Advisory Opinions - Mailbag: Majority Rule and Philosophy Majors

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Sarah and David take a break from the news to answer listeners' questions: How should fans approach the hosts in public? Does intent matter in constitutional law? Would making it easier to amend the Constitution fix everything? Also: -Policy solutions vs. social solutions -The issue with JD/MBAs -The First Amendment and the Israel-Hamas war -Ethics among lawyers -Congressional review of judicial review -Exclusionary rules -Legal career changes -Dworkinism -Get a lawyer -Civil asset forfeiture -Most accurate legal procedural Show notes: -McKay Coppins interview -AO episode with David's plumbing experience -AO episode on progressive legal philosophy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maple Syrup, we love you, but Canada is way more. It's poutine mixed with kimchi, maple syrup on Halo Halo, Montreal-style bagels eaten in Brandon, Manitoba. Here, we take the best from one side of the world and mix it with the other. And you can shop that whole world right here in our aisles. Find it all here with more ways to save at Real Canadian Superstore. This ad for Fizz is only 25 seconds long, but we had to pay for 30. Those leftover five seconds shouldn't just disappear, right? It's kind of like what happens

to your unused mobile data at the end of each month. Except at Fizz, your unused data from the end of the month rolls over so you can use it the next month. Hey, you paid for it, so keep it. Try the other side. Get started at PHYS.ca. If you need some time to think it over, here's five seconds. Ah, do, da-da-dee-da, do-da-do-do. Certain conditions apply. Details at PHYS.ca. You ready? I was born ready.

Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isger, that's David French. And it's a mailbag episode. Thank you to all of you who hopped in the comments, including those of you who signed up to be members of the dispatch. Just so you could ask us questions. Yeah, of course, we're going to make sure we get to as many as possible. So in that spirit, David, these are going to be lightning round, right? We're not going to spend 30 minutes per question. We're going to try to get through as many as possible. And if there's some really good ones that we don't get to, which is almost certainly going to be the case, we're just going to tack on some mailbags

to the end of a few episodes here until we feel like we've gotten through a good chunk of them. That sound good? Perfect. So three questions, 20 minutes each. That's right. Okay. Okay.

First one. Let's say we happen to be at the same airport with time to kill before our respective flights leave. I would love to just sit, have a chat and ask questions about your areas of expertise. What method of approach and introduction would give me the best chance of successfully making that happen? That's a good question. I think it's just, hey, are you David French? I'm an advisory opinions listener.

And then I'm like, you're obviously a scholar and a gentleman, like if it's a guy who's approached me. And then it's then, yeah, that's just a great entree. If I've got time, if I'm not hustling to get on a plane or something, I'm happy to talk.

I was on an airplane not long ago, Sarah. I've said this story where, you know how you're in an airplane and you're sitting in your seat and you're just looking down and you're reading your stuff. And at the end of the flight, got up, looked at the person next to me and she said,

oh, you're David French. I listen to advisory opinions. You mean I could have been asking you questions for two hours? So yeah, just say hi. Okay, so David's an extrovert and, you know, likes people. I am the opposite of both of those things in a lot of ways. So first of all, if you're sitting next to me on a plane, nope, sorry. No talking rule on planes. That's a no go. I mean, we can

like exchange some pleasantries, but, but like plane time for me is a sacred time of silence and reflection and usually a nap. In the airport, I do feel differently about that because I'm not trapped. Like I can get away. So yeah, I think that's a good intro. Hi, I listen to advisory opinions. What's up? Had that being said, I usually arrive to the airport about 35 minutes before my flight. So goodbye. All right. Next up, and this is a new member, David. Okay.

One thing I rarely hear discussed when it comes to Republican laws, such as the Stop Woke Act in Florida, is the intent behind the law. But you are often willing to discuss intent when it comes to Democrat-led laws. What role should intent play, if any, in the United States Supreme Court's rulings? It seems reasonable to a non-lawyer like me to ask, what was the intended goal of this law and does this outcome make us closer or further away from that intent? Yeah, okay, that's a really good question. So on the Stop Woke Act, intent really isn't relevant. The language of the act itself is pretty plainly unconstitutional as applied in particular to private corporations and to professors in public universities. So

there isn't really a need to even try to go beyond the text at all. There isn't an ambiguity that needs to be cleared up. The reason that you look at intent is when there's language that's ambiguous and you're trying to figure out what that language means. Right. If the language isn't ambiguous, the intent doesn't matter because you look at what they actually did. And then you get the conservative problem where even in ambiguous laws, conservatives, and here, of course, we're referring to legal conservatives, would say you still don't look at legislative intent because legislative intent is incredibly hard to discern. So one person gives a floor speech, but 100 people voted for it.

Is the one person's statement more important than what the 99 were thinking? What if that statement, you know, something you might say publicly about what you think about the act could be very different than how you wrote it. And maybe you do that intentionally, right? So there's all sorts of reasons why conservatives don't think the legislative record and legislative intent should matter. And that that's why, for instance, you do sort of this text history tradition analysis. Text first, is it ambiguous? Then you're going to go to that history, original public meaning of the text. Again, not the legislative intent. And look, you might be trying to discern what a word means and go back to see how the legislators

were using that word, maybe. But for something like the Stop Woke Act, David, I think that's exactly right. There's not an ambiguity we're trying to resolve. It's whether the thing that's there is legal or not, and there's debate over that. Yeah. And the other thing that's important to distinguish

when you're talking about originalism, you're not talking about original intent. You're talking about original public meaning. In other words, what was the public meaning of this provision when it was ratified, when it was enacted? Now, the other area where intent, but there is an area where intent really matters, and that's in retaliation, in a retaliation case. So often in a retaliation case, what you're dealing with is a government act that in many circumstances would be completely legal and fine, such as firing an employee, moving someone to a different shift, et cetera, et cetera. But if it's done for retaliatory purposes, then it becomes unlawful. And that's where you really have to dive in

to motivation, intent, et cetera. All right, next up, context. I'm a pretty young conservative. And in my college studies, I took a particular interest in comparative politics. Since I like to think that I am a pretty institutional guy, I am particularly fond of how constitutions are drafted and organized, different structures of government, things included and not included. The United States has a very old and very successful constitution. On one hand, isn't broken, shouldn't fix it.

