Advisory Opinions - Merry Christmas to the State Courts

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Sarah Isgur sits down for a live recording at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos G. Muñiz, Texas Supreme Court Justice Evan A. Young, and District of Columbia Court of Appeals Judge Joshua Deahl to talk legal philosophy, the state of civil justice, and the challenges that appellate justices face in an ever-more-litigious United States. The Agenda:—Why state courts matter—Texas’ new Business Courts, explained—How judges are selected in Florida—Florida’s rulemaking power over civil procedure—Why D.C. doesn’t have a “Supreme Court”—Why state constitutions change so often—Are judges using AI?—Judicial elections and accountability Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to a special Christmas episode of advisory opinions. I'm Sarah Isgher. That's David French. David, we told you all, this was going to be available for ethics CLE credit. You can go to to SCOTUSBlog.com slash CLE. About half of the states are represented right now, and you can go listen to it there and get your CLE credit. But if you're not interested in that, stay here. Listen to it with us. David, this was a really fun conversation with three Supreme Court justices, state Supreme Court justices, because while this podcast focuses a lot on the U.S. Supreme Court, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of cases happen in state court. And your last appeal is to the state Supreme Court.

There is no U.S. Supreme Court coming. And we don't spend enough time on it. And if anything, I've thrown some like shade on state judges because they often in many states are elected in a partisan process. And they stand for re-election in a partisan process. But, you know, I figured we needed to hear some first person testimony. When I was practicing and I transition almost fully over to First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment work, honestly, my interest in the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, was mainly sort of academic. Like, I was very interested just as a matter of I really enjoyed constitutional law, but when I was mainly a commercial litigator, mainly litigating, not exclusively, but mainly

in state courts, the composition and jurisprudence of the state Supreme Court was far more immediately relevant to me, my life, my client's lives than the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was just, that was sort of like watching cable news at night, you know. I'm very interested in that topic. So I want to learn about it, whereas the state Supreme Court's were, this matters for my job, this matters for my clients. And, you know, I used to have a, you know, just be very interested in the composition of the state Supreme Court's where I practice. There's also something to be said for thinking about the state Supreme Courts as these laboratories of democracy when we think about reforms for the U.S. Supreme Court. You know, what are the unintended consequences of the different

ways of selecting judges and justices? Some are actually, I think, far more harmless than you probably think. Some, maybe less so in my view. And the powers given to those state Supreme Courts also can be quite different than the U.S. Supreme Court in terms of control over litigation throughout their, you know, domains. So a lot to discuss here, as well as the types of cases that they see that the federal system will never see, like parental termination cases, some of the most serious, important work that happens and the life-changing work that happens that, again, is never going to get to federal court.

So we hope you enjoy our holiday special state Supreme Court justices. Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoonto's. Dispatch what? Hoonto, though some people pronounce it, Junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns, starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish for assembly or council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas

that built our great country. We launched dispatch hoontos without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day, without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called Party Fowl,

with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group,

but you'll run your junto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local junto, head to the dispatch.com slash hoonto. that's j-u-n-t-o the dispatch.com slash hoonto and if you're not yet a dispatch member this is a great

reason to join at the dispatch.com slash join we can't wait to build this with you hello and welcome to advisory opinions I'm Sarah Isger and I am here at the beautiful chamber of commerce building in downtown Washington DC for the Institute for Legal Reform and we are doing a state court extravaganza. Sitting right here next to me is Justice Evan Young of the Texas Supreme Court. He was appointed in 2021 by Governor Abbott. Previous jobs include but are not limited to the Department of Justice Baker-Botz and Justice Scalia, and he went to Duke and Yale. Sitting next to him is Chief Justice Carlos Munez of the Florida Supreme Court. He was a appointed in 2019 by Governor DeSantis.

Previous bosses include but are not limited to Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos. You went to UVA and Yale. I mean, if you're into basketball at this point, my husband went to Purdue, so he hates UVA and replays that one scene in his head over and over and over again. But everyone loves Yale, so that's fine. Oh, good. I'm glad the sarcasm came through. All right.

Last and least is Judge Josh Deal of the D.C. Court of Appeals. His mother thinks he works for the D.C. Circuit. He was appointed in 2019 by Donald Trump. He was a D.C. public defender, but most importantly, the co-clerc to my husband for Justice Anthony Kennedy. He went to Arizona, State, and Michigan. So, guys, let's jump right into this. There have been multiple cases at the Supreme Court this term where people are begging to get into

federal courts, save me from these state courts, whether it's subpoenas or standing issues. And so I thought we would just start with some of the obvious differences between the state and federal court before we jump into the why nobody wants you to decide their cases problem. Big difference between state and federal court is how you got there. although I'll note that all three of you were appointed to your positions, and yet, that's not really how you stay there. I was appointed, and it was to fill an unexpired term. My predecessor left the court to run per attorney general, and I had three months and four

days from when I took the oath, swearing the oath on Sam Houston's Bible, incidentally, before the voters of Texas in the Republican primary had their chance to decide whether I'd crawl back to my law firm. I hope they hadn't given my office away yet, or got to stick around to then fight the general election because someone else was going to win the Democratic primary, and I was able to prevail in both of those, exhausting experiences, and then have a six-year term, in which case we'll do it all over again. My term is up in 2028. So that's fundamentally different from the federal courts. Will you also talk about the Texas system? You, for instance, don't have criminal cases.

The Texas Supreme Court, by our Constitution, is the highest court. We have jurisdiction over all civil cases, and we do have criminal jurisdiction, but we call it civil if it's for juveniles. That means we have a whole separate court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, that deals with adult criminal cases. And I've got to be honest, I kind of like that. I'm so grateful to my colleagues on the Court of Criminal Appeals who are willing to devote their lives to seeing our citizens who are at their absolute worst on these terrible stories.

And we have terrible cases too, our parental termination cases are very terrible. Those are always tragedies. But mostly we're able to have the luxury of supervising the courts of appeals in our state on the civil docket in a way that I don't think most of our colleagues in other states are able to do because the criminal cases are so important and we don't have to do it. You're able to pick which cases you hear. It's discretionary. In almost all cases, there are a few cases.

