This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church joined as always by the Libertarian himself, Professor Richard Epstein.

Here at Hoover, Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow. He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU,

and he's also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

And Richard, it's October, and two political nerds like you and me,

that means it is Skoda's preview season

because the Supreme Court has just started a new term.

So I thought we would pick a few cases

and get some previews of the conversations we're gonna have over the next, you know, over the next year. So first up Richard.

It's going to be an adventurous term. Oh yeah. So first up Richard, Moore v. Harper. This is the so-called independent state

legislature theory case. So this is the argument that state legislatures have the

sole authority to regulate federal elections because of the elections clause of the Constitution.

In other words, state courts play no part.

Now in this particular case, North Carolina drew up some new districts drawn by the state legislature, but they were struck down by the state Supreme Court in order to redraw them.

Now, a lot of case law has occurred surrounding the election clause of the Constitution.

So can you help me make heads or tails of whether state courts should be allowed to be involved?

Well, it's a question. I think the answer is almost in very will be going to be that they are going to be

allowed to be involved but the question is exactly the way in which that particular involvement is

start to taking place. The basic situation is that what the Constitution does is that the legislature in each state

shall determine the way in which you select electors for the president and the people who are going to be

electors with respect to the electoral college.

And so the issue is whether or not

...