But on the other hand, our politics doesn't seem very healthy. So let me get to the question. We all love our constitution, but part of conservatism is incremental institutional change. What would be a few constitutional amendments that you would like to see added to the U.S. Constitution? Let's hear some ideas that are good while also realistic and then put on the infinity gauntlet and let's hear what the omnipotent David would do. omnipotent David would do. The omnipotent David. So I'll give the realistic question or answer before David can get it, give his omnipotence answer. Um, the realistic answer, and this is shared by Justice Scalia, Justice Breyer, and me. So really all three of us on equal footing there in terms of how we should amend the Constitution, make amending

the Constitution easier. I've talked about this before, and I don't have some set way that it must be, but I certainly think proposing an amendment could be made much easier if even then we keep the ratification process at the high bar that it's at, because we do want serious and a lot of buy-in from the states for a lot of buy-in from the states for a lot of reasons. You don't want the big states ganging up on the little states. You don't want the liberal states ganging up on the conservative states, whatever that may be. I think ratification should always have a high bar, but the proposal process doesn't need to be a particularly high bar. And I think you're exactly right. There's a lot of it's not broken,

don't fix it stuff to be said out there. But if you want the Constitution to be followed, and you want, I think, textualism and originalism to survive, then you also need to allow the Constitution to change with consent of the governed. And that's where I think we're running up against a problem is that nobody believes that it's even worth trying to have an amendment process right now, because it's never going to happen. And so then they try all these end runs and those aren't healthy for our democracy. Yeah, I agree with you completely about amending the Constitution.

It needs to be easier. There is also an issue that is, and a lot of conservatives are not going to like what I'm about to say, but let me make my case. The way in which the Senate and the Electoral College are constructed right now is moving us into a dangerous position. So if you go back and you look at sort of, you know, when we're talking about originally every state having the same number of senators. The gap between the largest states and the smallest states wasn't anything like what we have now. And then with the super clustering of people in urban centers, for example, going to be pretty quickly moving into a position where about 30 percent of the country elects about 70 percent of the Senate. And we're moving in that direction really quickly. about 70% of the Senate. And we're moving in that direction really quickly. Now, that also has knock-on distortion effects when it comes to the race for president. And so, at some point,

you just can't point at the original structure of the Constitution and say, too bad, so sad, if you move to a position of continual minoritarian rule. And that is a problem, guys. You just can't say to an increasingly larger majority of Americans, too bad, so sad, this is the way this thing was set up. Because the bottom line is, I don't know that it would be set up this way with the population disparities as big as they are. So we're kind of in uncharted territory here. So I do think that there is some real, if I had to put, and I was researching this for my book about American divisions, and this is something I drilled down on quite a bit. If I had to put a kind of an overgeneralized point, I would say that in many ways, conservatives are worried about majoritarian tyranny

and liberals are concerned about minoritarian rule. And both of them are a problem. Okay. Both of them are a problem. Majoritarian tyranny is a problem that is dealt with in many of the counter majoritarian elements of the Constitution. But guess what? My consistent as opposed to very uniquely aberrational minoritarian rule is a giant, giant issue. And just sort of pointing back and saying, you know, Senate to per state, suck it libs is not like the answer over time. As others have pointed out, it will be very funny. I would say if, but let's just be real. When, because this is how this show seems to be run by the grand makers of this reality TV show we're all living in. When Donald Trump wins the popular vote

and loses the electoral college in 2024. Gonna be a whole lot of shifting in the seats, I think. That's right. All right. So this was such a good question of someone who, look, James, who asked this question, I am concerned that you're spending too much time in my life. So James heard the

podcast that I did with Steve Hayes interviewing McKay Coppins about his new book about Mitt Romney. It, by the way, that book is bananas bonkers and not the political tell-all stuff that you're going to see like quoted in places, but the human psychology element to me was so fascinating. I feel like I've struggled with many of the, you know, cognitive dissonance and juxtaposition of different things that Mitt Romney has, which makes me think it's very universal to humans. And so it was a weird, weird thing to read in some ways, because I worked for the guy twice and yeah, I don't know. So he said he listened to that podcast and noted that I said how I don't read political biographies and I generally

avoid them, which is true. And then he says, it seems plausible that Carly Fiorita's two books, however, were mandated reading for me on the campaign. You're right. They were. Oh, is that right? Okay. Of course they were. And he said, the first book, Tough Choices, is heavily focused on the campaign. You're right, they were. Oh, is that right? Of course they were. And he said, the first book, Tough Choices, is heavily focused on the struggle she faces as a woman in a misogynistic environment with identity politics being right at the core of the book. Her second book, Rising to the Challenge,

repeatedly claims that she would never make the sort of arguments that she makes in her first, focusing instead on the virtues of gender and race neutral policies. And basically is like, what you think, which one's right. Based on our conversation last week, David, where I talked about, you know, the problems, the inherent contradictions in conservative women. You know what?

I'm going to square these for you or circle these squares. Oh, I'm interested. I probably would quibble with the description of the two books, but like, let's not, let's just take, I'm interested. descriptively there was going to be a lot of misogyny in that. There's the famous story, famous to me at least, where, you know, she says, I don't want to be left out of client meetings to like the all male team that she's trying to work with. And they said, yeah, yeah, of course, no problem. The next meeting's at a strip club because they thought there was no way she'd go. So she rolls into the strip club and is like, great. How's everyone doing? Let's do this. Let's have this meeting. Like that's obviously misogyny. It's descriptive. So then in Tough Choices, I think you get a more proscriptive book about what she thinks the policy should be. that I was talking about from Rachel Brand when we were talking to Lisa Blatt,

where she says, if you look for discrimination around every corner, you'll find it. Like descriptively, it might be true that everyone's a misogynist and all these horrible things have happened. But if you keep looking for it, you're going to find it.

It may be true. It may not be true, actually. But it doesn't really matter because the question is what you're going to do about it. And if you're not solving the problem in front of you, it doesn't matter if you can describe the problem in front of you. And so I think the second book's much more on solving the problem, which to her is having race and gender neutral policies. And we've talked, David, a lot about affirmative action from a legal context. We've talked about it some from a policy context. And when you poll people who affirmative action is intended to help,

the polling might not be what you think it is. Right. Because it can be, you know, we saw this when President Biden said that he was going to appoint, only consider black women for the next Supreme Court spot. Well, then there was this assumption that therefore, now Justice Jackson wasn't the most qualified person for the job. That's the problem when you have non-race and gender neutral policies is that it puts a burden on people who actually, Justice Jackson would have been the top of anyone's list regardless of her race or gender. burden on people who actually, Justice Jackson would have been the top of anyone's list regardless