A trial court holds a statute unconstitutional, the Attorney General, an appeal directly to us as an appeal, but 99.9% of the cases, we call it a petition for review. It's exactly the same as a cert petition. It'll become a little bit more like a cert petition, we think, in January, because right now, Texas, we're very happy to be a unique state in so many ways. One way that we're unique is that our Supreme Court, my court, does not grant petitions review for oral argument until after you've done both the petition stage. Like, yes, that sounds good. Now do full briefs on the merits. And then after you do that, whether we're going to actually hear your case or not,

which means that the petition stage briefing is just an antecedent step, and then the merits briefs are just really petitions. And I'm on the bench flipping through it and heading one of the respondents' brief on the merits is often the court should deny the petition for review. Like, well, that ship has sailed. Here we are, but it's a rational thing to do if you don't know whether the court's going to take the case. We have proposed reform to our rules such that we would be like every other. court of final review with discretionary jurisdiction from the U.S. Supreme Court to all of the

others that don't have mandatory jurisdiction and grant after the petition. We're going to make our petitions a little longer, grant after the petition, and then people can file their merits of course knowing they're coming to Austin to argue in the court. Last thing, Texas now has the new business courts. Will you just explain how that's going to change things on the business docket? Yes, we have a new business court with five divisions, each with two judges right now. but it is a court, a single business court. They're regional right now on this court.

Not all parts of Texas have access to it. It's in the five biggest metropolitan areas. Those judges are unique for trial judges, state trial judges, in that they are not elected. So they're 10 of them, and they are appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Senate right now for two-year terms. But the governor can just reappoint, reappoint, reappoint, we'll see how that plays out. That allows certain kinds of cases within the jurisdiction of the business. of the business court to go to an identifiable cadre of judges who have no responsibility

or authority other than resolving complex business disputes. And until the governor signed this bill, until the business court opened about a year ago, September of a year ago, Texas was by far the largest state without any court with jurisdiction to focus on complex business litigation. And now because of this, we're able to bring cases in and provide very expeditious, expert administration of justice, and the business courts are the first trial courts in the Texas system. This is also very different from the federal system for the rest of our courts, that write opinions. The legislature requires them to write opinions. Most Texas trial judges

do not have any legal staff, no lawyers that assist them, no law clerks. The business court judges do. And so the hope is that this will become very successful and will be able to illustrate that trial judges for all cases might be better served by having that kind of assistance. We might not need to create as many new judgeships. So it's very exciting in Texas and we're seeing this is being covered in the national media. A lot of businesses are paying attention to it and I don't know that the results are yet in, but all signs are positive about the work of the business court. We've just had our first jury trial, for example, in the business court and I'm excited to see it work. Well, you get all that and delicious

beef fajitas if you file in the state of Texas. Beef fajitas, by the way, invented in Houston. I feel like not enough people know that. I'm a Houstonian and also representing the tourism district. Chief Justice, let's talk Florida. Your system different than Texas. You are not running in partisan elections with primaries and everything. Tell us. That's right.

I definitely, I do not envy you, Evan. That's impressive that you've made it through all that. In Florida, we have a kind of more conventional system, I think, where we have judicial nominating commissions. All of the members of which are appointed by the governor, but a subset of them have to be people who are nominated to the governor by the Florida Bar. And those commissions then produce a list of names for the governor's consideration. He's required to choose from among the names on that list.

It's anywhere from three to six people. Once you're appointed, then the appellate judges in Florida have to stand for retention election, so it's just a yes or no up or down vote. So far, historically, this system has been in place since the mid-70s. Nobody has lost one yet. So hopefully my goal is to not ever be the first. Let's talk about the makeup then of the Florida Supreme Court's docket. You do have the criminal docket.

We do. But in addition, y'all also get to set the rules. We do. So one of the interesting things that we do is in our Constitution, rules of procedure for courts are set by the Florida Supreme Court. We have the ability to kind of initiate those. things on our own. We also rely on the Florida bar as a lot of committees that generate proposals for our consideration. Probably of interest to this group, we've been able to use that authority

over the last five or six years to do some things that we hope are going to make the civil justice system more rational, more fair, more predictable. For a long time in Florida, summary judgment, even though our summary judgment rule, the text of it was identically worded to the federal rule, it was almost impossible to get summary judgment basically. any kind of, you know, I think that people would see, a lot of the boiler plate in the opinions was if there's a scintilla of evidence on one side, it could create a factual dispute. We basically used the rulemaking process to essentially adopt sort of the federal standard for summary judgment so that, you know, it still gives people fair opportunity, still gives

them their day in court, but does make summary judgment more of an actual real world possibility. We've also made some improvements, we hope, on the discovery front. We adopted an apex rule, basically, insulating high-level officials, whether in government or in corporations from discovery that isn't necessary where they don't have unique knowledge of what's going on. And then finally, we've done a fair amount on active case management and civil cases. Again, the idea being that although in our rules for a long time, there had been expressions of support for the idea of judicial case management, the role of the trial court judge in Florida

was, I think, traditionally, culturally, and much more passive. We've tried to implement some changes to make it so that when people initiate a lawsuit in Florida that there's going to be more certainty about the timing, that there's going to be some, you know, while there's obviously always things come up and there has to be some flexibility, but just more of a commitment to having an orderly schedule, orderly discovery, disclosures on the front end. And, you know, essentially letting people understand, you know, once you enter the system and initiate this litigation, that there's going to be, you know, kind of a light at the end of the tunnel of foreseeable end, which the judge will be responsible for kind of, you know, managing the case to get it to that point

rather than just sort of passively letting things kind of, you know, languish there. It's a discretionary docket. It is, although it sounds like in Texas they have more discretion. And in our case, most of what we hear is discretionary, but there are certain triggers for it. So there have to be conflicts among the intermediate appeals courts, or they can certify questions of great public importance. The exceptions are we have to hear appeals in all death penalty cases, and if a state statute is declared unconstitutional, then we have to hear that. So we do have, most of what we do here is discretionary, but it's within sort of a limited

universe of things. You know, that used to be the rule at the U.S. Supreme Court, too, if a state declared a statute unconstitutional, it would go to the courts up until 1988. What about the criminal side, like if you were to sort of give us a percentage of your docket, how much is big business docket cases, how much is criminal and how much is sort of that third bucket of either public law or smaller ball civil litigation? So the death penalty appeals are a fair amount of our docket. It's not overwhelming, but I say it's probably 25%.

