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PODCAST

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast

Digging a Hole Podcast

Yale Law School professors Samuel Moyn and David Schleicher interview legal scholars and dig into the debates heard inside law school halls.

science social sciences

All Episodes

01:06:41

John Witt

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/10/28

This week, we descend from the ivory tower onto the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard for a discussion of the historical significance – and contemporary relevance – of the Garland Fund, the million dollar fund at the epicenter of the early Civil Rights movement. We’re thrilled to welcome our colleague John Witt, the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School, to join us for a celebration of his new book, The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended

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01:06:24

Bob Bauer

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/09/19

It’s been a long (and eventful) summer. But the leaves are just beginning to turn and there’s a cool breeze in the air, which means it’s time for a new season of Digging a Hole! We kick off this season with a wide-ranging discussion on the limits of executive power, the role of courts in checking the executive branch, and what progressives should do after Trump 2.0. To help guide us through these thorny issues, we’re thrilled to welcome to the pod Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished

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00:58:55

Richard Primus

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/05/27

We’ve had a lot of fun this spring, but a sweet summer scent is on the wind, and so we’re going to have to wrap up another successful season of Digging a Hole with today’s episode—it’s a real clambake. Courts have paid a lot of attention in recent years to what the executive branch can and can’t do: non-delegation, major questions, student loans, DOGE. The question of what the federal government as a whole can and can’t do, on the other hand, has been settled for a while. Settled, but wrongly, says

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01:10:08

Frances Lee and Stephen Macedo

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/04/25

Liberals have been introspecting (some may say self-flagellating) since the 2024 election, to varying degrees of convincingness and success. There’s the usual genre of complaints—NIMBYism, identity politics, the crisis of masculinity, forgetting about the factory man—but the one thing liberals agree on is that they can’t be blamed for following their good, apolitical science. Today’s guests want you to rethink that. We’re thrilled to have on Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, and

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01:01:29

Abundance

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/04/07

In the face of what is inarguably bad governance and fake—but spectacular!—technocracy (the list goes on and on, but we’ll stop at AI-generated tariffs), we thought we’d take a moment to join the conversation about what good governance looks like. A couple of weeks ago, one of us reviewed Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance, for the New York Times, and then the other one of us reviewed the review. So we figured: let’s work it out on the pod? No guests on this episode, just the two of

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01:01:38

Allison Powers Useche

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/02/18

Happy February, listeners, and welcome to season ten of Digging a Hole! When we started the pod five years ago, we had our eyes on the Grammys, or maybe the Emmys, whatever award show we could finagle our way into. Turns out we have bigger fish to fry than whether or not we’re more deserving of an award than Call Her Daddy — Greenland, anyone? We’re thrilled to be kicking off this season with someone who knows a great deal about United States Empire: Allison Powers Useche, Assistant Professor of

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00:53:24

Karen Tani

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2025/01/03

The start of a new year, the slouch towards the first days of the new semester, the last episode of yet another season of the pod: we’re feeling sentimental here at Digging a Hole HQ. As you take down your old calendars and put up the new, we’re going to take some time to engage in a tradition of ours at the pod and discuss the 2024 Harvard Law Review Supreme Court foreword, “Curation, Narration, Erasure: Power and Possibility at the U.S. Supreme Court,” with its indomitable author and the Seaman

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00:48:54

Dan Rodriguez

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/12/20

Now that the election is done and dusted, and we’ve had a chance to process somehow one of the least controversial presidential races of the last few decades, America’s back to business, with Congressmen threatening international institutions, the American public spending gobsmacking amounts of money for the holiday season, and California declaring a state of emergency over bird flu. Wait a second—can states even do that? Lucky for us, today’s podcast guest is an expert on state and local government

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01:08:16

2024 Election with Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/11/14

The year is 2025. Department of Government Efficiency dons Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have broken ground on their new taxpayer-funded palace, the architectural plans of which look suspiciously like a Cybertruck. HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has received a standing ovation from Congress after announcing that children will be given brain worms at birth instead of vaccines. Attorney General Matt Gaetz has just announced that people who successfully stand their ground will be mailed a sticker from DOJ.How

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00:48:22

Brian Highsmith

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/10/08

On this week’s podcast, we’re going more local than we’ve ever gone before, discussing the pleasures and perils of the company town. Here to be our local guide through this topic, and discussing his forthcoming paper, “Governing the Company Town” is Brian Highsmith — a former student of David’s, Ph.D. candidate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University, an academic fellow in law and political economy at Harvard Law School, and an affiliated senior researcher at Yale Law School’s Arthur