of her race or gender. I would also say that it's one thing that you can identify a problem. And there are all kinds of ways of remedying the problem, social, cultural, political, religious. And what a lot of people do when you identify a problem, for a lot of reasons, especially say on a legal podcast, then the immediate next question is what is the legal remedy for this problem? And oftentimes, something can be a problem for which a very proactive legal remedy may not be entirely appropriate or an exclusive focus on politics. A predominant focus on politics can be a problem because if you're throwing

all your eggs in that basket, A, often you won't accomplish anything because as we know, political reform is very, very difficult. And B, you might be just dealing with the smallest aspect and manifestation of the problem, ultimately, that that's the social, social, cultural reform, for example, that's the truly meaningful and

profound reform. And one of the things I'm going to just bear with me on this analogy, because it's not exactly one to one, but across all developed countries and economies, birth rates are falling pretty, pretty dramatically. I mean, if you go to South Korea, for example, I believe they're now to less than one kid per couple. But everywhere, birth rates are falling. And a lot of people immediately say, what can we do politically to deal with this? What are the policies that we can enact to deal with this? And so far, I mean, yeah, there are some walks who will say, well, you did this and it bumped up. It appears to bump up the birth rate by point two for 18 months.

But then the benefit began to run. You know, we've not seen a political solution move the needle on it really at all in a meaningful way. in a meaningful way, there are a lot of problems that are more conducive or a lot of issues that are more conducive to social, cultural, religious, for example, reform

than say political and public policy. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos. She'll love looking

back on your childhood memories and seeing what you're up to today. Even better, with unlimited storage and an easy to use app, you can keep updating mom's frame with new photos. So it's the gift that keeps on giving. And to be clear, every mom in my life has this frame. Every mom I've ever heard of has this frame. This is my go-to gift. My parents love it. I upload photos all the time. I'm just like bored watching TV at the end of the night. I'll hop on the app and put up the photos from the day. It's really easy. Right now, Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $30 off plus free shipping on their best-selling frame. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. Use code ADVISORY at checkout

to save. Terms and conditions apply. All right, next up. Is a JD philosophy PhD worth pursuing for anyone interested in some form of a legal career? And if so, under what circumstances? And it says, I know at least one of our two lovely hosts isn't too hot on philosophy, but it undergirds quite a few topics discussed at length on this show. First of all, I think you're talking about me saying I don't like philosophy and you're misunderstanding. I don't understand philosophy. Big difference. I'm married to a philosophy major, I think. Pretty sure. It was either philosophy or classics, but no, it was philosophy.

He was a philosophy major. Okay. Okay, but that all being said, like, so philosophy majors, brilliant, smart, smarter than I am. I don't get philosophy. I've tried really hard, especially modern philosophy.

Nope. I took a philosophy of science class that should have been my wheelhouse. Couldn't understand a bit of it. I don't think a JD slash is ever a good idea. Pick, like you're not an undergrad anymore. Having double majors in undergrad is a great idea. You're just maximizing opportunities.

By grad school, have a focus, unless the slash is itself what you're trying to do. Like if you're trying to become a professor, you know, in the philosophy department and you think a law degree, you know, that's the specific type of philosophy stuff you want to teach, then great. Maybe a JD slash philosophy PhD is a good idea. But if it's just, I want to practice law at a law firm, should I get my PhD in philosophy also? Will that help me? No. And David, you and I have talked about this. It comes up a lot more in the context of JD MBAs.

Yeah. And you and I, I think together, don't know anyone who's gotten a JD MBA. I met the first one. Oh my God. As I was about to say, who's ever pursued the JD side? They end up getting the JD MBA and then just doing business stuff.

Now, again, like there's asterisk to everything. If you want to do bankruptcy law, a JD MBA probably does make aisk to everything. If you want to do bankruptcy law, a JD MBA probably does make a lot of sense. If you want to do constitutional law, it doesn't. If you want to be a C-suite executive, it doesn't. At Mitt Romney, I asked him whether I should get a JD MBA and like, no, he never used the JD. What a waste. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would say, so first, no aspersions on philosophy majors. My son's a philosophy major. My son-in-law's a philosophy major.

They're both going, my son-in-law's already in law school. My son is hoping to go to law school. So philosophy to law school, two thumbs up. Also, it's the only thing you can do. Well, you know, I was political science to law school and there was a similar-'s the only thing you can do. Well, you know, I was political science to law school and there was a similar, a very similar dynamic in play. Like no one's hiring like political scientists, third shift, you know, and so especially B.A. political scientists, third shift. Now, there is an element of this that if you have the time, the desire, the margin for this, there is a life of the mind element that a sheer joy in learning and knowing things in study that I think has an immense intangible value, but don't go into a JD philosophy PhD or a JD divinity or whatever.

Don't go into it with the thought that this is going to be extremely useful in my law practice. That is not necessarily the case, except maybe niche aspects. But if you like to learn and you like the life of the mind, which does have real value and you have the time and you have the resources, I don't think that's any problem at all. But don't go into it with this idea that I'm giving myself a leg up. Fair. All right, next up. Both parties seem to be walking a very fine line with the First Amendment and free speech. Oh, you mean both political parties, not us. I was like, what?

We are. No, we're zealots. We're crazy people. We're zealots. Yeah, no, both political parties. Fine line. Also not sure I'd use that term for that, but okay. Other direction.

Okay. Are you concerned that the Israel-Has issue will erode our free speech rights? I've seen quite a few tweets lately from GOP candidates conveniently merging violent speech, quote unquote, with national security and speech I hate with calls to ban and a lot of other things that terrify me. and a lot of other things that terrify me. Lol. So, David, let me give you a really concrete example. Last night, now two nights ago, I guess, on George Washington's University, students used one of those like laser projector things to project onto the library,

which, by the way, was named after a Jewish person. You know, honor the martyrs, among other things. But that one pretty clearly seemed to celebrate, if not call for, the killing of Jews. There were then calls that the school should expel those students. Now, David, for a second, I want you to take out the context of like whether they were allowed to project lights on the library, sort of the more technical, like did they violate some rules about property or whatever? Take out the time, place and manner. Yeah. Let's just talk about the speech here. Yeah. Should they be expelled for having the odious opinion that we should honor the martyrs of Hamas.

No, no. Now, you know, look, GW is a private institution. It can fashion the speech rules that it wants to fashion. But if you have a university that supports and upholds academic freedom and free speech, as that has been traditionally and properly understood, freedom and free speech as that has been traditionally and properly understood, that is not, in my view, that's not a hard call. It's protected speech. Let's make it a little more explicit for them. What if they put up there, kill all the Jews?

