The Dispatch Podcast - Let's Talk About SCOTUSblog

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

On this special livestreamed conversation, Steve Hayes and Sarah Isgur discussed our recent acquisition of SCOTUSblog and chatted with the newest Dispatcher, Amy Howe, about our plans to build out an extended universe of legal coverage and all things Supreme Court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Steve Hayes with me, our sir, at Isker, and Amy Howe. And we are here to talk about the very exciting news from last week, which we have gotten to see in action this week of the Dispatch acquiring SCOTUS blog. I will leave it to the experts to talk about what this means in sort of greater detail and give you an introduction, and then we're going to jump right into some of the substance. But let me just say how excited we are to have this moment, how excited we are, Amy, to have you along with us and the SCOTUS blog team. I was trying to remember, as I was thinking about this conversation tonight, when I first read SCOTUS blog, and I can't pinpoint

it, but it was a long time ago. For people in Washington, D.C., who do what I do, which cover general news, provide analysis when needed. You know, SCOTUS blog has been one of the key places to go and get news information and analysis from the beginning since, basically since shortly after it launched 22 years ago. Am I right on that, Amy? It's correct, yes. Yeah, yeah. And I can remember one time I was in.

invited to do Supreme Court analysis at Fox News, and it was of the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings. And as Sarah will be happy and eager to point out, probably repeatedly throughout this conversation, I'm not an expert on the Supreme Court. I read the news about the Supreme Court. I find it fascinating. I find the legal questions super interesting, and I can kind of get lost in that as an intellectual exercise. And I almost went to law school to study constitutional law. But that's not my, it's not my world. So I would come to rely on SCOTUS blog to help me make sense of what's going on.

What is, you know, in the context of the confirmation hearings, what, who is Sonia Sotomayor? What is she done? What do we need to know about or what are her past decisions? What do they tell us about the way she thinks about the role of the judiciary about her likely role on the court? things like that that are pretty basic. And then my learning stops sort of at that point. But it has been, you know, something that I've gone to and read and referred to repeatedly over the years. So we are beyond excited to welcome the SCOTUS blog team to the dispatch and to really look forward to the kind of coverage that we think we've been doing here at the dispatch across a wide number of issues. and really kind of doubling and tripling down on what we're doing on the Supreme Court

and on the federal judiciary generally. A longer introduction than I had imagined. But welcome again, Amy and Sarah. And maybe the first place to start before we offer Sarah an opportunity to provide some context, maybe you could just introduce yourself to our folks and to the dispatch live viewers. Tell them a little bit about you and your background. you characterize the work that SCOTUS blog has done over these years. Sure, but I want to start by talking about how excited I am about this.

Like, on the one hand, it seems hard to believe that it's only been a week. But on the other hand, like, I'm having just a lot of fun. Like, a lot of people sort of first heard about SCOTUS blog back in, I think, around 2012 when SCOTS blog was live blogging, the opinion announcements from the Supreme Court cafeteria as we sat around and waited for the announcement of the decision in the Affordable Care Act individual mandate case. And I feel like that's the kind of fun I'm having right now. It's nerd fun, but it's a lot of fun. And so I'm really excited about this next chapter for SCOTUS blog. And I think it's going to really sort of take it to the next level. I am a retired lawyer,

just to talk a little bit about my background. I went to Georgetown Law School and practiced law first at a firm, Stapdow and Johnson, here in Washington, D.C., and then went into practice with my husband, Tom Goldstein, in a Supreme Court litigation firm. And we hadn't really done any of the things that people who practiced before the Supreme Court traditionally did, especially not in the late 1990s. We hadn't gone to fancy law school. We hadn't clerked at the Supreme Court. We hadn't worked in the Solicitor General's office. And so we decided to start a blog to show off how much we knew about the Supreme Court.

And it was a lot of fun. It turned out to not be the world's greatest business development tool. So we kept on Twitter because we were having a good time. And pretty quickly, it worked into the public resource, which is what it is today. know what you continue to be. And so there are a couple of different ways that you can think about Stodis Club. You know, one is sort of a, as a new site that covers everything that's happening at the court, whether the cases that are being argued today, the decisions that are being issued.

Today, the cert petition report is considering that it grants at any particular day, the emergency appeals are keeping everyone involved. Supreme Court very busy. But then it also is sort of a repository of information. And so we have what we call pages, which are like this docket that the Supreme Court itself are on its website. We just like to think that it's better, including because it's clear links to all of the briefs and opinions and the arguments when they happen so that again are covered. of that case on Strudis Blanc. And then we have sort of what we call special projects,

whether that is the, you know, justice is retirement or confirmation, deep dives into nominee. We've done special projects on things like courtroom access, elections, and so sort of souped nuts on the Supreme Court. Don't forget stat pack. The return of stat pack,

which takes on the Supreme Court. over the course of the term, things like who rates, what decisions, you know, when the justices are in agreement with each other, and which rates, who is the most often in the majority, who's the most often in the dissent, all kinds of fun statistics. Since stat pack went away a few years ago, I've had to do my own stat pack. And it's no fun doing it on your own. So I look forward to now at least, of course, I'm going to have to do a stamp pack. You can now compile them. And I'm still doing setback. I actually think that's really helpful, Steve. Do you mind if we just take a second for those who are watching at home in front of a laptop? If you bring up ScotusBlog.com, I'll just run through really quickly, like, how to use the website.

