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PODCAST

Short Circuit

Institute for Justice

The Supreme Court decides a few dozen cases every year; federal appellate courts decide thousands. So if you love constitutional law, the circuit courts are where it’s at. Join us as we break down some of the week’s most intriguing appellate decisions with a unique brand of insight, wit, and passion for judicial engagement and the rule of law. http://ij.org/short-circuit

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All Episodes

53:29

Short Circuit 380 | Homicide by Bath

Short Circuit ·

2025/06/13

Is making someone file a form “in the public interest”? The Fifth Circuit took a look at that age-old question in a recent case regarding the FCC and its gathering of demographic data. What might seem like a small issue opens the door to how the administrative state works, where agencies get their power, and how narrow the courts are reading those powers these days. IJ’s Bob Belden explains the twists and turns of this story that goes back several decades. Then Nick DeBenedetto of IJ walks us

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45:29

Short Circuit 379 | Tariff Bazookas

Short Circuit ·

2025/06/06

With the recent major tariff rulings we had to pull in a major tariff expert, Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. Scott digs into the “shocking decision,” as even he puts it, from the Court of International Trade declaring many of the recent “emergency” tariffs unlawful. He takes a look at what’s behind the opinion and what’s next as the case goes on appeal to the Federal Circuit and perhaps also to the Supreme Court. The law the tariffs are justified under might not even allow for tariffs, but

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53:30

Short Circuit 378 | Come and Take It

Short Circuit ·

2025/05/30

Fans of truckers should enjoy this episode, although they may grow angry hearing about a truck stop that never was to be. Tahmineh Dehbozorgi of IJ tells us of a property owner in Georgia who wanted to turn his land by a highway into a truck stop. But the county was dead set against him, leading to a decades-long zoning battle. A gas station would be OK, but not if it looks more like a place where truckers can fuel their rigs and get a little rest. In the end, when the controversy finally reaches

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56:23

Short Circuit 377 | Zen and the Art of the...

Short Circuit ·

2025/05/23

Sometimes a short ride goes a long way. Casey Mattox of Stand Together comes on to tell us how a dirt biker in Nevada may end up making some constitutional history. Agents of the Bureau of Land Management gave the dirt biker a citation for riding without a license-plate light. His public defender argued the underlying law was unconstitutional because Congress hadn’t given the Bureau an “intelligible principle” to guide the underlying traffic regulation and thus violated the nondelegation doctrine

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46:56

Short Circuit 376 | Murder Mysteries

Short Circuit ·

2025/05/16

Two federal appellate opinions involving a murder and whether justice was served. First, IJ’s Dan Alban reports on a Sixth Circuit case where a man alleges he was wrongfully accused and spent seven years in jail waiting for trials on various false charges, including not just murder but others too—including sodomy—and where the trials never happened. All of this, the man claims, was because of a conspiracy directed toward getting him to testify—and lie—in another case. It’s a crazy story that the

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48:05

Short Circuit 375 | Unsympathetic Clients

Short Circuit ·

2025/05/09

Constitutional rights protect everyone, even people we might not be terribly fond of. This week we discuss two defendants who perhaps don’t deserve a lot of sympathy but nevertheless had their rights vindicated in a way that protects those rights more broadly. First, an IJ alumna, Anna Goodman Lucardi, rejoins Short Circuit to update us on goings on in the Fifth Circuit where the court applied last year’s SCOTUS case about jury trial rights, SEC v. Jarkesy, to a similar situation involving the FCC

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52:21

Short Circuit 374 | Content-Based Dancing

Short Circuit ·

2025/05/02

All kinds of constitutional goodies this week, from sovereign immunity to the First Amendment right to dance. But we begin with our annual Kentucky Derby preview from IJ’s Kentucky boy, Brian Morris. After that Brian keeps things local with a case from the Derby’s home circuit, the Sixth, which features another old favorite of the podcast, Ex parte Young. That precedent helps a pipeline company with some litigation against the governor of Michigan concerning an easement under the Straits of Mackinac

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43:41

Short Circuit 373 | Live from Denver Law!

Short Circuit ·

2025/04/25

Short Circuit went mile high for a live show before the students at Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver. The focus was qualified immunity. That’s because Colorado led the way with qualified immunity reform a few years ago when its legislature adopted SB 20-217, which created a cause of action for suing state and local officials when they violate rights protected by the state constitution and also made sure that qualified immunity wouldn’t get in the way. Our panel were three local

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55:29

Short Circuit 372 | VHS Privacy

Short Circuit ·

2025/04/18

An old friend returns to Short Circuit, but it’s not a guest. It’s a case, Villarreal v. City of Laredo, where police retaliated against a citizen journalist. We’ve talked about the matter a few times before, most recently last year when the Supreme Court was considering whether to take it. The thing is, the Court did take the case, reversed what the Fifth Circuit did on qualified immunity, and remanded for a do over based on IJ’s victory last year, Gonzalez v. Trevino. Which the Fifth Circuit now

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32:47

Short Circuit 371 | Ten Years of Short Circuit

Short Circuit ·

2025/04/11

Last week the Short Circuit staff celebrated ten years of our inexhaustive coverage of the federal courts of appeals. At the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. we welcomed about 150 of our closest friends to an evening of reminiscing about “how it all began” with John Ross, Robert McNamara, and Clark Neily plus a “showcase panel” discussing the future of the federal circuits with moderator Ben Field eliciting comment from retired judges Kent Jordan (Third Circuit) and Diane Wood (Seventh Circuit)

