99% Invisible - Intro to a new Roman Mars podcast: What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

Special introductory episode to a new podcast produced by Roman Mars and Elizabeth Joh. Professor Elizabeth Joh teaches Intro to Constitutional Law and most of the time this is a pretty straight forward job. But with Trump in office, everything … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is not 99% of its bowl, but I am Roman Mars. So I created a secret side project podcast with a friend of mine. The goal was to take some of my anxiety about the political news and turn it into something constructive and fun and interesting and share it with people.

And I hope you like it, I hope you subscribe, I hope you tell all your friends, let's send it to the top of the charts, that would be nice. I want to take all of this energy and do something good, like learning the US Constitution. So here's the introductory episode, thanks. The whole idea for this series came from a tweet. It was by Elizabeth Jo, she's a professor at the UC Davis School of Law, and I know her personally because our kids go to the same elementary school. Elizabeth's tweet read, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit so it sounds better when I read it out loud.

Teaching constitutional law in 2017 means glancing at Twitter every five minutes before a class First I laughed then I retweeted it and then I wondered What does that mean exactly? I mean I kind of have an idea what constitutional law is It's a class that's sometimes called the structural aspect of the Constitution that is the aforementioned law professor Elizabeth Cho So I talk about things like the separation of powers. What are the different powers of the president versus Congress? I also talk about federalism, so how much power Congress has as opposed to state legislatures? It's nothing but it's usually a requirement if you're going to be a lawyer.

It's a class I love teaching a lot. I admit that not every student loves it. And I can see why. For example, the very first case I assign on the first day of class every year is a case that was written in 1803. It's called Marbury versus Madison. It's a big deal and we'll talk about it at some point.

But all you need to know right now is that the first sentence of that case is 60 words long. And the verb comes in the middle, so it's pretty dry, but this year has been a little bit different. And why is it different? Oh, you know why. This is what Trump can teach us about Con Law, an ongoing series of indefinite length where we take the extreme actions of the Chief Executive of the United States

and channel that chaos into learning our Constitution like we never have before. I'm your fellow student and host, Roman Mars. Coming up, we're going to law school, but in a fun way, and it's meant for everybody. But first, we gotta pay some bills. It's still gonna be cheaper than law school. But first, we gotta pay some bills. It's still gonna be cheaper than law school. Support for Trump Con Law comes from Squarespace. As you can tell from the existence of this side project podcast of mine, I like to take on new creative projects just because I can't help myself.

If you're about to embark on a new project, you should announce it to the world with a cool website from Squarespace. Their award-winning templates are the simplest and most beautiful way to present your ideas online. Even someone like me who has no business coding at all can create a beautiful website with Squarespace's all-in-one platform. There's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade. Ever.

For free trial and 10% off your first purchase, visit squarespace.com slash con law. That's all one word. That's squarespace.com slash con law. So the bread and butter of law professors are hypotheticals. Professors love hypotheticals, crazy things that happen, that they sort of think about in their minds, what if? What could happen? And so it's the sort of thing that is not realistic always,

but it's a way to get law students to think about what are the limits of law. For example, here's a crazy hypothetical. Could a former president sue a sitting president for libel for making false statements about him? I'm sure you're like, well, that's impossible, but it is possible. In this new reality, that's not a crazy hypothetical. President Trump tweeted that President Obama had illegally tapped his phones during the election process. He said it was at the level of Watergate, and he called him a bad or sick guy.

It doesn't appear to have any proof, but that's what he tweeted. And this new window into the mind of Trump has changed the way Professor Joe prepares for class. Before this year, when I prepared to teach each day's class for a constitutional law, typically I would read what I had assigned, look through my notes from the previous year, go teach class. Her procedure is a little bit different this year. This year I had a little ongoing note to myself, do not go to class until I have checked whether

the president has tweeted. If the president has tweeted, screenshot the tweets and discuss with class. So when Roman, when you brought up the idea of having some basic explanations about Conla, I thought, what a terrific idea. There are so many constitutional issues that this presidency has brought up. Whether you're testing mathematical models or automobile crashes, I think you will learn a lot about something by testing the extremes. So I like this idea that maybe we have a president who's kind of stressed testing the Constitution, really giving us a sense of what are the limits of each of the