Because for our dispatch members who aren't like A.O. lawyer nerds, which I think is most of our audience tonight. A.O. is advisory opinions for those of you who don't know what that is. There's nine justice on the Supreme Court. Sneve. I don't know if you know that. I think it'd be so funny right now if I just ask Steve to name them all. Anyone over, under? We could do it.

Okay. So if you go to the website... You all mine. Thank you very much. Right, when you get to the page, the news stuff that Amy is talking about looks like a regular news site. So like that case preview, tomorrow they're arguing the combined cases. Oh my gosh. Yes. So helpful. They're arguing the combined cases over whether a state can pay for a public charter school that is religious in nature, whether that violates the First Amendment, whether a state constitutional ban on providing public money for a religious charter school violates the First Amendment.

So you've got the real free exercise meeting establishment clause, play in the joints, tension there, coming really to the first. for that's tomorrow's argument and Amy wrote an amazing preview of that. So that's the normal news part of the website. But here's what she's talking about at the top. And we don't need to click on all of these so much as just do the pull down arrows. So case files. We do the little pull down arrow on that. Yes. So October terms, as you guys know, start that first Monday in October. There's Red Mass the Sunday before the first Monday in October. So we name everything by, it's like fiscal year in Supreme Courtland, but it starts in October. So for this year, we're in October term 2024. If you click on OT24, you can organize the cases by name or

by sitting. I always use the sitting ones. And so I think I've ever sorted it by name. Yeah, I know. Never. Because if I know the name, then I just search for the name with Control F. And there's not that many. Yeah, there's under 60 at this point. So if you scroll down to the April sitting, for instance, you would be able to see the case pages for that religious freedom case being argued. Another way you could find the case page would be to go to that news story, and it will also link to the case pages. But each of these will have their own case page. Just click on that first one, Royal Canaan. Okay, so just at the top here. Oh, no, stay, stay. You're never going to need the docket number, to be honest. But

opinion below, a lot of those are dead. links on the site right now. We are fixing those. We have hired Nora, the most amazing intern, not Steve's daughter. And Nora is like a gerbil. She's working away on this, fixing all the broken case links. But that could be really helpful because, especially before the Supreme Court has decided something to see what the circuit court said and how those judges talked about the issues for, what do you think, Amy? Seventy five percent of the cases, hyper, hyper helpful for 25 percent, especially in the criminal law ones. Actually, the circuit case was about 17 things,

only one of which is being decided by the Supreme Court. And it can be unhelpful. Then you have the opinion linked to it, who authored it, the vote, all of that. Scroll down some more, the holding. You have all of them, the stories that were written about it or mentioned it. But here we get to the fun color coding.

Oh, the colors, Amy. The beautiful colors. So these colors are not arbitrary. When you file a case at the Supreme Court, there's all sorts of rules that you have to abide by. But one of them is that the briefs have to come with the correct cover color on the paper. So the red brief, for instance, is the person who won below. And so the first thing you're going to want to do is look for the blue brief and the red brief, because those are your two main briefs.

I kind of ignore greenies. I don't know about you, ain't me? And the gray brief, if there's a gray brief. That's very important. That's the United States' brief. Yeah, in fact, if there's a gray brief, sometimes that's all I read. So you can, if you scroll back up to the top of this little part. Nope, to the top of the colors.

Okay, see the key to color coding, right at the very top. Yeah. So if you're ever curious, if you forget the red and blue, you can always click on that key. will take you to the Supreme Court website, which will tell you what each of the colors means and stands for. But just remember what we said, red, blue, gray. Those are the three colors you're really going to look for. Okay, back up to the top. The only other thing I wanted to flag for everyone, so the stat pack when it's done will be under statistics. That's great. The emergency docket. So if we can click on that for 04, oh, sorry, 24, 25, four, four, four,

pending applications. This is, you know, the birthright citizenship. I promise you tariffs will be on here soon enough. These are the, you know, a lawsuit was filed against the Trump administration at this point. And the district court said, ah, the Trump administration can't implement that policy while this case is pending. So I haven't even decided whether it's lawful or not lawful. I think it's probably not lawful.

it's likely is actually the real term likely not lawful and so they say the trump administration can't implement that policy that then goes to the circuit and then to the supreme court and it's just the question of what will the status quo be while the case is pending and of course that's going to be our big May 15th extravaganza amy would you like to talk a little bit about what's happening on May 15th. May 15th, are we talking about the oral argument? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so this, I mean, the Supreme Court theoretically would have been hearing its last oral argument of the term tomorrow. The justices normally fit all of the oral arguments in between the first Monday in October and the end of April. But they scheduled the birth rate citizenship emergency. stay application for May 15th so that they can decide it before the end of the term because otherwise they wouldn't hear oral argument until September or until October. And so we have a lot

of coverage planned for that as well. It's really unusual for them to be hearing arguments in May, as I said. But tell them what it's actually going to be about. Yes. And so everyone calls that the birthright citizenship plays not. What is right citizenship isn't really on the agenda? This is really about what's known as universal or nationwide injunctions, whether a single trial court judge can issue an order that binds the entire country. And this is something that has been controversial. Some of the justices have weighed in on the propriety of these nationwide injunctions.