There is a fair amount of public law. We have, on the civil side, I'd say it's kind of evenly divided up among things that would be of interest to the business community and then things like family law and, you know, that sort of thing. Not necessarily even kind of big business type tort law, but, you know, kind of ordinary sort of accident type stuff. So yeah, so I'd say it's about the 25 or 30 with the death slash criminal and then the rest is kind of a hodgepodge.

All right. You're the only person I called judge on this panel, but you are on the highest court of D.C. Your whole system fascinates me. I mean, I don't know where you want to start. Yes, we are one of the courts where the high court, we refer to us as judges. The court is not called the D.C. Supreme Court. It would make my life easier, if it were. I could stop both explaining to people that the D.C. Court of Appeals is the last stop in D.C.

Unless you go to the U.S. Supreme Court. And it would avoid my mom telling people that I'm on the D.C. Circuit, I think. She might want to keep doing that even after a rename. So that's one oddity, but there's just endless oddities about the district's court system because we are this quasi-federal institution that was established by Congress in the early 70s. We go through what we call a judicial nomination commission in D.C. That commission is headed usually by a D.D.C. judge, a federal judge, and select people, one who's selected by the president, a couple who are selected by the D.C.

Council, one or two by the mayor, and they send three names to the President, who, according to this congressional statute, has to pick one of those three names. So you're presidentially appointed, but within some bounds that some people would suggest, I've heard the argument that that avoids the appointments clause. I hope it doesn't. I would prefer to be constitutional than unconstitutional. We go through the Senate and we get confirmed, and then we don't have to deal with any the elections, thankfully, I would hate to have to do that, even retention elections.

We do have a review process after 15 years where another local commission, distinct from the first one, sort of takes a look at how you date over the last 15 years, and again by statute, if they say keep them for another 15, and they almost always do absent some really bad malfeasance or unless maybe some dementia has set in, and then they might kindly suggest that you not apply for another 15 years. They will re-up you for another 15 years. And also, unlike my colleagues here, we do not have discretionary review. We are the intermediate and the final Court of Appeals in D.C. If you go to the D.C. Superior Court, you have an appeal as a right to us, and so we have an incredible volume of cases currently hamstrung a little bit

by being short a couple of judges because the nomination and confirmation process, you know, tends not to be the Senate's top priority to confirm DC judges. Seems like they're making some movements now, but we've had one vacancy for the last 12 years now and another vacancy for a couple of years. So I'd really like to get those filled to get some help. And while these two guys sit en banc, if you will, every time, you don't.

Sometimes you sit in panels, sometimes you sit as a full court. Because again, as you said, you know, with all the systems we're familiar with, there's three tiers, federal, almost every state I'm aware of, except you not being a state. But because you're only two tiers, sometimes you're sitting as a panel, sometimes it's all of you? That's right, so more often than not,

we sit as a three-judge panel, and that's on 99% of the cases. Maybe about three times a year, we'll hear a case on Bonk, and that's the whole group of us. That makes for one particular oddity in our court, which is when you sit as a panel, you're bound by whatever the panel before you did. We're not like a Supreme Court that can say,

oh, let's revisit that thing we did a hundred years ago. We now disagree and want to do something different. In order to do that, you have to go on bonk. And we don't go on bonk that often just because there's a huge resource constraint. We've got thousands of cases that we decide. I publish about 25 opinions a year. I write unpublished opinions, maybe about 30 to 40 a year. Everybody has a ton to do.

So when you're trying to drum up support to change something about the district, district's law, and to go en banc, part of that lobbying effort if you're trying to lobby other judges is often met with, I'm too busy. We just have too much stuff to do. I don't want to deal with another en banc argument. Now, having said that, we have one tomorrow. You're all welcome to stop by. You can come watch a case about whether or not somebody, whether there is reasonable,

articulable suspicion to stop somebody who fled after slight interaction with officers if you're so inclined. So we do it now and then, but not too often. This is sort of interesting. this before, but in many ways, your courts are almost different stages of what the Supreme Court has gone through. So you're sort of the current Texas here is the current Supreme Court in terms of your docket. I would say Florida is that pre-1988, some discretion, a lot of discretion, but not complete

discretion. D.C., interestingly, represents that pre-1925 court that didn't really have discretion over its docket. And Stuart Banner, in his most recent book, the most powerful court in the world, makes the argument that it was those 1925 discretionary changes to the U.S. Supreme Court that made our current constitutional sort of jurisprudence, because before then, they were too busy. If they discovered a new constitutional right, it would mean a whole lot more cases coming to the court, so they were disinclined to ever sort of read new things into the law because

they were overwhelmed with what they were currently doing. There just wasn't a lot of judicial philosophy, because there was no time for philosophizing. of which, at the current federal Supreme Court, there's a lot of talk of text history and tradition as the new originalism. You guys have constitutions, except for you and your home rule stuff. We'll get to that. Oh, D.C. That's why you're on this panel, because it's so much fun to think of how this could all be done differently. Texas and Florida both have far more frequent amendments to their constitutions than the U.S. Constitution. Texas, again, my home state, so I'm just going to be more familiar with this. I mean, Texas has a fun history. There's multiple

constitutions. We were an independent country for a while. It's not like some of these states where the language is identical or adjacently identical to the U.S. Constitution. We're out there doing our own thing. How does originalism work with multiple constitutions? And again, I want to be very clear. We were our own country, everyone, the Republic of Texas. And so how do we vindicate all of that? We'll be right back with more advisory opinions. A quick word from today's sponsor, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Fire. As more people grow afraid to speak their minds, fire is standing up for students, teachers, journalists, parents, anyone being silenced. This season, join Fire in protecting the First Amendment by making a donation at thefire.org slash dispatch.