different provisions that he seems to be challenging in the Constitution. And that's really important because it turns out it's forcing us to think about things and wonder, well, do we have answers to some of these questions? For example, when can Trump treat the presidency like the apprentice and declare you're fired? When can the administration declare it's going to cut off funds to sanctuary cities? When the president talks about so-called courts, should we be worried about that? Yes, you should be worried that's solid, yes, but we'll do an episode about it nonetheless. What about impeachment? Is that going to happen? I think it's actually practically pretty unlikely,

but everybody's talking and wondering about this portion of the Constitution, so it's important to understand what it's about. Maybe even more interesting is that we're dusting off parts of the Constitution that people hardly even considered in 200 years. So for example, uh, present Trump just went overseas. He got a gold medal while he was in Saudi Arabia. Can he keep that shiny gold medal? Is that the kind of thing that's barred by the emoluments clause of the Constitution? Or what about owning the Trump hotel or property in other countries? Plus, there's this hardly considered part of the Constitution that liberals are salivating over. Could a president be declared unfit to serve and then removed from office? That's the 25th amendment. These questions don't generally make it into

the basic constitutional law textbooks. Because really no one has cared about them before. They're not relevant, that's the basic answer. It's kind of relevant now. So this is a real opportunity. I think when it comes to the Constitution, this should be a moment to care a lot about the Constitution. And it's not an onerous task. It's short.

It's less than 5,000 words. You know, we're both Californians here, so I'll give you an example of the California Constitution. The California Constitution is 100 pages long. It's one of the longest in the world. So by contrast, the federal Constitution, you can read in one sitting. It's pretty easy. It's also a remarkably stable document. The federal Constitution's only been changed or amended, 27 times, and really only 17 times, since the first 10, the Bill of Rights were erratified very shortly after the original constitution.

California Constitution, we love changing stuff, we get tired of it. We've actually changed our state constitution over 500 times. California is stuff to cliche. So what's my conclusion here? It turns out that in 2017, I've decided that Trump can teach you a lot about Conlaw. So we're going to learn the Constitution together because of Trump, because I need something to hold on to, and the Constitution is the life raft our forefathers gave us. And damn it, I'm going to learn how it works. A preview of what's coming up this season on Trump Con Law after this.

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Go to ziprecruiter.com slash conlaw. That's ziprecruiter.com slash conlaw. This season on what Trump can teach us about Con Law. Think of a few things that have made the headlines. So-called courts, the president refers to the judiciary as so-called, he really raises a question about judicial legitimacy. That's going to take us back in time to Youngstown, Ohio, President Truman and the Korean War. President Trump has threatened sanctuary cities. Why is that even an issue for the federal government to talk about?

That's because of the spending clause. Trump wants to build a border wall, and we're still not sure who's going to pay for it. But one thing that's absolutely clear is that if you're going to build a physical wall all along the Southern United States, you have to take people's private property. And that involves the takings clause.

We are probably gonna get a lot stricter with the border in all kinds of places, not just with the physical border of the United States, but also at international airports. And many more people are raising concerns that their cell phones and laptops are getting looked at by border patrol. What happens when you are asked to provide the contents of your cell phone or laptop?

Why can that happen? Can it happen? And that has to do with the fourth amendments so-called border doctrine. So every week, I'm inviting you and Elizabeth Jo over to my house to teach us these topics and so, so many more on. What Trump can teach us about Con Law? It's gonna be fun and you're gonna get smarter and be a better citizen.

Bring the kids they're gonna like it too. Subscribe now in Apple Podcasts, Radio Public or wherever you get your podcasts. The first full episode is already there, it's waiting for you. Go to trumpconlaw.com for a link. This show is produced by Elizabeth Cho and me Roman Mars. All the music and trumpcon laws provided by Doom Tree Records, the Midwest Hip Hop Collective. The two big takeaway lessons from this show are learn the Constitution and buy Doom Tree Records because both will make your life 100% better.

The tracks this week were from Sims, Dessa, and Laserbeak. We are a proud member of Radio Topia from PRX. Find out more at radiotopia.fm. Radio Topia. From PRX. you