And, you know, the Biden administration didn't like it when there were conservatives going to, district courts in Texas seeking to block the Biden administration's initiatives. And now that the Trump administration is having difficulty implementing its policies, conservatives don't like them. So it's going to be very interesting to see how this shakes out. So Steve, I have a big vision for May 15th. I don't want to like over promise here, but like the live blog will have the full dispatch extended legal universe. So Amy will be in the courtroom during it. But then you know, me and the gang will have the oral argument playing

and we'll be live blogging so that, you know, if you're at work, you can just follow along with our thoughts and feelings during the argument. Then when the argument finishes, we're going to get the full dispatch extended universe

for a dispatch live. And hopefully Amy joining us from right outside the courtroom to tell us all the things that we missed because there aren't cameras in the courtroom. And despite Amy wanting them, I'm thrilled that there aren't cameras in the courtroom, and I just get Amy's

malifluous descriptions of the justices faces. I mean, I think that sounds good. I think it's exciting to have all of these resources and to be able to bring this to people in a way that makes sense for them. Let me, if I can, take us sort of a step back for the average dispatch reader

who is excited about SCOTUS blog and adding, but maybe isn't going to get into the color code and is it going to what I mean I may or may not be describing myself I mean but I'm a pretty good standing I think for for our readers in this in this sense what can they expect from this marriage and I mean we pointed to the sort of news briefs on the top of the page but how will this be good for the average readers interested in Supreme Court issues might be interested in constitutional law wants to follow this one to be sort of up on what's happening, but isn't going to go six levels deep?

So, first of all, I've been relying on Amy's reporting the whole time we've been doing AO. I try to give her credit when I'm reading from her courtroom reporting. I'll admit I've probably failed more than a few times because she has always been my go-to reporter for what actually happened in an oral argument in particular. For instance, right now I'm waiting for her to tell me what happens. happened in the Martin case that was RQ today. And I have, this is not a joke. I haven't told Amy this. I've been like refreshing SCOTUS block waiting for my martin. What was it? I don't want to go through the whole transcript, Amy. So in that sense, we've already been getting some of that

benefit. But the courts are becoming so much more important because, and I've explained this a lot, maybe you all are sick of hearing it. As Congress has slowed and slowed and stopped doing its job, and the executive branch has felt the political pressure to step up and do more and more. I mean, we're at Trump's 100 days. It is incredible when you think about the first 100 days of a presidency and all the political capital that he has expended. And not any of it was on a single piece of legislation. In fact, not any of it that I'm aware of, and Steve, you may be able to correct, me, but I think I'm right about this. So not any of it was on, obviously, a constitutional amendment. Not any of it was on congressional legislation. Not any of it has even been on rulemaking,

like regulations. No notice and comment, none of that. It's all been executive orders that the president can sign that may or may not, he may not even have the power to do that, and that the next president can unsign on day one. So all this political capital for things that either he didn't have the authority to do or that are so ephemeral, they will be gone on January 21st, 2029. And I say all that because it makes the courts more and more important because I don't think this is just a Trump phenomenon. We saw it increase Biden to Trump, Trump to Biden, Biden to Trump as well. The more presidents feel like they're not going to go to Congress, they're not even going to do notice and rule, notice and comment rulemaking, the more winds up in court because there's

so many more ways to challenge it from the opposing policy side. Right. I think the way that I think about it is while the actual EO's executive orders themselves are ephemeral and can be reversed and likely many of them temporary, the I would say the distortion of the system is here to stay. likely will grow. You know, other people might argue with my characterization of that as a distortion. And the decisions you get from the Supreme Court, you might have had some, you know, the play in the joints that I was talking about, for instance, between the free exercise clause

and the establishment clause. We've had that play in the joints. I mean, we've literally had the term for, what, Amy, 70 years, 60 years. And there's been a play in the joints for the whole time. we're not going to have any more play on the joints because Oklahoma was like, I don't know, let's find out. So that's a lot of what Trump has done as well that is putting the court in an interesting position where they're having to, you know, it's like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that you can't both know the position and velocity of an electron. Well, for a lot of law, that's been the case as well. and now the Supreme Court's being asked to, you know, pick the velocity or the location.

Way to dump it down, Sarah. Right. She said the Eisenberger. I'm sure everybody's like, yeah, totally. I got that. I'm tracking you now, Sarah. That's great. I just want to say, like, I'm so flattered, Sarah, that you rely.

