Short Circuit Institute for Justice

First of all: PARENTAL ADVISORY! If you have children nearby you might want to save part of this episode for later. It doesn’t happen until just after 32 minutes into the episode, but the naughty language the Seventh Circuit quotes in one of this week’s cases forces IJ’s Sam Gedge to choose between dishonest modesty and, as he puts it, revealing the un-expurgated truth. Like a gentlemen, he goes for the latter while discussing a qualified immunity case about a “kung fu cop” with “multiple blackbelts” who gets a little punchy with a man who had a few too many. After that things just get weird as Sam introduces us to the first case in the American (reported, at least) tradition to use a certain word on George Carlin’s famous list. We close with a conversation about Patrick O’Brian’s and Jane Austin’s editing styles. But before any of that IJ’s Jared McClain tells us how to successfully make a mandamus claim against the Capitol Police. Although it seems you can get close in the D.C. Circuit, the common law gauntlet is a tough one.







Leopold v. Manger







Brumitt v. Smith







Edgar v. McCutchen







Memoirs of the Countess of Cardigan







Quart of Blood Technique

How does history inform our interpretation of the Constitution? In all kinds of ways, it seems, and perhaps in too many of them. We once again look at how history and the Second Amendment are mixing together, in a case from the Eighth Circuit. The opinion lets us do a bit of digging into a less-well-known founding father, Benjamin Rush, and his enthusiastic embrace of putting people behind bars. But before that IJ’s Bobbi Taylor details some of the latest class-action shenanigans in the Seventh Circuit. For the first time we address “mootness fees,” settlements extracted in some disclosure litigation against public corporations. And we consider whether they’re “a racket” as the court suggests.







Alcarez v. Akorn, Inc.







U.S. v. Veasley







Ted Frank episode, SC 154







Szasz, The Manufacture of Madness

We take a break from the federal courts of appeals and look into a brave new world—or is it an Orwellian one? Our thoughts—our inner mental processes—are the one aspect of our lives that is completely private. Right? Well, emerging technology is making that not so true anymore. IJ’s Anya Bidwell welcomes Professor Nita Farahany of Duke University to Short Circuit to discuss her recent book The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology. They talk about how neurotechnology works and how it has many potentially transformative implications, including many good ones. But in the wrong hands—especially the hands of the State—those implications can be quite unsettling. And there are so many gray areas in-between. People in China and other countries are already dealing with some of these implications and the legal and constitutional system in the United States is not yet ready for them if we are to keep the mental privacy we all value. Get ready for a conversation about what is private, what is human, and how liberal values and the Constitution can address the good and the bad of a future that is already here. And how to write a book via the Pomodoro method.







The Battle for Your Brain







Searching Secrets







Incriminating Thoughts







Pomodoro Technique

We’re gonna read you the Riot Act. Again. An old friend of Short Circuit returns, the Anti-Riot Act. Perhaps (?) named in homage to its 18th century predecessor, the Congressional statute received a facial test at the Seventh Circuit, and IJ’s Kirby Thomas West tells us how it fared in the face of a guy who requested that everyone bring their family and a brick to a “riot.” He did not do so well in court, but perhaps the Anti-Riot Act has problems anyway? Then we go for a drive down a Houston freeway where Sam Gedge makes a citizen's arrest of a qualified immunity claim while drinking at a local flea market at 2am. The Fifth Circuit served up a wild ride of a case that is too good to pass up but also holds bigger lessons for how judges perceive “split-second decisions” and premeditated lies.







U.S. v. Betts







Hughes v. Garcia







The Riot Act







Short Circuit 146 (4th Cir. Anti-Riot Act case)

Stories we hope our listeners can relate to this week: borrowing cars and lousy neighbors. First, from the Sixth Circuit, IJ’s Rob Frommer details how a man sitting in the passenger seat of a running car somehow lost his Fourth Amendment standing. And went to prison. And then in the Second Circuit your host explores what can be done when your neighbor is an embassy. It’s an all-too-familiar tale of a building project gone awry but with a twist of sovereign immunity.  







Click here for transcript.







Register for the May 10 open fields conference!







U.S. v. Rogers







Harvey v. Sierra Leone







Neighbors 1980’s opening song







Fawlty Towers—The Builders

It’s been a while but we’re back with an episode of Unpublished Opinions. Herein IJ attorneys Anya Bidwell, Patrick Jaicomo, and your host talk about . . . Anya’s recent Supreme Court oral argument, how SCOTUS is surprisingly a friendlier place to argue than many other courts, the recent FTC rule about non-competes, why we still have a “Lawyers’ Edition” for SCOTUS cases, how perhaps lawyers can learn from magazine covers . . . and more!







Judge Posner liquidated damages case







Rob Johnson’s Tweet on FTC’s & non-competes







Anya’s SCOTUS argument







No Fly List case