There's a lot of Jewish students at GW's campus. Can you expel them for saying kill all the Jews? They're not doing anything to kill all the Jews. They're just saying, I support killing all the Jews. I'll change it to, I support killing all the Jews. Right. Okay. So there is a line. So Title VI, for example, is going to require, and Title IX is going to require universities, both public and private, that receive federal funds to protect students from harassment. Okay. And so there is a line of that once there is a line that once it's crossed means harassment. And it's not typically a line that is related to the actual viewpoint of the speech. It's often related to the time, place and manner of the speech, sort of where is it happening, how relentless is it. You know, the phrase that's used is severe or pervasive, sometimes severe and pervasive.

But the general rule, it has to be so severe and pervasive that it deprives you of the benefit of the academic program. So it's a high bar for actual harassment. And we've actually, on the podcast, we've talked about what is the case law regarding, say, a single use of the N-word. Can that constitute harassment? Is that severe enough to constitute harassment, say, in the employment context? So there is a line of conduct that can cross over into harassment. I don't think there's any real credible argument that that sign that we saw projected on the building crosses that line, but there are things that can be said and done that do cross the line into harassment, but it's a really high bar.

And by the way, your overall question was on should we be worried about free speech rights? Yes, obviously. 100% from both parties. Absolutely. I like using the example of Newsom and DeSantis because I think they're very, very similar. They just have different underlying beliefs. But like philosophically, they're in the same place. Gavin Newsom signs a law in California that barred doctors from discussing with their patients anything about COVID that was not accepted by the majority of doctors, basically, or the scientific consensus, contemporary scientific consensus, with no thought to how contemporary scientific consensus might change, how it changes. It might be from people speaking out loud. And then, of course, you have the, I think, far more publicized. And I think it's a shame that

one was publicized a lot more than the other, frankly, because they're the same thing to me. Both were enjoined, by the way. The Newsom Law was enjoined immediately, as were DeSantis' Stop Woke Act stuff, which also barred then professors from talking about their opinions on controversial topics regarding race or gender. So, yeah. Yeah, I have made this point a million times. Gavin Newsom is Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is Gavin Newsom.

They just censor different things. Finkel is Einhorn. Einhorn is Finkel. Do you even, do you know the movie? I have, no. I just, no. Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Oh, I've seen that.

That's a deep pull though. That is a long, how old were you when you saw Pet Detective? I wasn't that young. Didn't that come out in the late nineties? You might've been like 12. Okay, it was 1994. I was literally 12.

Good call. 12 is the perfect age for that movie. Are you kidding? No wonder it made such an imprint. Although I was 25 when that came out, and I was the perfect age for that movie as well. You were a male. You were the perfect gender for that movie at any age.

All right, legal ethics. There are increasing instances of misbehavior by lawyers. By the way, I don't know if that's true, but they're increasingly publicized. Prominent, yes. You have the authority to discipline lawyers who violate the code of professional responsibility

in any relevant state. What discipline would you mete out to Kevin Clinesmith, who falsified the facts in an affidavit to the FISA court and received a one-year suspension of his license to practice law? What about Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesbrough? They're saying it's Chesbrough. That's a dumb way to pronounce that. I'm going to keep saying cheese, bro, until I'm told otherwise. And Jenna Ellis. This is a really easy answer. And I actually don't think we talk enough about legal ethics on this podcast, David, in part, because like, if you're not a lawyer, what do you care? But as much as I think the number one amendment for me in the constitution is to make amending the constitution easier. The number one change I would make to legal ethics in the country is disbarring a lot more people.

I don't mean on the margin. I don't mean in the prominent cases. I mean, a lot more people. I don't mean on the margin. I don't mean in the prominent cases. I mean a lot more people. So it's a really easy answer for me. Disbar them all and not as punishment and not as some sort of both sides ism thing, but because, uh, being a lawyer should be a privilege and a high privilege is that, and instead, um, the, the thumb has been put on the scale of, you know, forgiveness and people make mistakes. And I just, I think we've balanced the scales really wrong. There's lots of, you know, if you're a total nerd, you can go read some of the cases that go before your bar ethics committee. You know, lawyers embezzling client funds. That should be disbarred. That shouldn't be a suspension.

Lawyers, I mean, this was the case in that ADA Supreme Court thing, David, where the lawyer's being disciplined. And so now that discipline hasn't been meted out yet. But in that case, remember, he is approving or disapproving settlements without talking to his clients. And, you know, he had those 400 ADA tester cases or more, I'm sure thousands of ADA tester cases. And so he basically wasn't acting as a lawyer for his clients. He was acting as the client and the lawyer and then finding people to sign things who could be the technical client. client and the lawyer, and then finding people to sign things who could be the technical client. Disbarred. I remembered a very, you know, I don't talk about this case too much, but when I was clerking, and you can look this up because I think Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, at least at

one point, had signed up to do the movie version of this. A guy is put on death row. The prosecutor in the case knows that he's framed the guy, and by which I mean hidden evidence that would be exculpatory. He gets cancer and is on his deathbed. He confesses to his best friend, who is also a prosecutor in the office, that he hid exculpatory evidence in this case. Then he dies. What is the best friend? Another prosecutor in the office who I think has an equal responsibility at the point that he learns about this to remedy it. He does nothing. Thankfully, the defense attorneys two weeks before the execution

date find out that this evidence might exist. That person is not put to death. They are in fact released. And what does the Louisiana Bar Association do? Nothing, probation, man. That's it? Yeah, he said he was an alcoholic and I believe also was addicted to drugs at that point and that he was really mourning the loss of his best friend. I'm like, wait a second. Again, you're a lawyer.

So your excuse for why you behaved unethically is that you were also doing other things that you shouldn't be doing as a lawyer, which is being addicted to drugs and alcohol, which it's not that that's, it's not a moral question. It's whether you can perform the duties acceptably and ethically as a lawyer, if you're having addiction issues. So I'm so glad as that, as you got to the end of that story, you raised the addiction issues. Because I would say, so there's a couple of things that I've noticed in practice. One is, if you're going to touch client funds, the hammer of justice will come down on you swiftly and severely. There are so many things other than touching client funds for which there seems to be an incredible amount of patients. And I've always wondered about that.