But you are not actually my target audience when I write for Skoda's blog. I'm actually thinking more, like, of my mother who's a retired middle school teacher in Annapolis, Maryland. reading my articles. And so, you know, I think part of what Scotus blog tries to do is to, you know, sort of on the one hand, make the Supreme Court very accessible to the average person who is interested in the court and wants perhaps more detail than they're able to get elsewhere because, you know, there is so much going on in the news right now. You know, my colleagues in the press core are wonderful, but, you know, Scoti's blog, the spring court's all we do. And so we have kind of unlimited space to cover the cord, which my colleagues just don't have because their

editors, you know, tell them like, okay, you know, you get 750 words to cover the argument. So we're able to, you know, on the one hand, try to make it accessible. But on the other hand, while we're writing excessively to go into a fair amount of detail about what's happening. happening at the court. But you explain, I mean, I think this is the value. And again, I'm using myself as a stand-in for our readers and viewers tonight. I mean, I think you explain it in such a way that it is accessible that your mom, the retired middle school teacher can understand it, that I sort of a lay reader can get it without really dumbing it down. I mean, and in that sense, it's consistent with kind of what we've tried to do at the dispatch in a variety.

of different areas. I mean, I think we provide a lot of coverage on a lot of different things, whether it's in the morning dispatch or other newsletters, where people can come, if you want to come and get a sense of sort of what's going on in the world. Well, you can come to the morning dispatch. You can read the quick hits. You can go deeper on, you know, one issue occasionally two. We'll send you, we'll give you recommendations of places to go deeper still in other areas. But, you know, for somebody who's a movement conservative reader and wants to understand the history of American conservatism. Well, they can go to Jonah. We'll get a lot of that. And we have these different areas where people can go deeper. And this will be another one. But I don't want to,

I don't want to scare off our non-court, you know, the people who are looking at the colors because it goes so deep. There's a lot there for everybody. And then also a lot for law dorks like Sarah. I mean, I think that's not the law nerds is the right phrase. Is that what you prefer? Is that right? I feel like Steve would be giving me wedgies in the bathroom

and junior high version of this conversation. It's not true. I was never, well, usually not a bully. Let me take a question, a big picture question that we got from one of our comments. And if you have questions, please lob them in.

We're going to start taking a bunch of questions. and we'll probably do questions for most of the rest of our time here, both on sort of the process and SCOTUS blog itself, and then we'd like to get into some of the issues, some of the things that the court is looking at over the next couple days of today and tomorrow. This is sort of a pickup of some of the conversations that we've having. This is from EFC who says, I will be a new SCOTUS blog reader.

It's not clear to me for this announcement how to access it. Will there be a link from here? from the dispatch site to the SCOTUS blog site? Do I need to sign up on the site? Will there be separate links to articles, et cetera, from the dispatch site? How do you all envision that on sort of a practical level working? Yeah, so in the dream world,

and it's going to take us a few months to revamp the SCOTUS blog website as well, but there'll be like a, you know, along the top bar there, there'll be a dispatch bar. as well or dispatch legal or whatever and then same at the dispatch there'll be a a little way to send you over to scotus blog so they are going to stay separate um and when you think about it i think that makes a lot of sense what amy and scotus blog has done is build a just like tunnel vision independent reporting view of the supreme court there's none of my like shenanigans on aO that infect scotis blog. So they are married, but distinct personalities. Married, finally, separately. Literally.

Is that, what do you think, Amy? Is that fair? Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds right. And so you can go to scotusblog.com right now. You do not need to do anything. And you can see that website that we were putting up on there. And again, for like our newbie users, just click on that first Supreme Court to consider bid for first religious charter school. And you'll see some of the rhythm as well, right? When the Supreme Court took the case, Amy wrote up, Supreme Court takes case on religious liberty. Then in advance of the oral argument, here's what the Supreme Court will be hearing about tomorrow. Then after the oral argument, here's what they heard. And then when they decided, here's what they decided. And so for every important case, you'll have that rhythm from Amy of they took it, they're going to hear it, they heard it. They heard it. They decided it. Tomorrow morning will also be, because tomorrow they're hearing this really big case about charter schools in Oklahoma and whether or not this Catholic charter school can become the nation's first religious charter school. But before they do that, at 10 a.m., they will also be releasing opinions. And so we will be live blogging the opinion announcement. There are no cameras in the

courtroom or even audio of the announcements. There are no electronics allowed in the courtroom. So I'm actually in the Supreme Court's press room downstairs as they hand out physical copies of the opinion simultaneously with the announcement of the opinions upstairs in the courtroom. But, you know, we have a little community who gather online for the opinion announcements on the live blog, and it tends to be a lot of fun. By the way, fun fact, Steve, that you don't know about the Supreme Court. So there's the nine justices in the average tenure for justice, and I mean over the scope of the entire history of the United States, like when people died of coughing too much or whatever, is 17 years. And that has only increased in recent years

as well. So that's a really long time. But you then don't get the full scope of who all works at the Supreme Court. So like Patricia McCabe, who is the head of the public information office, whose office will be handing Amy these opinions, Patricia has been at the Supreme Court since 1991. And the librarian for the Supreme Court. So Chief Justice Roberts, Amy, check me on this. He's the 17th Chief Justice, I believe. If you say so. Yeah. The librarian of the Supreme Court is only the 16th librarian, because that's how long the librarians work at the Supreme Court. And this guy's resume is so much more impressive than any of the justices. It's incredible. I'm like a, yes, I'm a law nerd, but like I'm, I'm even more of a Supreme Court, like, building history nerd.

