him with us. And we also have Jonathan Adler, who has just
1:40.1	recently moved to William and Mary Law School, where I worked for several years before going to Texas A&M, so please give my best to everyone in Williamsburg.
1:49.1	Jonathan is the Tazewell-Taylor Professor of Law there. He was previously a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
1:57.2	He is a prolific scholar and media commentator, and in particular for this crowd, you may know or be interested in know that he's a regular contributor to the Volok conspiracy legal blog.
2:08.3	Also, potentially, of special interest to this crowd, he is originally from Philadelphia, so a hometown, a hometown scholar.
2:17.4	Next, we have Sarah Isker, who is an editor at the dispatch, which recently acquired
2:22.3	SCOTUS blog.
2:23.9	She is host of the advisory opinions podcast, a contributor for ABC News, and I think most
	...

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