Merry Christmas to the State Courts

Advisory Opinions

The Dispatch

News, Government, Politics

4.7 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sarah Isgur sits down for a live recording at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos G. Muñiz, Texas Supreme Court Justice Evan A. Young, and District of Columbia Court of Appeals Judge Joshua Deahl to talk legal philosophy, the state of civil justice, and the challenges that appellate justices face in an ever-more-litigious United States. The Agenda:—Why state courts matter—Texas’ new Business Courts, explained—How judges are selected in Florida—Florida’s rulemaking power over civil procedure—Why D.C. doesn’t have a “Supreme Court”—Why state constitutions change so often—Are judges using AI?—Judicial elections and accountability Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ready?
0:02.0	I was born ready.
0:04.0	Welcome to a special Christmas episode of advisory opinions. I'm Sarah Isger. That's David French.
0:24.9	David, we told you all, this was going to be available for ethics CLE credit. You can go to
0:30.1	scotus blog.com slash CLE. About half of the states are represented right now. And you can go
0:36.3	listen to it there and get your CLE credit.
0:38.3	But if you're not interested in that, stay here. Listen to it with us. David, this was a really
0:44.9	fun conversation with three Supreme Court justices, state Supreme Court justices, because while
0:51.2	this podcast focuses a lot on the U.S. Supreme Court, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of cases happen in state court.
1:00.2	And your last appeal is to the state Supreme Court. There is no U.S. Supreme Court coming.
1:06.3	And we don't spend enough time on it. And if anything, I've thrown some like shade on state judges
1:12.1	because they often in many states are elected in a partisan process and they stand for
1:17.7	re-election in a partisan process. But, you know, I figured we needed to hear some first person
1:23.8	testimony. When I was practicing, until I transitioned almost fully over to First Amendment
1:29.1	and Fourteenth Amendment work, honestly, my interest in the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court,
1:36.0	was mainly sort of academic. I was very interested just as a matter of I really enjoyed
1:41.0	constitutional law, but when I was mainly a commercial litigator, mainly
1:45.5	litigating, not exclusively, but mainly in state courts, the composition and jurisprudence of the
1:50.8	state Supreme Court was far more immediately relevant to me, my life, my client's lives,
1:57.1	than the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was just, that was sort of like watching cable news
2:01.9	at night. You know, I'm very interested in that topic. So I want to learn about it, whereas the state
2:07.3	Supreme Courts were, this matters for my job, this matters for my clients. And, you know,
	...

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