There is a person whose job it is to run the elevator because it's one of those elevators. You have to close the accordion screen door to make it work and then press the numbers. They've got a little stool in there and they will run the elevator for you if you're down at the private areas. Let me jump in with a couple of questions because these are directly on point here. Two-part question for Amy. Well, let me ask just the first part of this. our question for Amy from Mark Holmland. Do you have inside SCOTUS sources? How do you look at your reporting? And to what extent if you have those sources, does that inform what you're doing

and how you're writing and the kinds of things our folks will be reading? Yeah, this is not, it's, you know, there are not a lot of inside SCOTIS sources. There are certainly has been some great reporting like Jody Cantor, Joan Biscupic from inside the court. But it is, less of an entrepreneurial investigative reporting beat than it is a brief where you read a beat where you read a lot of briefs and go to a lot of arguments so right and then the second part of mark's question before we jump to another one about the dispatch scotas blog marriage um what is the lasting fall of the dobbs leak and which justices were most affected by it and will we ever discover the leaker. This refers to the leak of the Supreme Court's opinion in Dobbs on Roe v. Wade.

How long ago was that now? Three years. Three years. Almost exactly three years. It would have been May 2nd, 2020. What's the last thing followed? Has it changed the way that people think about the court? Does it change the way that those of you report on the court approach?

I think a lot. changed a lot inside the building, and I don't think that we know the full extent to which it has changed it. I mean, I think that, you know, you have the impression that there was not a lot of security, and by security, I mean, not like armed guards, but your sort of process necessarily surrounding the way that they sort of circulated drafts of opinions before the Dobbs leak. And, you know, particularly in the term after the Dobbs leak, you know, it took them a lot longer to get their opinions out initially. And you had the sense that they had just put new procedures in place to try to keep leaks from happening and that it was just sort of slowing the works down generally. Which justices, and I think there's just sort of, you know, more security around the,

the building overall as a result of the leak and then sort of the fallout from the leak, sort of the backlash against the justices, which justices were most affected by it. You know, I think it's hard to say, will we ever discover the leaker? I don't think we're going to, you know, maybe it'll be some kind of like deep throat thing where we'll find out in like 50 years. I don't think that there's going to be any sort of investigation at this point that determines who the leaker is, I would be surprised. It was an investigation, right? But there was an investigation.

There was an investigation. And maybe a year or so after the leak, they sort of released a report that said, we don't know. So I would be really surprised if, you know, that there are any sort of official investigation results that say who the leak is. is um but you know maybe again as i said some sort of like deep throat thing in 50 years anything you disagree with sarah there or ending on that um i think it wasn't just the dobs leak i think it's all the things poured into one as amy was saying but you know shortly after the leak of the dob's opinion was the assassination attempt on justice cabinaw and i I think you can't really separate those two because they were related one another.

They were also related temporally. I think that had a psychic effect on a lot of the justices on just how close that came. You know, if he hadn't called the would-be assassin killer, if he hadn't called his sister, if he hadn't seen the marshals, if he, you know, if his sister hadn't told him to call 911 and turn himself in, we could be having a very, very different conversation right now. And I think that was sobering. I think it was also bad for the clerks, if that makes sense, instead of bringing them all together. And I think it pulled them more into their chambers. You know, the justices really don't go out to lunch anymore.

It used to be a tradition that each justice would take out each other set of clerks. And the justice would sort of be known for what restaurant they would take the clerks to and stuff like that. And, like, they don't really go out anymore because they can't really just sit at restaurants anymore. So there's been those types of negative effects, but they're not all purely from the leak of the Dobbs' opinion, if that makes sense. Yeah. Let me jump to a question from my new favorite name in this chat. It's a question from Solomio de Hades. Solo Mio is a cut of meat, fillet, and Hades is a...

town in Spain. So I don't know the background. Head-Daz is famous for its sherry. So I don't know. It's just making me hungry. Just someone trolling you, trying to get you to take your question. Not the first, not the last. Yeah, they knew that that would get the question. Not hard. Very smart. You'd ask your question. It'll definitely get my attention. That's true. Smart. I assume Skodasblog, in contrast to the dispatch, is not going to have an ideological bet. Amy, why don't you take that first? That is correct. You know, we are going to maintain, and that was part of, I think,

when we were talking to you all about the acquisition and do Snedd, like, you know, we want SCOTUS blog to keep on being SCOTUS blog in the kind of work that we do and in the unbiased coverage that we have. Yep, I think that's right. You know, something that is also on SCOTUS blog that we didn't talk about would be, I forget the name of it, Amy, but the like point counterpoint. like having two people kind of discuss Symposia, sort of.