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Originalism is hard, even in the federal system, where we have all of these resources, what did the text mean to reasonably educated speakers of English at the time it was, adopted. In the state constitutions, we have the same obligation to find out what it meant to those who ratified each constitutional provision, but we generally have far less information about it. There's a famous example at one of the Texas ratifying conventions, and there was an initial question, well, shall we pay for a court reporter to transcribe it? Well, hell no, that's $2 a day back then, so we're not doing that. And that tradition of thrift has certainly continued in Texas government.

And that makes it harder, right, to be able to do some things. Now, you say we have multiple constitutions. We have one. It's the 1876 constitution. We have prior ones. That one superseded them. All that is our continuing live constitution. The 150th anniversary will be in a week because it's Christmas Day today, right?

Yes, this is airing on Christmas Day. So we're about to enter the 150th year. And that's a big deal for Texas because although the people of Texas every other year vote on a host of amendments to our Constitution, our Constitution, it's the second longest. Alabama, I think, is the longest.

Ours of the second longest. We amend it all the time. We don't have citizen initiated referenda. The legislature has to propose these by a vote of two-thirds of each house, and they come to the voters who usually will adopt them because if it's going to get two-thirds of both houses, probably it's okay. But not

always the most recent one to fail. increase the maximum age for judges, and that failed two years ago. But that means that originalism is a little complicated because I've actually decided cases in which I was a ratifier. I can remember standing in line at the polls to vote on a particular amendment to the Constitution of Texas, which then has been part of litigation. So that creates kind of an odd question in our minds,

but then we have all sorts of other amendments that are happening at all sorts of times throughout Texas history. And in each of them, the goal is to figure out what the people of Texas could reasonably have understood themselves to be doing at the time that they did it. Our belief is that that is what the law meant then. It's what the law means today until the people of Texas change it, which they're free to do. As I say, they do this quite frequently. But in principle, it's no different from what the U.S. Supreme Court does. In practice, it's much harder. Chief Justice, it would seem to me that originalism,

at the Supreme Court where you have lots of resources for amici, lots of professors diving into law review articles, looks very different when it's you and your clerks with a Constitution that not a lot of people have spent endless time with. Yeah, that's true, and what Evan said about not necessarily having as much information about the provisions, that resonates with me. It also resonates with me that Florida, like the way you describe Texas, we do have frequent amendments. One of the challenges that I think states face with, you know, when they're trying, if they believe in originalism and they believe in some idea of, you know, kind of public

meaning, what could something reasonably have expected to be understood, the legal content of that, I think the interaction between federal and the state law can get very interesting, especially when you're talking about citizens' initiatives. It can be difficult to kind of figure out how much your view of the meaning of the language and state law should be influenced by maybe the background federal law that was there. If you're thinking of sort of the drafters of things being very lawyerly and maybe things were coming from the legislature, whatever, you might assume a certain backdrop for that, whereas if it's a citizen's initiative, it may not be as reasonable to assume

that the drafters and the voters necessarily had the same things in mind. So that can be a challenge. We also, I think, because of the ease of amendment, are, you know, there's, increasingly there are things that are put in the Constitution that really are more at the level of detail of statute. So you're not talking about the, you know, majestic generalities and stuff like that. You'll have a six-paragraph long, you know, regulatory scheme that gets put into the Constitution.

We have forms in our Constitution. It's like blanks to fill in your name and stuff like that for homework. I mean, in the Constitution. Yeah. So that can create some interesting dynamics. And then we do, of course, have the problem of the fact that we've had several revisions to our Constitution and then how much of the existing practice do you assume is sort of baked into things when they're revised and stuff.

And so I think a lot of, you know, at a sort of philosophical and methodological level, I think a lot of the premises are the same, but I think the implementation can be different and in some ways a little bit more challenging. the state level. And you had mentioned that sometimes the text of these state constitutions can be the same as in other states or the federal constitution. And in Texas, we have a complete mix. Some of our provisions are word for word what the United States Constitution is, which allows

for at least a premise or a buttable presumption that it was supposed to mean the same thing. Others, we don't have a due process clause. A lot of states have a due course of the law of the land clause. Our religion clauses are far more poetic and expansive. than the First Amendment. Our takings clause is dramatically different. But historically, I think in many states, certainly in Texas historically, we've treated all of those the same and mostly said, well, they pretty much mean what the federal.

This takings clause, completely different language, but it must mean the same thing. Well, one of the reasons is that his, over the past, you know, half century, century, so much law has been federalized that there wasn't that much work for states to do and doing the hard of trying to generate independent meaning for state constitutions was sometimes not necessary because the feds were doing so much of it, and sometimes very dangerous for the reasons that we were just describing. You know, if we try to give independent meaning to a state constitution and we botch it, nobody can fix that except for the people of the state, which is a hard process, even when

you have referenda, even when you can have the legislature propose this to the people. But that's why originalism is actually so important, and it means that the states now have an obligation as a certain amount of authorities being restored to the state. state systems to get it right and to try to have people bring cases which they really litigate and mine for text history tradition, the original public meaning based upon the documents that we can find from that time. We're a good age for that. Methodologically, a lot of lawyers, a lot of lower courts are open to doing things that are systematic and consistent and reliable in ways that might not have really been true before.

Originalism in D.C. is pretty easy. You have the Home Rule Act and it's only about 50 years old. Originalism in DC is basically statutory interpretation in reading a statute from 1973. We have something called the Home Rule Act that set up the district's basic structure of government. We refer to it as quasi-constitutional, it's like a charter, and very little of the cases, very few of the cases that come to my court really involve the Home Rule Act. It doesn't have a bill of rights or anything like that attached to it. So unless you have some kind of challenge to the structure of government, which we had one very recently, We had an en banc sitting that we decided about a month ago that was about whether or not the district's anti-SLAPP Act violated the Home Rule Act because it had some procedures in it that was arguably encroached on the court's rulemaking authority. We said it didn't.