And then, you know, but when you look at a lot of these cases, what you'll find is they're related to substance abuse. And so often what the bar will do is they'll treat that wrongdoing almost like a medical issue, if that makes sense, that this is what happens when someone is addicted. And if they can get clean, then bring them back, give them their law license back. law because lawyers have a lot of substance abuse. So I tend to be more along your line, Sarah. I tend to look at the practice of law as a privilege, not a right. Heck, that's the way I look at all kinds of professions. I wrote this whole piece months and months and months ago, actually probably more than a year ago, in my Sunday newsletter at the Dispatch about this college football coach named Hugh Freeze, who had recruiting violations, is very outspoken Christian, but got caught with an escort service. And what's he do? He lands at Liberty University coaching football. And then he goes from Liberty University coaching football onto

Auburn coaching football. And this sort of this view of, well, of course, can't you forgive him for what he's done wrong? And I'm thinking, yes, you can absolutely forgive somebody for what they've done wrong. But this sort of idea that you get to go back to this high position of trust that you once had, that's where I dispute. That's what I dispute. And I raised this story of the British politician, the Profumo affair, who was caught with a young woman who I believe, as the story goes, was also having an affair with a KGB agent. Not good. And he was defense minister. Not good. And so what's he do? He steps aside from public life permanently. And he goes and serves the poor for the rest of his life.

And by the end of it, he was one of the most respected men in Britain because people knew that's what genuine repentance looks like. It is, I am sorry. I violated the public trust. And I'm not going to impose upon you by asking you to trust me again. I'm just going to do good things in life. And I thought that I think it's one of the more powerful stories. I do like that story. Okay, this is a great question. I think it's one of my favorites from the whole mailbag. You ready? Buckle in. Yes. In the wake of Dobbs, Senator Whitehouse

and AOC, I think, proposed a piece of legislation that would allow for fast-track congressional review of SCOTUS decisions with a filibuster carve-out. Despite the partisan motivation of the original proposal, it's an interesting idea. Thoughts? Fast-track review. Okay, number one,

you cannot do that on constitutional questions. It is not like Congress can overrule the Supreme Court OK, number one, you cannot do that on constitutional questions. It is not like Congress can overrule the Supreme Court on a constitutional adjudication. Sure. But on all of these, make Congress do its job. Yeah. This is a good way to make Congress do its job. Yeah. I mean, I think you could easily fast track legislation in response to Supreme Court adjudication. That's what I think that's.

Well, again, let's forget what the actual proposal is. Let's just talk about the what our proposal would be. That's similar. Yeah, my my. Yes, I think it would be very interesting to have a fast track process to respond to Supreme Court interpretations of regulatory and legislative actions. I think that's I've never thought of that before. I'm intrigued. Sarah, I'd need to think through it before.

I think it would also remove the excuse from Congress that like, oh, they've just got so much, like if there's a fast track option, it also, I think, helps the courts to say like, look, they had this fast track option and they didn't then address it. So we're going to take that as congressional acquiescence. Like, cause there's always that question of like, well, what if you rule this way in Congress doesn't act for 20 years? Is it because they suck or because they actually thought your decision was fine? Um, I think this would also sort of help with those questions in the court. So it would make the courts a little bit healthier in, um, trying to figure out congressional action or versus inaction on major question

doctrine stuff, non-delegation stuff. But also it would maybe make Congress do its job or at least help it do its job. Now on the filibuster carve out part, that's like a whole separate discussion on what I think the filibuster is for, what it's not for, whether it's good or bad. Short version, I think it's good. Yeah, I'm intrigued. I like that. That's good. That is some solid ideation

from our commenters. That's fantastic. I like that. All right. The possibility of a constitutional crisis in the coming months seems to increase by the day. Given the increasing likelihood, does Sarah still stand by her cutting down the forest despite the devil position on all the Trump stuff?

To be frank, I don't know how this all ends without one or more branches of our government taking actions that were hitherto unprecedented for good reason, but may in the near future be justified. But maybe I'm missing something? Look, I'm not going to say you're missing anything. You seem to have a pretty good grasp of this. But sorry, I do stand by it that we don't skirt the laws, expand the laws, shrink the laws to get one guy. That's that. If you do it once, you make that exception once, it's all done from there. So I stand by it. And then you just a criminal trial, right? But at the same time, the existence of 10 million MAGA bullies should not mean that there is a lower bar for prosecuting or convicting Donald Trump. It's apply the law. It's rule of law. If we sit there and we say that

Donald Trump is such a distorting force that we're not going to apply. My view is the rule of law can handle him. I have never really had the view since November 2016 that the voting public can handle Donald Trump so much, but the rule of law can handle this. We have seen across the developed world, heads of state, leaders of government facing criminal sanction for criminal activity in a non-banana republic, very rule of law way, and these nations survive and thrive. So I've tended to go from the other direction where a lot of people say, if you prosecute Trump, that's just too much of a strain. Whereas my view, if you don't prosecute him, when there is reason to prosecute him, that is the greater strain. But at the same

time, I'm with you, Sarah, you don't relax rules of evidence. You don't have a lower threshold for prosecuting him. Just do what you would do if he was a governor, if he was a senator. All right. Oh, another good one. Do you guys have any thoughts about the exclusionary rule? I know that it's become controversial in certain circles, but it seems like it has some value as a deterrent against bad behavior by the police. However, as a law-abiding citizen, that doesn't seem to be very helpful to me. So what would you think about a legal regime where you could sue the police or other government actors for trespass or other torts if they violate your rights, getting rid of qualified immunity in the process, of course?

That would seem to deter bad action by the cops while still maybe keeping more bad guys in jail and enabling me, the law abiding citizen, to have some redress against violations of my rights. So the exclusionary rule means that if the police violate the law, usually the Fourth Amendment in collecting evidence, that we exclude that evidence from trial. Right. If anyone's watched any police procedural and I can't believe you haven't, if you're listening to this podcast, you've seen the exclusionary rule all the time. You've heard fruit of the poisonous tree, inevitable discovery. There's all these terms that come out of this. discovery. There's all these terms that come out of this. But of course, at its root, and by the way, this like blew my mind in law school where like on the first day of crim law, basically, they're like, what if there weren't an exclusionary rule? Why is there an exclusionary rule? You're like, wait, what? OMG. That doesn't make any sense. The person who's punished then is we, the people, and the bad guy goes free, not because they're innocent

or because the law couldn't prove them guilty, but in fact, because we just exclude things to deter the police? That makes no sense. So yeah, I think it's a great question. This has been debated now for many, many decades about what you should do about that. And we've all just kind of settled into the status quo. But David, would you change it? I think so. The reality is there has to be a consequence for violating the Fourth Amendment, for example. And the settlement that we've reached is making it extraordinarily difficult to hold police responsible for violations of civil rights, but making it very easy to essentially say to crime victims that the mistakes of others are going to block you receiving justice for what you've suffered. I don't, I'm not a big fan of that arrangement, Sarah. I'm not a big, now those who, but I will