The symposia, yeah. I think we'll still be trying to do things like that. Obviously, advisory opinions certainly has opinions. So I think we will have things like that, but like any newspaper that has kind of an editorial page where you'll have a little bit of every opinion over there, that will be very different than what Amy's doing. And dear God, we are not.

changing a thing about Amy Howe. Like, I would steal her up in a little, like, hermetic box so that she can never leave or inhale fresh air. That's weird. That's a weird thing to say. I mean, like, you know, when I sat down to write that preview of the Oklahoma Charter School case, you know, I didn't write it any differently over the weekend this past weekend than I would have two weeks ago.

Yeah. I just want to say from an institutional perspective, this is. Arguably, this is the most important thing that we want to communicate to people coming out of this conversation and bringing Scotus Bog into the dispatch. We would be absolute fools to try to change Scotus Bog. I mean, Scotisbog is successful. The reason that we wanted to bring into the dispatch is because it's successful on its own terms. People find value in the work that they do because the work is produced at such high levels of integrity. That's not to say, of course, we think that our opinion and analysis, and commentary work does the same thing. It's all fact-based. It's all fact-checked. We think it's some of the best news and analysis you can get out there. But with SCOTUS blog, it is meant to be as straight as you can possibly be,

getting as close to objectivity as you really can. And we are not going to mess with that. We would be, as I say, we would be absolutely idiots to try. I have a question here from Jay, Eric, about David Latt. Um, he's probably, that's probably not a name that's familiar to many of our readers and viewers. If you are an AO listener, um, you definitely know who David Latt is. Can you introduce David Latt to the broader universe of dispatch folks and tell us who he is and what he's likely to be doing?

I can't wait. So David Latt, um, so probably the, I don't know, Amy, if you would agree with this, but I think the three most famous reporters who all do very different things in legal world. Okay, I'll make it four. Amy Howe, Jan Crawford Greenberg, Adam Liptack, and David Latt. So there used to be this news blog newsletter, whatever you want to call it, called Underneath Their Robs. And it was anonymous. And it was a gossip website about the federal judiciary.

So this anonymous blogger whose spoiler alert is going to turn out to be David Latt would write, you know, like, which justice is the best dressed or which judge was spotted out at whatever restaurant, you know, eating a corn dog, he would announce a prom queen of the Federalist Society National Convention. And so for a long time, a lot of us were trying to figure out who the writer of underneath their robes was. It was obviously someone who had gone to an elite law school, turned out to be Yale, had clerked at an elite level, turned out to be Judge O. Scanlon at the Ninth Circuit. and had just a lot of access to interesting legal stuff. And it turned out that David Latt at the time was also a federal prosecutor, an AUSA under Drumroll Chris Christie in New Jersey. So when he outed himself, actually, U.S. attorney Christie at that point was pretty understanding of the whole thing. But pretty quickly, David realized that he wanted to go off from law world and start

his journalism. He started the website above the law, which was basically the outed version of underneath their robes in a lot of ways. He sold that website and now continues off in the world. And then he started his current newsletter, original jurisdiction, which is the other news source that I most rely on. So basically all we've done this week is like create Sarah's universe of the things she relies on most and force them to be my friends through money, which I'm fine with. Harrah's used to do that for me, too. So, so many things I could say in response to that.

Buying friends for Sarah? David's, David will be our partner. He'll continue original jurisdiction. It will still be his own newsletter, but you're going to be seeing a lot of cross-pollination and David will be part of our dispatch extended legal universe del U. We're looking for. for better names.

Excellent. Let me get to a couple of the questions. Again, if you have a few more questions, we're going to go and we'll go for about 20 more minutes. If you have other questions, feel free to drop them in. Take this question from Kaylee. I thought it was interesting to see that SCOT has heard an FBI qualified immunity case today with the news about the small family in Oklahoma getting wrongly hit by ice. Are they related?

Are they related enough? Oh, I think I was so busy. getting ready for the FBI case today that I didn't read about, haven't read about the small family in Oklahoma. What's the nature, how would you describe the FBI case? What's its, well, the FBI case, it's, you know, the facts are really compelling of this case called Martin versus United States. And it's about a family in suburban Atlanta who were the victims of what it's called the wrong house raid. The FBI SWAT team had a warrant to go to, you know, particular house because they were as part of an investigation into gang activity and the

agent, special agent who was leading the team shows up, doesn't sort of confirm the address. They go in and it is the wrong house on the wrong street. But it's a really complicated question involving claims under something called the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows lawsuits against federal employees when they are acting within the scope of their duties. And there are exceptions that pull things out of the Federal Tort Claims Act. And then there are exceptions to the exceptions. And I think it's the end of April. And I think the justices were likely to sort of send the case back to the lower courts on relatively narrow grounds. Like the justices, like a couple justices didn't ask that many questions.

questions. The justices who did speak up were pretty clearly thought that, like, you know, come on, FBI. What do you mean? Like, you just sort of show up at the wrong house. And there was this great. There was this great. I mean, Justice Gorsuch has been really cranky this week for some reason. Don't know why. But he, like, read the riot act, Elisa Blatt yesterday, who was the advocate. And then today he has this back and forth with the government's lawyer, where he's like, so you're saying it is the policy of the U.S. government? to sometimes knock down the door of the wrong house, really? And the guy's like, well, no, but like, you know, it's going to happen.

