New Episode: Subversive Mission
Belatedly, here’s a link to our latest podcast episode, A Subversive Mission:
We announce an exciting new partnership with SCOTUSblog and introduce the show to new listeners. We then return to the mysterious origins of the Chief Justice's "no, no, a thousand times no," debate the Court's new policy designed to maintain secrecy, and then take a close look at Galette v. NJ Transit Corporation, a sovereign immunity decision in which the Court may, or may not, have paid attention to Will's amicus brief.
Also, the new partnership was also announced in a crossover podcast episode of Advisory Opinions with us and Amarica’s Constitution as well. You can listen to that crossover episode here.
Comments welcome as always.
Did you envision the unanimous outcome based on oral arguments? It seemed to me after them that the Court will be much more divided
I feel like Will’s “transparency makes organizations worse” argument begs the question. In one sense, it’s true. I have friends who are school social workers, and they can’t take too detailed of notes because those notes will become discoverable in a future lawsuit or may be subject to our state-law FOIA analogue. So, they take minimal notes, which results in (1) possibly poorer care for their students and (2) poor deposition testimony in future lawsuits bc they can’t rely on any substantial notes.
But, proponents of transparency would argue these are necessary trade-offs that must be accepted so we can see when these institutions fail us. So, simply saying transparency hurts institutions wouldn’t rebut the perception that these institutions are evil/consistently fail us, which is the main driver of the transparency laws. The hard work of rebuilding trust seems to be the way to go.