say this, if you had a rule like the commenter suggests, which is what we do is we admit the evidence, but we punish the police. In other words, the officers are held liable. The interesting, the result of that may not actually ultimately be more justice for crime victims. Because if the consequence is direct and immediate to the police, as opposed to the case, right, the consequence is not to the case, it's to the cop. The question is not, in my view, is not, does that mean we're going to get a lot more evidence in? You probably see cops be a lot more cautious about the way in which they seek evidence. And so I don't know net-net how it, but the person who's a crime victim may be harmed, that feels like a kind of a fundamental justice level wrong. But at the

same time, what would be the actual real world effect of the change? Would it be better for crime victims? I'm dubious about that. Yeah. I know this isn't quite the right use of it, but it's a little bit of a Chesterton's fence problem for me. Yeah. Not that we don't know what the fence is for, which is the real Chesterton's fence thing, but rather we don't quite know what would happen without the fence. And I'm, so I'm hesitant to change, but that's why we're conservatives. Yes. Okay. You guys are cracking me up with all of your stuff on the David's plumbing experience. I just want to read two of them because they're really funny.

At the end of the podcast, during the discussion of David's home plumbing experience, Sarah proved the point that men and women experience life differently. I didn't hear that story as a humble bragging at all. On the contrary, that was just a typical, competent male response to the pipe bursting in the crawl space. Yes. I'm stunned. Advisory Opinions claims to be the premier legal podcast. And yet during the entire discussion about David having saved the house from flood damage, there was zero mention of the law of avoided expenses. Under this law, David is now allowed to purchase any toy or experience he desires,

provided the price of such purchase is lower than the cost of repairs or insurance deductible, whichever is less, that were avoided by his recognition and action in stopping the plumbing league. I am not familiar with that law and I'm adopting it now. That's fantastic. All right, David, you knew this question was coming, but it's a twist on the should I go to law school? Oh, okay. As someone considering a

mid-career change, possibly going into law, what are our dueling pitches on the value of law school then? So that's a really good question. In this case, I'll just, I'll give you the age because the person's 30. Okay. And I will note that my dad went to law school when he was 40.

So I think we should consider the mid-career change in the 30s for our purposes. I would say if you're 30, that's still early career. I think so. But you know, you're going to have to go to law school. You know, like there's still, like's still early career. I think so. But, you know, you're going to have to go to law school. You know, like there's still like this person has applied to law school.

So, you know, we're talking 35, really. Yeah. You know, I still believe in law school is an option, expanding choice. But I would need to know more about their current career. The current career is they're thinking of leaving it. So it's obviously not a passion. Well, if it's a passion. They're thinking of leaving it.

So it's obviously not a passion. Well, if it's a passion, so if they're leaving it for a passion, it's a career that is providing them with options in life, but they're dissatisfied at the present versus a career that's actually quite confining for their options. Because I've had this conversation with mid-career folks before, and every person I've talked to who's considered a mid-career change that I strongly endorsed, their status in their career at that point in time was that, A, they were very unhappy in that job, and that job was not giving them additional options, that they were kind of locked into a path. And so they had to do something quite disruptive to give them that option expanding choice that I think that law school does. Whereas

it's a different thing if you're in a job, in a career, where let's say you have considerable educational credentials already. You have the kind of educational credentials that allow you to hop from one job to another or from one career field to another. In that circumstance, the law school add-on, the law school addition, may not be all that material. In that circumstance, I'm moving to the Sarah camp of, we'll only do that if you have a passion, if you really want to practice law. I think I've given my don't go to law school unless you want to do law version quite a few times. That's the short version that a lot of people go to law school because they hear David and think that they get to be David French when they grow up or something because they have

a law degree. And in fact, I know that you see a lot of lawyers or former lawyers out there doing other things, but compared to the number of people who get law degrees, it's a drop in the bucket. The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of law students become lawyers. And a lot of them don't like practicing law. So again, like try anything you can to figure out whether you'd actually enjoy practicing law, because that's probably what you're going to end up doing. The career change thing, though, is more intriguing to me because I think you have a better chance of knowing more about the law, knowing exactly what type of law you want to practice. And so in my dad's case, I think this is a story worth telling. He was the financial officer of a very, very small apartment company that happened to be run by his uncle. And the company went into bankruptcy.

And so he spent a long time sort of working with the lawyers to try to get this company through the bankruptcy. And at the end, you know, in sort of light at the end of the bankruptcy tunnel. So the story goes, he turned to my mother and said, I'm going to be really sad when this is over. I've really liked the bankruptcy side. And she said, well, can you keep doing that? And he said, well, I'd have to go to law school and become a bankruptcy lawyer. And she like, this is like a bedtime was like, then go to law school and rolled over and went to sleep, you know? So he did. Um, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. The whole point was just to go into bankruptcy. Law school was like the most means to an end thing

ever for him. And he goes straight into practicing bankruptcy law and becomes a bankruptcy judge, I don't know, about 10 years later. So I think that's a really good version of like, yeah, of course, do the mid-career change. You know what you want to do. You just need this thing to go pursue the thing you know you would enjoy. That's a great reason to go do it. Everything else though, like I just don't like my job and law school seems option expanding. My question, still question. And I still like the option expanding choice. All right. I've heard you talk about the leading conservative legal philosophies of textualism and originalism. What are the liberal and progressive legal philosophies out there? Great question. I know it seems like we don't talk about it a lot,

and it's because, I think, on the one hand, the whole idea of legal philosophy is actually relatively new, all things considered. There were certainly philosophy of law, but in terms of dueling schools and sort of different interpretive methods and all of that, that's really just coming of age in the last, certainly in the last century. Look, the leading liberal philosophy for a very long time through the 70s and 80s and 90s was living constitutionalism, this idea that the constitution evolves to meet the current needs and that it is up to judges to sort of determine how to balance those two. It was sort of the Breyer balancing test. It's a legal philosophy. And I think it's easy to look back on that and poo-poo it as like, oh my gosh, that's insane. Why would you not be looking at the text? But I don't know, like the constitution was written a really long time ago,

and that's why we hired judges. And that's how the common law basically started to exist. So why should constitutional law be different than common law? What I think you have now is actually something more like the Kagan world of we're all originalists now. We just don't agree on what was the original. What do you think, David? Yeah, you know, I would refer back and I can't, it's been some time, but we actually had a podcast some time ago

where we walked through a lot of the more progressive legal philosophies. And we also talked about Dworkinism, for example, which is not susceptible to the fastest possible explanation, but it really does link law and morality very closely. law school, there was the sort of the living constitutionalism, which had a kind of evolving view in the law that was essentially like meanings do, can and do in fact change over time as circumstances change, which was subtly different from sort of a more Dworkinist view. And again, this is super fast. There are going to be progressive legal scholars listening to this who say you're not capturing a lot of the nuance here.