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00:51:08

Melissa Schwartzberg

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/09/24

Good news, listeners! Our rational and responsive representatives in Washington have agreed to keep the federal government running through December 20. (As far as we know, anyway.) You might be tired of the all the backroom dealing it seems to take to keep national parks open and the wheels of our country turning. Get it together, you grumble. But as realists in the world of legal theory, we wanted to ask: what would it mean to take legislative dealmaking seriously, and is it possible for deals to

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01:08:59

Jack Balkin

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/09/10

Welcome back, dear listeners, to season nine of Digging a Hole! We’re just as surprised as you are that we haven’t been taken off the air yet, but we’re here and ready to keep producing hit after hit— at least while Yale Law School keeps funding us, anyway. After a summer of roller-coaster legal and political action, we’re ready to help you navigate the turbulent times ahead. But before we get to current events, it’s worth dwelling on history. And today we’re excited to have on the pod our colleague

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01:02:22

Dylan Penningroth

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/05/30

With the long weekend in the books, summer’s officially here. School’s out, and we can’t imagine why people would be thinking about American universities – has anything interesting or controversial been happening on campus recently? (Our field correspondent David Pozen reports.) Anyway, today’s episode is the last episode of the season, and we’re excited to let this one linger in your minds for the next few months. Today’s very special guest is the MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning Dylan C

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01:04:14

Mehrsa Baradaran

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/05/23

We’re almost at the end of our season, just as the biggest sports leagues in the world come to the end of theirs (as our guest today says, it all revolves around oil, and maybe a bit of corruption and looting). Speaking of today’s guest, we’ve got on an expert in banking and the racial wealth gap whose biography will probably surprise you at every turn: Mehrsa Baradaran, Professor of Law at the University of California Irvine School of Law, who takes us on a tour of her new book The Quiet Coup:

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00:56:44

Kunal Parker

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/04/30

Dear listeners, this season has been riveting, and it’s been a little controversial. Some of you have written in (if you listen to this episode, you’ll see we’ve graced certain aggrieved parties with a response). We see you, we hear you, and boy, do we have a classic legal theory podcast for you. Today’s guest is Kunal Parker, Professor and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami School of Law, here to talk about his fabulous new book The Turn to Process: American Legal,

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00:53:28

Noah Feldman

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/04/16

On today’s podcast, we’re excited to welcome back former Digging a Hole guest Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. We take a break from legal theory and indulge Feldman in a discussion about his new book, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People. In this episode, which was adapted from a conversation between Feldman and Sam at Yale Law School, we dive into Feldman’s theory of Judaism as a theology of struggle, his taxonomy of Jewry,

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01:05:52

David Pozen

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/03/12

Have you ever wondered about the legal history of the war on drugs? Even if you haven’t, we won’t mollycoddle you – this episode’s a trip. Our guest on today’s podcast is a scholar of constitutional law and information law known for really getting in the weeds and dunking what we think we know in an acid bath. We’re delighted to have joining us today the radical David Pozen, Charles Keller Beekman Professor at Columbia Law School, here to talk about his far out new book, The Constitution of the War

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01:01:07

Daryl Levinson

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/03/05

Listeners, law professors have been having a bit of a crisis. Those poor souls have been asking: is international law real? (No comment.) What about constitutional law – that has to be real, right? The New York Times ran an op-ed this week where con law professors more or less said, “no, but we’ll keep pretending as long as we can.” (As Calvin Trillin wrote in 1984, what if con law “really wasn’t the ideal place for a smart boy with a social conscience to go?”) Feeling down in the dumps, we brought

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01:17:11

Robert Post

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2024/02/20

Welcome back, devoted listeners, and say hello to season eight of Digging a Hole, where we’ve got an extraordinarily stacked lineup just waiting in the wings. To make up for the cold, cold months where you had to get your legal theory fix from reading articles (boring) or attending faculty workshops (ugh), we’re kicking off the season with a mammoth episode about a mammoth book. Today’s guest is the former dean and current Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and Co-Reporter for the

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01:04:26

Cass Sunstein

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast ·

2023/12/11

Like George Santos’s tenure in Washington and Tim Scott’s rousing presidential campaign, all good things must come to an end, and so we wave goodbye to season seven of Digging a Hole. Our last guest of this season needs no introduction: according to our team of in-house scientists, if you stacked a penny for each citation he’s received, the tower of pennies would reach almost 1,000 feet high (which, frankly, is not as tall as our scientists expected but is taller than any other scholar’s penny

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73 results

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