So we don't see it that often. And when we see it, what you do is you go to the committee reports from 1973 and 1972 and you read through them and that's all there is to it. There is not, you know, there was nothing like the Federalist papers where different senators and Congress members were writing, you know, theories about D.C.'s self-government. Saturday Night Live starts in 1975 and is still on today. Like, there's almost a TV show that we can trace from Home Rule forward. Well, some of the people in this room were even in existence when the Home Rule out was. That is correct. And a lot of people in the district are.

You know, it is, it's novel in the sense that, you know, we can't, we have a local legislature called the D.C. Council, the mayor is the executive in the district, but they don't have the power to amend the Home Rule Act. If somebody wants to amend our Constitution, it has to be the federal government. It has to go through the House. And they're trying to do that right now, in fact, largely with regard to how the district appoints its judges. I feel like maybe I prompted that now that I got here. Everybody said this whole system seems wrong. So there are efforts to amend the Home Rule Act, but we don't have any say, You know, the district's residents, I am one of them, as are my kids and my wife, would

prefer not to have, I think generally would prefer not to have the federal government tinkering and being too involved with the district's government, but, you know, your mileage may vary with that proposition, and certainly some people's mileage in the current Senate, in the current House, and in the current administration have differing views for me about that, and they're not going to listen. They're not going to take my advice, but... Judge Deal, I'm going to stay with you because we're now going to move to the obligatory part of every 2025 panel, which is, how is AI affecting your world?

I am a big proponent of at least the capability of AI improving and making courts work more efficient. I teach a course at Washington University Law School on AI and the judiciary. I will play around with AI a little bit in my job. I had a case, the case that we're hearing tomorrow, it's unclear exactly how far the officers are from this guy when he runs, and we have video of it, it's all on body-worn camera, and I can see it, and I kind of ask my clerk, says, like, what's that, 50, 100 feet? And eventually, I, like, clipped it, and I put it into a chatbot, and I said,

what do you think? I kind of had it at 75 feet. I'd ask the chat bot, and the chat bot was 75 to 100 feet, and here's why. These are two-foot pavers, and I count, like, 24 pavers on the run. And I was like, that's actually excellent analysis. really helpful, and I think it happens to be right in this case. Now, I think you have to approach it with a great deal of skepticism. I mean, I've had, you know, all manner of AI, you know, like just overtly lie to me, and even after I catch it in a lie and say, you know, that case doesn't

say that at all, try again, and it will just make up a different quote. So that case, that quote's not in the case either. So you need to be aware of its shortcomings. But in terms of how much data it can process, like how much information can take in and within a minute spit out what is often a pretty nicely written draft opinion or draft memo that you should be careful of its citations and you should be careful of what facts it's reciting because they might be wrong. But it is really quite incredible what it can do and, you know, it's just getting better and better. So I am bullish on its possibility that it can basically, served as an extra law clerk. You know, I'm already skeptical of what my law clerks give me.

I check everything in the record that they tell me and the cases. And I don't mind doing that for a chatbot too. But if the chatbot can do it in a couple minutes, what it takes my clerks a couple weeks to do, it can serve a very valuable function. Chief Justice, my question to you is about the rise we've seen in nuclear verdicts, these $10 million plus verdicts. What do you think is driving that? What's the biggest change you've seen in the plaintiff's side bar in the, you know, since you've been on the court? Well, I haven't really, I don't really have any great insight on that. I think a lot of the, in terms of reform in Florida, I think there's been a lot of action on the legislative front.

There were some significant changes in insurance law that were made within the last couple of years that appear, just from a policy perspective, to have been accomplishing what was intended. But I think from a litigation perspective, there hasn't been enough time for it to bubble up to our court. But I would say that that stuff and then hopefully some of the things that we've been doing in terms of helping get the sort of the machinery of the courts working more efficiently, I think, are probably the things that I've kind of been the closest to. All right, my question for you, Justice Young, is about what you wish the business docket folks understood about your job and particularly access to justice issues. Well, that's a good question. I guess what I would say, and it would be to really every audience, but is that the judicial system of a state is one system.

And it may well be that you care about a particular slice of it, and it's easy almost to imagine it. I've described this as the statue from the book of Daniel that had the feet of clay. And it's easy to care about the golden head at the top. But it turns out that if the base is made of clay, the whole thing collapses. And I say that because it's really important to me that all the people of Texas at every level understand that it is one judiciary. It belongs to the people of Texas.

It is theirs. The government of Texas belongs to the people all three branches do in the same exact way. They choose their judges to do different things than they choose the members of the executive and legislative branches. But we're theirs. We belong to them to try to administer judges. justice fairly. And if the people of Texas who mostly will see the judiciary in really miserable situations,

sometimes a criminal case, most often family law cases, if they do not believe that the judiciary of Texas is able to expeditiously and efficiently and fairly hear them and resolve their disputes, then they will lose confidence in the judiciary, which means the judiciary will not be there to be able to do the things that people in the business world deeply care about, which is why everyone should want the system as a whole to be strong. Everyone has an interest, I should hope, and I really think, I think even more now than I did before, in ensuring that confidence in the judiciary, both that it is perceived as being good and that it actually is good, that both of those things matter at every level

of the judicial process, and if you want reform for one area, the best thing you can really do is to make sure that the system is strong at the bottom. that no one is doubting that the judges of our state, for example, are able to do their jobs properly. The business court was created in part because we would have massive, urgent business cases filed in courts of general jurisdiction in some part of Texas where that judge would have several counties and would have criminal cases, criminal termination cases, urgent cases about someone who has been confined for mental instability to an institution, all of these things pressing

on that judge, and then somebody comes and says, I have, you know, a massive issue about this merger that I would like you to enjoin. What in the world they're supposed to jettison? And so it isn't just creating a new court to benefit a favored group by any means. It's to protect the judges so that they can do the parts of their job that they really are there to do for the people in their communities that in Texas elect them and allow the business court to be a pressure release valve too. So it should be positive for everybody in the system, not just creating a nice,

