The Immunity Episode

Advisory Opinions

The Dispatch

News, Government, Politics

4.7 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sarah Isgur and David French dive deep into the world of immunities, examining recent Supreme Court decisions and their implications. They discuss State of the Union attendance patterns, analyze a postal service immunity case that split along unexpected ideological lines, and explore the contrasting jurisprudential approaches of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh across different administrations. The Agenda:—State of the Union attendance—Postal service immunity—Executive power dynamics between Gorsuch and Kavanaugh—NRA v. Vullo and qualified immunity—Q&A from Florida State University Show Notes:—Postal Service v. Konan—The GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal 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 Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isger. That's David French. And we've got a very
0:24.6	immune podcast for you today. Sovereign immunity, absolute immunity, qualified immunity. We're
0:30.4	going to talk about them all as well as what exactly would it mean for Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to look consistent over different administrations.
0:40.5	Plus, I mean, we got to talk about the state of the union, what actually happened, which is
0:44.5	not much. And at the end, we're going to bring you the questions from our Florida State University
0:50.1	podcast from earlier this week. And thanks again to the First Amendment Clinic at FSU for having us.
0:58.0	So let's dive on in.
1:03.6	All right, David. Let's start with the state of the union, the longest state of the union in American history.
1:10.7	Obviously, we discussed sort of our own feelings
1:14.4	about whether the justices should show up, whether there should be a televised state of the union.
1:19.5	But in the end, David, it was the most predictable thing imaginable. We had the same four justices
1:24.8	come this year that came last year. The chief, Justice Kagan,
1:29.4	Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett, and they sat in seniority order. And a few things to note
1:35.3	here. One, those other just haven't been coming to things. So no surprise there. But two,
1:42.9	this is actually a version of the 3333 court, which I know will shock
1:47.1	people because 4 is not 3. Well, we need a fact check that one. But hear me out, David.
1:53.8	Okay.
1:54.5	The point of the 333 court is that the court actually divides into these clumps of three, you know,
1:59.8	more often and blah, blah, blah.
2:01.8	But really, it's the like two axes, right? It's this idea that there's an ideological axis
	...

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