And he's like, how about checking the number of the house? He's like, well, actually, it could be really dangerous to, like, check the number because with that amount of time, someone could be shooting from the house. And then Corsuch goes, how about the street? Can you check the street sign before you towed on it? And the lawyer is like, well, I mean, I guess maybe you could chase the street side. It was bad. Yeah.

How much? Can I ask, let me ask, again, sort of a, a stand-in question for our readers and viewers. How much can you tell about the way a case is like they'd be decided by listening to those questions? I had always been told on the rare occasion where I had to do this and where I was providing commentary or analysis on court cases, hey, be careful. A lot of times they're going to be asking questions as a devil's advocate or they're going to

steal manning arguments. Don't jump to conclusions. But, you know, some, Amy, some of what you do and have done over the years. years is to interpret what you're hearing and saying and saying, this feels like this is kind of headed in this direction. How much should people read into the way that the justice has asked their questions? Amy, by the way, is the perfect person to ask this to because it has changed, since oral argument has changed, you actually get Amy to tell you the before and the after. Yes. And so when I started doing this, like oral arguments, like an oral argument like today,

it would be, well, and actually today wasn't a great example, but, you know, oral arguments were an hour. I mean, the Noel Francisco one was a good example. That was like two hours of my life. They'll never get off. Last week, it was supposed to be an hour and was two and a half hours. But, you know, during COVID, the justices started doing these telephone arguments. And when they came back to the courtroom after COVID, they realized that they liked having Justice Thomas ask questions. So they went with this hybrid program in which they have this sort of free-for-all section of the argument that's the same way that it had always been. But then they also have a time when they go through the justices from the Chief Justice all the way to Justice Jackson in order of seniority. And everybody has the opportunity to ask a question. So if it's a high-profile case, everyone will ask a question.

And you can be there on morning, it feels like. And so, you know, I think the answer really is it depends. Like there are some cases where you come out and you're like, I'm not really sure what they're going to do. There are some cases where you come out and it's pretty clear what they're going to do. And sometimes like today, you know, some of the sort of really technical cases, the justices will actually like come pretty close to telegraphing what they're going to do. couple of the justices would sort of say to the lawyers, if we do this, sort of what is your reaction? And the lawyers would sort of push back against it. But it seemed pretty clear that there were probably five justices who were just like, you know, we're going to get this off

our plate and somebody else can deal with it at another time. Steve, I would just add, I think the harder thing now, you know, when it's a two-hour argument, your brain has trouble processing what percentage of time was really spent on various points. So I listen to the arguments and go read the transcript. The justices, I think Amy's exactly right. I think they're telegraphing a lot more today than they were five plus years ago. But you can, I can get distracted at least if, you know, Sotomayor dominates the free for all argument time that I can sort of imagine in my head that more justices were saying that or something because she was talking so much, for instance or something like that.

So it's always, you know, a pro always is going to break down all nine, count to five every time. Make sure you heard from all nine. Because in that FBI raid case that Amy was just talking about, we never heard from Justice Barrett. So there's one whole vote that we know nothing about. And like, you don't even notice that necessarily unless you go back through and are like, wait, did I, did Justice Barrett ask something?

And then you look at the transcript and you're like, oh, when justice. when the Chief Justice called on her both times, she waved off. Let me ask another big picture question. As I sort of think through what I think our readers are interested in understanding, a lot of the sort of mainstream media reporting on the court, and particularly the commentary, the commentary defending the court, the commentary criticizing the court, talks about the court and the justices as if they're political,

players in the same way that the Senate is, for instance. And they'll talk about the breakdown, you know, Republicans versus Democrats, liberals versus conservatives. Sarah's spent a fair amount of time both in written stuff for the dispatch and also in discussions on A.O. telling us that that's not the right way to think about it. What, Amy, how do you react when you see that, the court described that way? get Amy to criticize my 333 theory I mean I don't think of them I don't think of them as 333 I mean I do think of them you know I think of them as sort of on a continuum and so you know in

some of these cases you know are that you know is justice Barrett more amenable to you know to move to the other side as we've seen like in some of these cases in which she's been in dissent with the other female justices? Yes. You know, I think that it is, for the most part, a six to three court. And we've seen that in a lot of the big cases. You know, I don't think of, I think that they are, I don't think of them as partisan. I mean, I think that they are political, but not partisan. I mean, I think that they are cognizant of what's going on. in the political world. They're, you know, obviously not just sort of up in an ivory tower, but I don't necessarily, they're not always partisan. I love when Amy and I disagree. Amy and I, this is going to be like a really fun part of this, I think. I think Amy and I, I mean, Amy is as basically two decades covering the court on me. So far be it from me to put myself on par there. But, you know, we just had this great conversation about cameras.

