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Advisory Opinions

The Plastic Cutlery of Damocles

Advisory Opinions

The Dispatch

News, Government, Politics

4.74K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2021

⏱️ 77 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fearing that death or disability will remove Justice Stephen Breyer from the Supreme Court when a Republican is in the White House, progressives have begun urging the senior Democratic appointed justice to retire so that Joe Biden can nominate a younger successor while he has a chance. Is Justice Breyer likely to retire anytime soon? David Lat joins today’s show to give us his take. Stick around to hear David Lat and our hosts chat about Biden’s 36-person Supreme Court commission, a new opinion involving California pandemic law, Google v. Oracle, and lawful orders from police officers. Show Notes: -David Lat’s Substack: Original Jurisdiction, and novel: Supreme Ambitions -David Lat’s posts on Breyer: “Will Justice Breyer Retire? Reading The Clerk Hiring Tea Leaves” and “Confession Of Error: Justice Breyer Is Hired Up For October Term 2021” -Ritesh Tandon v. Gavin Newsom -Fraternal Order of Police, Newark Lodge No. 12 v. City of Newark -Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. -Orin Kerr’s Twitter thread on lawful orders and Pennsylvania v Mimms -“A Tale of Two Rap Songs” by David French in The Dispatch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the advisory opinions podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger and a bonus

0:11.0

guest. And this is exciting because normally we have a guest and the guest is there for

0:16.8

a very specific reason because they have a very specific super cool kind of expertise

0:22.4

that we want to go into whether it is, you know, this we had the space reporter at the

0:26.4

Atlantic once. We've had all kinds of fantastic guests. We've had the Olympic curling coach.

0:32.5

We've had so many guests, but rarely I can't remember if ever we've had a guest that's

0:36.7

just into all the stuff we're into. So this is going to be almost like a co podcast with

0:43.5

David Latt. Sarah, do you want to introduce David?

0:46.0

Oh, I would love to. I have known David Latt since I was a baby, baby law student. David

0:53.4

loomed larger than life and we'll get into some of the reasons why back in my era of law school,

1:00.0

where he was the secret anonymous blogger that was outed. I think I think my three L year

1:05.2

you were outed. But the my my kindest memory of David is that we were and it's a humble

1:14.3

brag. It's like not even a humble brag. It's a full on brag. David was bowling at the

1:20.4

White House. I got invited along with his friends at the last minute. I did not have any

1:25.4

socks. He gave me a pair of his socks so that I may enjoy the full experience of my first

1:31.4

time at the White House and my first time bowling at the White House. And it was super surreal

1:36.1

and cool. I never gave him back the socks. I still have them to this day. He is now the

1:43.6

author of as a original jurisdiction, this incredible newsletter. If you like our podcast

1:50.1

and you're like, boy, but I'd really like to do it in written form. Let me introduce

1:54.0

you to original jurisdiction. It touches on the legal corporate world of law firms,

2:01.2

lawyers of the week, opinions of the week, and of course all the top line stuff. You'll

2:05.8

see some overlap. But most importantly, you'll get a really smart and different take.

...

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