new wing of the judiciary for those people. And when it all works together, the whole thing gets better. We do a much better job at having efficient pre-trial administration. Our trials go better. They generate fewer errors. The appellate courts tends to be able to do their work more efficiently when the trial courts are able to do theirs. And in the Supreme Court, we can focus on articulating legal principles with maximum clarity, which in turn makes it easier, we hope, for the trial courts. and the lawyers of the state to be able to bring the right kinds of cases and make the right kind of arguments. But if we have a weak judiciary in which the people either perceive or rightly think that

the judiciary isn't capable of doing it, the whole thing falters. And that's why access to justice actually is something that deeply matters to me and I think should matter to you and to everyone who might be watching this in every state and in the United States. And I'll just make a plug for a previous podcast with Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit, Jennifer Elrod, who came on to talk about the knowing, failure to fund the program that allows for people to be represented mandatorily, represented by counsel.

You know, some states use public defenders, some states use CJA lawyers who are serve as appointed counsel and are therefore funded. If we do not have funding for that, this goes to your point. It's very easy to not care. Pretty hard to get people worked up about criminal defendants, but this is the point. The whole system is a single system, and I know Judge Deal, you worked as a public, public defender for a long time and think very carefully about these things. We'll be right back with more advisory opinions.

Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fairs. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same. weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at go-transit.com slash tickets. Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch.

I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes. Dispatch what? Hoonto, though some people pronounce it Junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish for assembly or council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the

ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch hoontos without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called party foul with dispatch members

after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane, normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities,

at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your junto your way. And if your gatherings grow large and, know if we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local hoonto, head to the dispatch.com slash hoonto. That's j-un-t-o. The dispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the dispatch.com

slash join. We can't wait to build this with you. We do have a criminal justice act in D.C. We have a lot of CJA, what we call CJA lawyers, who handle a lot of the defense. But the needs are, you know, we have right to appointed counsel in criminal cases, obviously. But the civil needs of individuals, you know, it's just impossible to meet. Even in a town like D.C., where every other person you meet as a lawyer, there aren't enough lawyers to go around. There's all sorts of litigation needs, and, you know, just to go back to a previous topic,

One thing that I've started to see, and I think I've heard some colleagues on the trial court complain about it a little bit, is you are starting to see pro se litigants who are getting pretty savvy about using AI themselves. I had an appeal not that long ago where somebody filed a brief and it was a really good pro se brief and he had left one of his prompts within the brief. And the opposing side called him out and he said, ah, he's used AI in writing this brief. You can see it. He left that prompt in and I was like, Thank goodness. This is a great brief so far as a pro se brief goes. So, you know, we have conferences and conferences about improving access to justice, you know, in landlord-tenant cases that can be quite serious. They have high stakes, but most people are unrepresented. Oftentimes in family law cases, they're unrepresented.

And in various types of parental rights cases, they're unrepresented. And, you know, this is one potential additional release valve that might be coming if we learn legal service providers learn how to sort of harness AI or just individuals or platforms create AI that is, you know, it's not without its pitfalls, it's got its perils, it can lead to bad things if you're not careful with it, but that is one other potential way to improve access to justice in the district and across the country. I do think that is one thing that's interesting about the difference between the state courts and the federal courts, and I just hearing these judges talk, I do feel like we,

We're a lot closer to sort of the day-to-day things that people need access to the justice system for. And there's a lot of accountability that comes with that. I know that my colleagues and I are constantly thinking about, you know, some of these access to justice problems are almost intractable, but there are things that you can do if you're responsible for governing the court system that can make it, you know, easier rather than harder. And it's, you know, it's just sort of the kind of having the ownership in the administration of, you know, just the basics of people's interaction with the courts.

It's something that we, you know, that's a huge part of our job that's kind of, you know, not, it's, you know, it's pretty separate, really, from the sort of deciding cases thing that most people associate with. And I know that it takes up a lot of our sort of intellectual energies, is kind of trying to think about what we can do on that front. Sticking with you, Mr. Chief Justice, what is something that someone can do at oral argument to impress you. Cander always impresses me, you know.

Just acknowledging, and I know this is kind of trite for coming from judges, but just acknowledging that you're speaking to people who have to eventually make a decision and that, you know, especially at our courts, by the time it's gotten there, in our, you know, as I mentioned, we have a lot of cases where it's because district courts are intermediate level courts have disagreed. So smart people, conscientious people have disagreed. Chances are this isn't, you know, a complete no-brainer. So anytime people sort of acknowledge what's difficult about the case and then help, you know, obviously they're advocating a particular position. So show us how we can consistently, coherently, responsibly get to the outcome that they're wanting us to adopt

and, you know, just sort of admit the difficulty and embrace it and help us, you know, help us, you know, resolve it. Obviously, you expect them to want us to resolve it in their favor, but basically put it in those terms for us. Justice Young, why should someone clerk at the state Supreme Court rather than the federal system? Well, I don't know. It has to be an either or, but there's a lot of advantages that were certainly not presented to me when I was a law student. The thought of clerking on the state Supreme Court was never suggested to me as a sensible idea. I never occurred to me to try to apply for it. But it turns out the Texas Supreme Court, we let our law clerks sit in on our conferences, which is kind of crazy at a certain level, but there's

reason for it. Our conferences can last, you know, seven, eight, nine hours sometimes. The law part, and then we get to the administrative part where the clerks leave for when we're discussing the rules of procedure and judicial administration, all the rest of it, but just the law part can be, you know, six or seven hours, and they're hearing the nine justices go around the table in every single case that we're deciding whether to grant, how we, you know, regarded the oral argument that we heard the prior week, how we think about the the opinions that have been circulated. What an extraordinary thing to have a year of hearing

that every time there's a conference. So from the perspective of a lawyer who wants to be a Texas lawyer at least, that's one heck of a turbo charge to being able to bring a matter of law type of perspective to practice, understanding how it is that the Supreme Court of the state is likely to respond to a particular kind of argument that has been made or a particular kind of ruling that has been brought forth from a lower court. And then the state courts right now are in a kind of a renaissance, I think, we're doing things that state courts weren't really asked to do several decades ago. I agree with the Chief Justice.