in the courtroom in transparency for the court on advisory opinions. And this is another good example. And I look forward to so many of them because she's smart and thoughtful and not some knee-jerk partisan about the court's partisanship or ideological bent. And it's what makes her a great reporter of the court. But it also makes her really fun to talk to and push her on her thoughts and opinions of the court as well. Is it the case that, I mean, I think some people think, in cases involving the Trump administration, which I think we're likely to see, you know, pretty consequential stuff

over the next four years, that any of the justices start from the position, hey, I'm sort of for Donald Trump and the sympathetic to Donald Trump and what he's trying to do and reason backwards from that and the way that we see most political actors. I mean, many political actors,

even people who surprise me, doing that. Is that, do the justices do that? Is that the wrong way to understand how they operate? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I think that, I mean, this is what I think what a lot of us are really watching now. I mean, I think that what's going on right now is that they are not necessarily giving the Trump administration the presumption of regularity that they had given him in his first administration, and they would give to any other administration. I mean, I think this is what we saw with the, you know, 1 a.m. order in the removal case, you know, that they felt compelled to sort of issue this order so quickly without, you know,

not just without waiting for the other side to respond, but, you know, just within hours, without waiting for the Fifth Circuit to respond and sort of with this very clearly worded order. yes there are any any disagreement there no um i just i don't i think what people can see from the outside as oh they must be giving trump sort of the benefit of the doubt or like i assume i'm going to rule for trump and then you have to sort of prove otherwise for some areas of the law is going to match on to conservative legal ideology and for other areas it's not and in particular where I think Trump 2.0 is going to run into problems is that conservative legal ideology is all about shrinking the administrative state and the sort of expansive powers of

the administrative state and all of those agencies. Well, Trump 2.0 is all about the powers of the executive branch and the administrative state. So I think you actually might see, by the way, for those who do listen to our podcasts and hear cat meowing all the time, this is gawkin chips in all of his glory. He is the loud one. So every time you hear that, he's sorry. He can't help himself. He gets very lonely. So I think we'll see that come to ahead. Now, of course, what's interesting is also in conservative legal world. The president's power within the executive branch is also a big thing. So I think so far at least, Amy, I'd be so curious what your reaction to this is.

So far, I would say that the justices on the court have been very predictable on those types of cases based on conservative legal ideological beliefs, circa 2005 or so. And that's what makes, if you wanted to predict their outcomes, you would look at like, well, what did the 2005 conservative legal world think? I think it would be very unhelpful to look at what MAGA world thinks now for predicting Supreme Court outcomes. Hmm. Yeah. Chew on that one. Yeah.

2005 was so long ago. Yeah, I was trying to think about why you picked 2005. It's the year that Roberts and Alito were confirmed was sort of what was coming to mind. So it's in some ways when we got the most conversation about, because Harriet Myers gets nominated and then her confirmation fails. And so we really see conservatives be like, no, no, she's not one of us because he doesn't understand or even know X, Y, and Z. So I always kind of pick the Harriet Myers point of like a failed nomination, almost

tells you more about where the ideological fissures are. Yeah, absolutely. Let's end with this one, which is sort of fun from Joshua Haslinga, if I'm saying that correctly, will you be bringing back the SCOTUS blog accounts, end-of-term Twitter trolling? Oh, I don't know about that. All right, explained it. What was it? Yes, so that was Scotus blog, the Supreme Court of the United States does not have a Twitter account.

there are a lot of people who don't realize that. And so when people, when the Supreme Court issues a decision that people don't like, whether there's people on the right or people on the left, sometimes people would take to Twitter and they would tweet at SCOTUS blog thinking that they were tweeting at the Supreme Court of the United States. And, you know, sometimes it was just sort of interpretive, but sometimes it was highly entertaining. And there was a tradition for several years in which at the end of the term said that the Scudus blog, people ran a Scudus blog Twitter account would collect some of the best ones. And at the

end of the term would respond and tweet back. You know my vote, Steve. Yeah. I mean, I found it highly entertaining over the years. Because they're so restrained about it, really. Right, right. And we could all use a little more entertainment in our live or things. It's a little like, sir, this is a Wendy's right. For a SCOTUS blog. And I mean, I think one of them, I actually do remember.

One was, sir, this is a blog. Well, thank you both for doing this tonight. I hope our viewers got a better sense of exactly what this is going to look like and how we're going to move forward. Again, Amy, so excited to have you with us and so excited about Scotus blog in general. Sarah, less excited about you, but that's sort of par for the course.

So those of you who were looking for, I mean, you started it, right? For those of you who are looking for commentary or analysis of the president's first 100 days, we didn't do that. We didn't do that on purpose. We thought there are other people talking about that today. if you've noticed. We did a little of it on last week's dispatch podcast. We'll do a little bit more of it in this week's dispatch podcast.

But we really wanted to focus on this exciting news and SCOTUS blog and all the things, all the things to come. So, sir, any last words? I will regret this, probably, but. So if you look about quirk theory and you, there we go, yes.