Completely no, understand. More Dworkinist view, which as I understood it, was much more like, look, when you read the Constitution, what it is articulating is sort of a series of moral principles embodied into law. And the really important aspect of legal interpretation is embodying the moral principle. It is advancing the moral principle. Yeah, that's a good way to put it, yeah. Not so much the close textual analysis. And I always found that quite interesting and intriguing. And then, of course, there's a whole other branch of legal analysis, which is critical theory, critical legal theory.

So there are different strains of legal analysis. The one I always found the most compelling was the more Dworkin approach that, hey, look, especially if you're talking about the Constitution, you can't read the 14th Amendment, for example, in this sort of close textual way. It's written in quite deliberately broadly to articulate values. And similarly, the First Amendment, it's written in this broad way to articulate particular kinds of values. And so the value laden analysis is inseparable from the legal analysis. And so that kind of legal philosophy of all of the more progressive legal philosophies I have found more compelling than say, for example, critical theory,

or what we might strictly call living constitutionalism. Yeah, I mean, in the value side, I mean, I think it's part of the problem that we have now is that the right is, that's somewhat what common good constitutionalism is also about in its own way. And again, if you don't agree on the values though, that it was trying to embody, all you're doing is leaving it up to the judges. And so then

we just end up with the same problem of hope you picked good judges. Now, of course, the criticism of textualism and originalism is same thing, right? Like you can dress it up however you want, but in the end, it's still about which judges you picked. And that's why we have a podcast, I guess. Yeah. And I think that one thing that I that's why we have a podcast, I guess. Yeah. And I think that one thing that I want to get across with our podcast, which I think we do pretty effectively, is that textualism and originalism are not like digging for gold. In other words, like... Or math problems. Or math problems. I think there are better interpretive methods

than the alternatives. But to say that they're sort of almost scientifically precise, for example, is just completely wrong. As we have discovered when we just walk through, for example, the incredibly thorny history and tradition around gun laws, for example. This is not a crystal clear. This does

not clear everything up for everybody. I think it's better versus worse, but it is not a math problem, as you said. I love this listener for the next question. This story cracks me up. Like his life sounds fascinating. All right. So you have to go through the whole story because it's fun. For context, my dad and I got into an argument over a story I told him about police coming to my residence to inquire about a crime that I was a potential suspect in. My dad insisted I shouldn't have let them in the door and should have required them to get a warrant. His reasons varied from the possibility that if I let them in, they would perform a search. There may be something in my car apartment that I don't know about or that they may potentially plant evidence. He closed his argument by saying, if they can do it to Trump, they can do it to you.

My wife, who has defund the police and adjacent actually supported the idea about planting evidence and doing unlawful searches, but said that I don't need to worry about that because I'm white. In the end, I did cooperate with the police, but not because I thought it through, but just because I felt like it was what I should do in the moment. I'm generally trusting a police, which probably shows my privilege. And I generally feel like if you know you have nothing to hide, cooperation is probably in your interest. And everything went fine. My question is, what would you do in that kind of situation? And what advice would you give from a kind of high level of legal abstraction to someone in a situation like that?

How great is that story? His MAGA dad and his defund the police adjacent wife are both like, yep, don't let the police in. That's so, that is quite a story. My advice is if you're interacting with the police in any circumstances where it is your understanding you might be a suspect, get a lawyer. Like, don't do this on your own. Don't think, oh, I can clear this up. Come on in, guys.

Let's just sit down, cup of coffee. We'll clear this sucker up. No, if you're in a circumstance where you think that you might be a suspect, as opposed to, you know, you're calling and asking for the police's help or the police are coming to your aid. But if you're in a circumstance where you think you might be a suspect, and then police knock on your door, say, you know, officer, really appreciate the work you do. Appreciate you. But you know, I was listening to this podcast and they told me not to let you in. Yeah. Let me just talk to my lawyer first. All right. So I'm going

to call a lawyer. I'll talk to my lawyer first. And yeah, then let's circle back. I don't know. I don't know that mine is so black and white. I think it would be a little situationally dependent. So like, let me give you an example, David. What color is your car? Black truck. Okay. So the police pull you over and say,

we have a tip that there's a black truck driving around Nashville that has a kilo of cocaine in the back. Can we look in the back of your truck? Are you really going to, now you have to imagine you're not a lawyer in this situation, but are you really going to say like, no, I need to call my lawyer. You know, you can clear this up right now. There's not a kilo of cocaine in the back of your truck and they're not going to plant a kilo of cocaine in the back of your truck. Now, like you should know whether

you have a gun in the back of the truck and all of that stuff, I guess, for sure. But I don't know, David, is it really at that point you would still know you wouldn't let them search? Well, see, that's an interesting question because they have the, at some point, I'm not clear. Now, as a lawyer, I might say, uh, black truck isn't enough probable cause. That's right. Like let's, in this situation, they don't have probable cause. They need your permission.

Just. They absolutely need my permission. I don't know. That's a close call. I mean, I, just because I have like an agreeable sort of personality with people, I'd be like, yeah. And then I would think,

what if somebody put something back there? I haven't looked back there before I got in the truck. Like I'm not 100% sure what is back there, right? Let me give you a different alternative though, where I think I am more in your camp, which in some ways is way more egregious. And I'll try not to make this like, I will not make this about you. And you see this on Dateline all the time, right? Yeah. If your spouse is killed in your home and they're like, hey, can we search your home?

And again, it's a crime scenes, like you have to suspend some reality here. You're the number one suspect at that moment. Yeah, and there is no number two. Yeah, you should call your lawyer immediately, even if you know that you did not at that moment. Yeah. And there is no number two. Yeah. You should call your lawyer immediately, even if you know that you did not kill your wife. Yeah.

Because they're not looking for like the murder weapon at that point. I mean, don't get me wrong. They love the murder weapon, but they're looking for anything in your life. So it's not even about planting evidence at that point. Or it's just like, nope, just don't. That's a bad idea. You're the number one suspect.

So it's like different if, you know, this example where they're going door to door in the apartment and they're looking for a bike that was stolen or whatever, like the bike's not in your house. Or they're looking for someone who had a specific whatever. Like, I don't know. I think that there's a spectrum

and in three quarters of the spectrum, you should not, you should call a lawyer. Yeah. But there's and in three quarters of the spectrum, you should not, you should call a lawyer. Yeah. But there's like a far end of the spectrum, whether it's 10% or 25% of that spectrum, we're like, yeah, it would be a huge hassle for you if you're going to make them go get a warrant because now they do think that you're looking good.

