Today I talked to Aaron Tang about his new book Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court--And How We Can Fix It (Yale UP, 2023).
The Supreme Court, once the most respected institution in American government, is now routinely criticized for rendering decisions based on the individual justices' partisan leanings rather than on a faithful read ... Show More
Apr 9
The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence
Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Vict ... Show More
57m 50s
Apr 8
Thorsten Gromes, "Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases" (Springer, 2026)
Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases (Springer, 2026) examines one of the most important questions in peace research: What leads to enduring peace after civil wars, and what leads to the resurgence of violence? For decades, intrastate conflicts have be ... Show More
41m 8s
Apr 3
Tim Cresswell, "The Citizen and the Vagabond: A Politics of Mobility" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
An expansive treatise on the power relations that govern our movement The Citizen and the Vagabond: A Politics of Mobility (U Minnesota Press, 2026) develops a theoretical approach to the study of mobility and its relationship to the production, maintenance, and transformation of ... Show More
37m 11s
Sep 2024
Anthony Michael Kreis, "Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development" (U California Press, 2024)
One of the great divides in American judicial scholarship is between legal scholars who take the justices at their word and assume that those words define the law and political scientists who dismiss all judicial arguments as smokescreens for partisan bias or wider political forc ... Show More
1h 3m
Oct 2024
Jon Michaels and David Noll, "Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy" (Atria/One Signal, 2024)
Law professors Jon Michaels and David Noll use their expertise to expose how state-supported forms of vigilantism are being deployed by MAGA Republicans and Christian nationalists to roll back civil, political, and privacy rights and subvert American democracy. Beyond identifying ... Show More
1h 19m
Nov 2023
Demystifying the Indian Supreme Court
<p>In recent years, there has a growing concern that the Supreme Court of India is not firing on all cylinders. Critics have argued that the court functions in an opaque manner, exhibits excessive deference to the executive, is sluggish in concluding cases, and is hampered by an ... Show More
51m 6s
May 2024
You're A Grand Old Flag, You're An Upside-Down Flag
Now, this is a story all about how Sam Alito's wife got flipped-turned upside down.
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Sam Alito flew his flag upside down in the aftermath of the insurrection. He doesn't deny that, but he blames his wife for it. Dames, amirite? Aside from the obvious ethical issues implicate ... Show More
36m 31s
Jul 2023
Mayur R. Suresh, "Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi's Courts" (Fordham UP, 2022)
In Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi's Courts (Fordham UP, 2022), Mayur Suresh shows how legal procedures and technicalities become the modes through which courtrooms are made habitable. Where India’s terror trials have come to be understood by way of the expansion of the secu ... Show More
47m 8s
Apr 2025
A Constitutional Crisis, Due Process, & the Rule of Law
What is a constitutional crisis? For some, a constitutional crisis is when the president defies the Supreme Court, for others it is when a president simply defies a federal judge’s order. Under the reign of President Trump and his administration, the country has dealt with a numb ... Show More
36m 59s