It's always been the case that the state courts are the ones that have the closest touch to the people of their states. One of the reasons why electing judges may not be the best system, but it's not crazy. These are the judges that are going to actually be seeing these people in their courtrooms. You have the domestic relations exception to federal jurisdiction. Federal judges don't get involved with that sort of thing.

And so if you're going to be in state practice, having what he described as the, you know, always been true of state courts, touch on the law that most will affect most litigation and most people, but now having the U.S. Supreme Court giving authority the states to try to resolve constitutional questions under their own constitutions means that you're learning things from people that will actually matter in high-stakes cases as well as ordinary litigation. I wish I could have gone back in time and clerked at my current court. The conference thing is a big deal. I would have paid my whole salary to have gone into one conference with Justice Scalia,

and that was not on offer, you know? All right, Judge Deal. Last question to you. I want you to take off your judge hat and hang out with me as your clerk's sister-in-law. And these two guys in between us, they seem like nice, smart guys, right? They're okay, at least. Why is it, though, that we keep hearing people, again, with these Supreme, U.S. Supreme Court cases trying to finagle their way out of state courts if it's, you know, overseen by two such

great guys as this? You know, I've tried to explain it to listeners before. I think I have done a very poor job of that. And so I'd like you to take a crack at explaining why so many people still. still want to be in federal court. So, you know, this is not a question I've really had to think about in my work. My rough sense is that the premise, at least, is I assume defendant heavy. Usually it's the defendants who want to get out of the state courts.

I've sometimes worried about, you know, local jury pools, local council having it in with the judge, and defendants usually being better resource, think they're going to get a fair shake in the federal court. In D.C., I don't know that we see that. often. You know, if we're just having a chat as, you know, brother-in-law, clerk, sister-in-law, you tell me. I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure exactly what the phenomenon is. So, I mean, I would have thought the phenomenon was plaintiffs like being in state courts and defendants want to be. Why do the plaintiffs want to be there? Is it the partisanship, that these are elected judges and that people feel that and they think the federal system is there for,

they're better credentialed, they get smarter. Is it the resources question? As you said, The federal courts just have way fewer cases, so you think you're going to get more attention from the smart people. That can definitely be a big reason. In D.C., we have, you know, a shrinking, I think, at least on my court, shrinking backlog. We don't have the terribly old cases that we once had. But you can really languish in the Superior Court if you end up, you know, we're down 10 judges on the Superior Court. And so you've got dockets that are backed up by a couple years. It can take you a long time to get to trial.

So I do think for institutional players who just, you know, one fewer case to one, worry about, that can be a big incentive to get out of certain state courts just kind of depending on what their backlog is. To the contrary, I think the DDC, the federal district court in D.C, I don't think has anything like our local backlog. So I think you'd be well advised if you wanted to make things go quickly to jump across the street. Are there other incentives? I mean, maybe local jury pool. I don't know that the local jury pool is not going to be any more favorable toward plaintiffs than the federal jury pool in D.C. that's the same jury pool. I don't know about in some of the states, I assume it's a broader

district in the states. And then part of it might just be biases that, you know, people think, oh, those are better judges across the street. That might have been, I think that was probably more true, you know, 30, 40 years ago. I feel like a lot of the action is in state courts, you know, like Justice, like Evan was saying, my docket is super interesting. We get great clerks. We have law school professors who are telling law school students, you know, the real action right now, especially if you're into criminal law, which, unless you really care about the Armed Career Criminal Act. The Supreme Court is not doing much of interest to you.

We have a really interesting docket. And so I think the judges have gotten better and better. And, you know, I hope litigants want to come to state court. I hope they want to come through our courts. They want to leave. I can't stop them. You notice I'm not going to ask the two guys who run for re-election that question. I do want to take a couple questions from you guys.

And so listeners understand, I am what is standing between them and a cocktail. So we'll see what questions we get. Maybe they'll be very, very short. But if you have a question, I think there is some microphone-ish plan out there. Hopefully this is not an inappropriate question for the panel. But I want to follow up in the AI question. Defense counsel, I've seen AI being used by the plaintiffs bar a lot recently, and not just by pro se litigants, by attorneys.

And I think the belief is that they can really do it with impunity. And if you're a diligent defense counsel, no matter how frivolous it may be, It's going to cost five figures at least to, you know, submit a brief addressing this. And it gets withdrawn, there's no sanctions, and it goes on. Is there anything the courts can do about this to make sure that AI does not invite a flood of frivolous claims that distract from real meritorious litigation? Chief Justice, I'm going to start with you on that one. No, I mean, I think, and I've been kind of trying to follow what other states do,

and I think Texas and Florida are both trying to take a fairly light regulatory touch right now on the theory that the existing tools for judges holding litigants accountable when they, you know, abuse the system or submit frivolous filings or whatever, you know, obviously I know that there's been a lot of attention to AI given, you know, that aspect of it and the concerns with that. You know, I think that just in general bad behavior by lawyers, it's tough to get judges to use the tools that they have. So we've been talking about Florida at the appellate court level, At the trial court level, judges are elected in Florida, and I know that that, you know, can create challenges for them if they're, you know, perceived as being too hard on lawyers or whatever. But I really, my sense is, at least for now, and I'm not a huge fan of AI just because I'm just sort of scared of technology and stuff like that.

And it just sort of the kind of, you know, inhumanity of it and everything sort of freaks me out. But just from a kind of disciplining people who abuse it and everything, our sense. end so far, and it's something that we're looking at closely, and our Florida bar has been very actively looking at it, but we don't really view it as anything that the existing sort of tools that judges have can't handle. So if you're a fan of John Grisham, like myself, two themes often emerge from his books. One is wrongful conviction, and then the other is his opposition to the election of Supreme Court judges. So I'm curious, your position on the latter, where do you stand?

on the election versus the appointment of Supreme Court judges. I'm going to give that to you, Justice Young, because I do think it's interesting, you know, I watch Texas quite closely, how many justices leave early so that it can be an appointed justice to replace them before the election. There's very few just straight-up elections for the Supreme Court in Texas that don't have an incumbent in them, which leads me to think that the justices themselves maybe don't think that a free-for-all election is a good idea. Well, it has happened.