That's fair. That's fair. But I would also say I've been colored by, I spent a lot of time looking into civil asset forfeiture. And that is a scary thing. Like civil asset forfeiture, especially if you're in a jurisdiction that hasn't engaged any civil asset forfeiture reforms. It is stunning how many dollar bills in the United States of America have cocaine residue on them. So there are fascinating stories about dogs, drug dogs, hitting, you know, like alerting

to your cash money. Now, if you're carrying around a normal amount of cash, which for me is zero cash, I never carry cash. But if you're carrying around a normal amount of cash, you're generally not in, you know, you're not in any real risk. But if you carry around an abnormal amount of cash, or the police see an abnormal amount of cash, sometimes out comes the dog to see if there is any drug residue on that money. And a shocking amount of money has drug residue on it. But okay, that's my, I've read a lot of civil asset forfeiture stories, which are not representative of your typical traffic stop and yet could lead you to be a little bit excessively paranoid. But the stories are real. The stories are real, Sarah.

Absolutely. All right. Last question are real, Sarah. Absolutely. All right. Last question for today's Mailbag episode. With the sudden popularity of Suits over the summer, I assume this is related to Princess Meghan. Oh, yes. Suits, the show. What do you think of the show?

And what were the best TV shows, movies about lawyers, the law, a non-lawyer wants to know? I haven't seen. I've never watched Suits. Yeah. No. And I will tell you why I haven't seen it. Yeah. Probably the same reason as me.

It's that the Netflix trailer that pops up where they have the lawyer interviewing the person behind the death. They have the lawyer interviewing the applicant. And he has an absolutely like ungodly level of knowledge about the law, just unbelievable. Like he's made a deal with the devil level of knowledge about the law. And it immediately takes me out of it because I'm thinking, okay, if this is a legal superhero show, then OK. I mean, I guess that could be interesting. You know, I've memorized my superpowers. I've memorized the F3rd reporter series.

Like, could that be interesting? But if it's a legal superhero show that's sort of cast as some sort of stylized legal procedural. Not my jam. First of all, I definitely thought Suits was about what they wore, not about what they did. So I didn't know it was a legal show to begin with. But also, I would put legal shows into two categories. Procedurals, where the story is the focus, that's going to obviously have a lot of the law. Maybe it'll be more accurate or less accurate, but it's about the law. And then setting shows,

where the law is the setting, but it's really a soap opera about who's sleeping with whom. The latter, I'm not going to be interested in at all. Right. No, soap opera, no. Unless it's the morning show. Yeah, that's true.

The law as a setting isn't very interesting to me because then it is going to be. Yeah, that's true. The law as a setting isn't very interesting to me because then it is going to be just totally inaccurate. I've never seen law as a setting where they make it like really realistic. On the procedural side, you might be shocked to hear this, or maybe you won't be. By far, the most accurate is law and order. That's not to say that it's always accurate and it's gotten less accurate over time, but certainly in the 90s, that was remarkably, like, weirdly accurate. Yeah, you would not, if you're a lawyer watching peak law and order in the 90s, it was rare that you would say, nah, dog, no, that's not, it was often quite serious, actual sort of real legal issues, legal issues wrestled with in a compressed, but, you know, more or less

realistic way. And before they did rip from the headlines in the 90s, they were doing ripped from the criminal law textbook. So I remember one of the episodes that I had seen, because obviously I've seen every Law & Order episode my whole life, you know, when there used to be like a federal holiday and TNT would do the marathons, that was me always. I might even wake up in time for the beginning of the marathon. It was a real incentive there. But I remember being in law school and reading the Tarasov case in California and being like, wait, I've seen the law and order about this. And for those who don't know, and I'll get the facts slightly wrong because it's been 20 years, but the guy tells his psychiatrist that he's going to hurt the person and then

does like, what was the psychiatrist responsibility at that point? This was a big deal in the seventies when psychiatry was sort of coming up. Therapy was more popular. Yeah. And, you know, the answer is basically, if you know your patient's going to hurt someone, yep, you got to warn them. You do have a duty at that point.

You know, and can I just describe my love-hate relationship with David E. Kelly shows? Give us examples of David E. Kelly shows. Now, unless I'm getting them wrong, Lincoln Lawyer, The Undoing, Big Little Lies, I believe. And doesn't he go all the way back to like The Practice and Boston Legal? Oh, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. So he's done a lot of legal shows or shows with legal angles to them for a long time. And he's he went to law school. And so, his shows from a dramatic standpoint are almost always really good. And from

a legal standpoint, he'll often throw stuff in there that is just spot on, but then almost always, Sarah, almost always he'll throw something in that you're like, no, no, don't, no, don't do that. That is not the way this would go. And it's for dramatic purposes and all that, but it's sort of like the Humvees in the Covenant. It takes me out of the moment. You saw someone in the comments section note that you were wrong about that.

Okay, yeah. So he was saying that there were times in Afghanistan they would go out in non-tactical vehicles. In Afghanistan and not in Iraq, yeah saying that there were times in Afghanistan, they would go out non-tactical vehicles. In Afghanistan and not in Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. And now in Iraq, that was, that was grounds for military discipline if you took, went out in a non-tactical vehicle. But if you remember the mission in the covenant, they were going into the middle of a terrorist like hive in non-up armored Humvees. I'm sorry. I just, I know it's a nitpicky thing.

It's ridiculous. I'm like a Comic-Con attendee who's like really angry at that Hawkeye's, you know, costume isn't like period accurate or whatever. But I don't know. It just, it took me out of it. But it was a it took me out of it for a moment. But then the rest of the movie, the story was great, as you said. All right. And with that, thank you guys so much for all these amazing questions. As I said, we will actually work through some of the rest of these over the course of the next few episodes,

because there were some great questions that we still left behind. These were in no particular order, by the way. They were not in like my favorite or least favorite or whatever. So yeah, we're just gonna keep trucking through some questions. They're really awesome and helpful to know what you guys are thinking, to know what we haven't explained well,

all of that stuff. So feel free to keep hopping in with more questions because I think it's helpful. We're better at it when we do the live show of remembering that there's an audience who doesn't necessarily know all of our shorthand and reads our minds. And that's sort of what the comment section serves as. It explains to us what we didn't explain out very well because we were like, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay. And then we keep going. So thank you. Thank you for your support. Be a member of the dispatch and yeah, we're going to see you next episode.