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44:54

Short Circuit 370 | Humans Only in the Copyright Office

Short Circuit ·

2025/04/04

Bad news for our AI listeners this week. The D.C. Circuit ruled that you cannot be the “author” of a copyrighted work. Only humans get that perk. Dan Knepper of IJ comes by to explain this latest victory in humanity’s war against the machines. Dan also lays out how the court actually kind of dodged some of the trickier issues when it comes to artificial intelligence and copyright law, but notes that those may be coming soon. IJ’s Dan Nelson (no relation) then steps up and takes us on a trek to

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47:42

Short Circuit 369 | Substantive Due Process, The Podcast

Short Circuit ·

2025/03/28

Most weeks we summarize two, sometimes three, cases from the federal courts of appeals. This week we provide to you free of charge (as always) one, single, case. But, hang on, it has four opinions! It’s also 169 pages, which is way way more than our guests usually read for all an episode’s cases put together. We did, however, so you don't have to. The matter is about a Florida public school that didn’t abide by the wishes of a child’s parents when it comes to what pronouns to use for the child. Much

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39:57

Short Circuit 368 | Flipping the Bird

Short Circuit ·

2025/03/21

Is stretching out one’s middle finger at the police protected by the First Amendment? And whether it is or not, can the police trump up charges and assault someone who flips that bird? We dig into those deep constitutional issues with Jaba Tsitsuashvili of IJ when he discusses an Eighth Circuit case about a man stopped in Des Moines, Iowa. The police claim it was because he drove dangerously. The courts bought that—until the man got a hold of the video. It showed that the police may not have been

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54:47

Short Circuit 367 | The Police Power

Short Circuit ·

2025/03/14

Often in old constitutional cases you see judges of yonder years invoking this mysterious substance called “the police power.” It’s something that has fallen out of a lot of our constitutional conversations, and unfortunately when it’s remembered today it’s often taken to mean “the government can do whatever it wants.” We take an episode to try and set things straight. Joining us is Professor Daniel B. Rodriguez of Northwestern, who has written a book to explain what the police power is, where it

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45:38

Short Circuit 366 | I Love You But Can’t

Short Circuit ·

2025/03/07

What’s the difference between a campaign contribution and a bribe? More than the Sixth Circuit seemed to think. Or so argues Paul Sherman of IJ about a recent appeal of a bribery prosecution of a Cincinnati city councilmember. The councilmember was speaking to a developer and asking for a contribution. Unknown to him, the developer was working with the FBI and wearing a wire. They had some conversations about contributions and approving projects that were very confusing and also raised important

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1:01:37

Short Circuit 365 | I Like Old Property

Short Circuit ·

2025/02/28

A long-time friend of the Institute for Justice, Robert Thomas, joins us this week. For years he’s litigated property rights cases across the country, lately for the Pacific Legal Foundation, and also blogged his adventures—and a whole bunch of other property rights news—at inversecondemnation.com. With some years since his last visit to Short Circuit, he comes back to discuss a recent North Carolina case where the legislature revived some claims after a statute of limitations had lapsed. Was that

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46:19

Short Circuit 364 | Big Bats

Short Circuit ·

2025/02/21

Everyone agrees we need to build more homes. But what if those homes are going to be in your backyard? For some reason that possibility often leads to discoveries of endangered species. Ben Field of IJ joins us to report on an environmental case from the Fourth Circuit where the dispute came down to whether new homes would hurt a species of bat. The problem is no one had seen a bat. So are they really endangered? And what does this have to do with the famous snail darter “species” from a 1970s

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53:06

Short Circuit 363 | The Licensing Racket

Short Circuit ·

2025/02/14

You probably know that all-too-many jobs require a license to work. But how is that license administered, who enforces its rules, and who makes the decision on whether to take the license away? Almost always it’s a board composed of people with the same license. Rebecca Haw Allensworth joins us to discuss her new book The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong. Unlike other studies on licensing it digs deep into how licensing boards operate, what their

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Short Circuit 362 | Boil the Frog to Tear Down the House

Short Circuit ·

2025/02/06

Two cases, from the Fourth and Sixth Circuits, came out within just a few days of each other, and each was about a city tearing a house down. And whether that was OK. They came to different conclusions, partly because one seemed to have been litigated a bit better, but also for other reasons we discuss. First, IJ’s Christian Lansinger describes a Virginia property that wasn’t in great shape, but also where the officials didn’t act quite right before they tore it down for being a nuisance

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48:03

Short Circuit 361 | Reading the Qualified Tea Leaves

Short Circuit ·

2025/01/31

We welcome back Easha Anand of Stanford Law’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic for her third (or is it fourth?) appearance. Last time she was on she had not yet argued at the Supreme Court, but now she’s done it four times. She tells us if it gets easier (not so far) and then gives a report on a recent Third Circuit case where the court got qualified immunity all wrong. In ruling on a malicious prosecution claim the court helped the pernicious doctrine of QI grow from just being about rights to about

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390 results

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