Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.

I'm John Carlo Conoparo. I'm Zach Smith. And welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

Welcome back to another episode of SCOTUS 101.

We're in the home stretch of the Supreme Court's term, and the opinions are starting to come fast and furiously.

But before we get to those opinions, G.C., is there anything interesting on the orders front?

No, not this week.

Although the court agreed to add a few cases to its docket for

next term. None of them was particularly noteworthy. Well, then let's get right to the opinion,

since we have a lot to cover. What's up first? Yes, indeed, we do. First up is Vidal versus

Elster. This was a unanimous decision as to the outcome, although there was a really interesting

intra-originalist debate between Justice Thomas and Barrett that I'll get to momentarily.

There seems to be a lot of that these days, G.C.

Yeah.

Yeah, really interesting things happening, particularly with Justice Barrett.

And I'll explore a little of that in just a minute.

Now, Vidal versus Elster is just a trademark case, really.

There is a provision of the Lanham Act called the Names Clause, which stops you from registering a

trademark of somebody else's name without their consent. There was a First Amendment challenge.

In this case, Mr. Elster wanted to trademark the phrase Trump too small, but the court was

unanimous that the names clause does not violate the First Amendment.

But how the various justices reached that conclusion sparked this debate that I mentioned.

Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, held that the history and tradition of restricting

...