I think right now maybe seven of the nine of us were initially appointed to the Supreme Court. Now that doesn't do a whole lot for you in the election other than it maybe makes it a little bit easier for you to get people's attention when you're campaigning because the primary ballot is just two names. It doesn't have a little I for incumbent or anything. But I don't know that you would have run. If it had just been an open seat, were you really going to throw your hat?

No, absolutely not. Right. So you don't get Evan Young's on the Texas Supreme Court in the law. unless there's actually an appointment first. That's my point. Well, and whether that's good or bad is something for the people of Texas to decide in their wisdom. But the point that I think you're making is, well, somebody's going to run for it. And whether, assume that I'm good and should stay, well, that doesn't make much difference

if there's somebody else who has a better ballot name, let's say. And there are studies that are fascinating about the number of voters who go into the poll and they have all of these judges. Harris County, Texas has the longest ballot in the United States of America because of the number of judges. We elect all of our trial judges, and so we have all of these courts that no citizen can reasonably be expected to know, in a primary imagine, like which of these two names. And so there are studies that show certain things, like if there's a color in your name, that's usually worth a couple of points. If your name is an ordinary Anglo-Saxon word, like young, that's something. worth a couple of points. And I always say, I'll take whatever I can get. Don't get me wrong.

But I'd much prefer if we're going to have an elected system for people to vote for me because they think I'd be a good judge. Well, that's very difficult if there are a hundred judicial positions. 70, I think, is what it was in Harris County last time, plus all the other non-judicial positions. And so, you know, the Supreme Court is at the top, but most people don't know the difference really between the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals and the District Court and the Family Court and all these different things that we have. And so we are, we're in a tough situation in terms of the people of Texas demanding absolute control over who all their judges are and the people of Texas demanding to know almost nothing

about who any of their judges are. And it's like being on, you know, two mountain peaks and trying to cross over on a rickety bridge if you're the candidate, whether you're incumbent or somebody else. And so we have to campaign, we do our best to try to educate people, but there are 31 million of us in Texas. Say, well, what would be, what would be a better system? There are alternatives out there, but the graveyard of judicial reform efforts in Texas has many tombstones, many, many, many tombstones because the people insist on maintaining

their authority. And so we've had some crazy experiences, I wish we had a few more minutes, I tell you some stories about former Texas Supreme Court justices who've gotten elected because people thought they knew they were based on their name, and within a year they fled the United States For Grenada, having been indicted for serious crimes, this is in 1976, you know. He just feels very Texan, honestly. It's, I mean, it's sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. But what's the alternative, practically, and then, you know, are we going to do something

that the people of Texas are not going to accept, I think, a system in which we have a Missouri plan option, where you have a very small group, sort of like what you have in the District of Columbia. I don't see that happening. Would they accept something in which maybe the governor gets? to appoint, the Senate confirms, and then there's a retention effort in, like in Florida, maybe, but again, there have been so many people that have tried to do that, and that sounds to Texas is a strong populist tradition, our 1876 Constitution derives from that era, you're just stealing

power away from us and giving it to elite people, and people don't like that, even if it might make some sense. So what I have concluded is that even though I don't love having to try to campaign You ask people for money. Imagine being a judge going out there and your paw is outstretched, hoping people put money in it so that you can have no choice. You have a state like ours with all these major media markets and you're trying to cut through all of the noise to get people to focus on you.

I don't love doing that, but my view is until something fundamentally changes, that's the system we have. And so I'm glad that I had the chance to first you put on the court, but I will keep trying to run and I go around when I'm not on the ballot. I spend a lot of time across the state trying to talk to people and explain to them why, as the owners of the Texas judiciary, a third of the government of our state, they have a civic obligation to learn something about the judiciary and make wise choices, so that they can leave Texas better off than they found it, just like those who came before us have generally

done. And that's tough. It's like the starfish story. I can, you know, reach a few people here, a few people there, and 31 million of us. But that's what I'm going to do. I'm leaving it to others to decide whether or not there's something. It's above my pay grade. It belongs to the people of Texas.

He would be a very hard person to beat, I think, in a fair fight. You know, the thought I leave with on this is I think it's very hard to have the court do its, any court, any judge do their job, which is often to be a counter-majoritarian institution when standing for election and asking for money and having people not really know much about the role. I want to thank the judges on this panel for coming here and talking about this. as we've said on the podcast before, the vast majority of law in this country that gets done

is by state courts, and yet we talk so infrequently about it. So thank you guys for helping me do a little bit of correction on that balance. Thank you for having us. That's it for us today. If you like what... Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes.

Dispatch what? Honto, though some people pronounce it, Junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns, starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Hounthos, Spanish for assembly or council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those Honto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch Hoontos without quite the same ambition,

but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day, without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country and I've attended many of them.

I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gathers, gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called Party Fowl with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there

are other sane, normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your hoonto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local hoonto, head to the dispatch.com slash hoonto. That's j-u-n-dispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at thedispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to build this with you. But we're doing here, there are a few easy

ways to support us. You can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And we hope you'll consider becoming a member of the dispatch, unlocking access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at Dispatch.com slash join, and if you use promo code A.O, you'll get one month free and help me win the ongoing, deeply scientific internal debate over which Dispatch podcast is the true flagship. And if ads aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership at the dispatch.com slash premium. That'll get you an ad-free feed and early access to all episodes, two gift memberships to give away, access to exclusive town halls with our founders, and a place in our hearts forever.

as always if you've got questions comments concerns or corrections you can email us at advisory opinions at the dispatch.com we read everything even the ones that say david's right that's going to do it for our show today thanks so much for tuning in we'll see you next time Dream.