Sarah’s desire to jump to conclusions or to whatever stance she feels is correct (usually from smugness rather than her intelligence, and she clearly is intelligent) is disappointing. I am a Democrat and lean pretty left, but contemplate issues with reason rather than pure emotive ideology- especially legal issues I don’t know enough about- and had found this show educational and interesting. Recently I’m not so sure how much I can trust Sarah’s opinions, and now David’s- since he seems to bend to her will rather than challenge her more often than not. Sarah should show more humble contemplation since her ego seems to take over any reason she has left. Any one have another show to recommend?

I adore this show and find the intelligent analysis refreshing. But the idea that drug smuggling from undocumented migrants in Mexico could constitute an invasion would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. The “ultimate geographic source of the fentanyl crisis” has been declared as China, according to Congress’ Select Committee on the CCP. A vast majority of the trafficked drug comes through legal ports of entry (see Customs and Border Patrol Statistics for the proportion of seizures reported between Office of Field Operations [ports] and Border Patrol [border]). And fiscal year 2022, 84% of offenders were *American citizens* (United States Sentencing Commission). So the premise of “illegal migrants are the cause of fentanyl trafficking” is in itself flawed, and the implications of a resulting declaration of “invasion by undocumented migrants who are swimming across the river” is woefully misplaced, to potentially chilling consequences. I was shocked David could not convince Sarah of this. If drug smuggling is an invasion, then we should expect Greg Abbott to next declare war on China and American frat boys coming back from spring break.

You fully expect Biden to be accountable but the same is never expected of Trump !!! Why is that ?? I don’t understand it happens repeatedly Sara calls Biden a liar and a hypocrite. Does she not see Trump the same. If so make it clear. I believe he changed his mind as he saw the way Trump is sweeping into office while ignoring several rules again about how it should be done legally but it’s Trump so that’s OK ??

After years of listening, I’m weighing in. When I first started listening, I could hardly tell which way Sarah and David leaned politically. Their well-reasoned arguments analyzed the merits of both sides of the cases before the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, events preceding and following the 2024 presidential election proved too strong a siren’s call…and into the cesspool David dove. French argued that voting for Harris would somehow “save conservatism.” He lost most conservatives even before he presented his first ill-conceived argument. Then, CEO Steve Hayes launched an ad hominem attack against Sarah simply because she argued for one of President Trump’s nominees. That convinced me to never give one cent to The Dispatch. Hayes seems upset because people didn’t buy the tired argument that the angry rioters of Jan 6 should somehow disqualify Trump. French and Hayes might both want to consider how the left tried to bait the average American into voting against Trump through constant fear-mongering about threats to democracy. Well, democracy has firmly spoken. They would do well to listen. I’m disheartened. AO listeners have long enjoyed a serious legal podcast that has stayed above the mud-slinging filth of the political world. It’s not too late to return to merit-based legal analysis. I pray you do.

Sarah is allowed to have an opinion. I don’t like Gaetz either but her reasoning is consistent.

I have been an avid listener to your podcast with David French. I have learned about conservative approaches to the law and the Supreme Court. While I’ve seldom agreed with you and David, I’ve felt respected. Sarah’s interview with James Ho was so worrisome. Her fawning introduction of a controversial judge and lack of bringing up his critics sometimes serious questioning of his rulings and his often outspoken criticism of those before him in personal rather than professional manner. I’d have appreciated a more serious discussion of Ho’s whole career with serious objectives to his rulings. This was a pure hagiography.

David is great but tired of Sarah not being able to call a spade a spade.

Love the show. Not crazy about the new logo.

It’s almost as if the gun industry deliberately flooded the market with weapons & the Republicans deliberately resist all gun legislation and voila you can’t regulate these common guns. It can’t be that simple, huh? Also always remember as long as young men can purchase these types of weapons (military grade) then they will not join the actual military.

I enjoy the show. Maybe get James Rosen on to talk about his book on Scalia.

I love this show, and everything you guys explain. But please, PLEASE, start saying case names and citations when discussing particular cases. It’s sometimes nearly impossible to find the cases you are discussing without even a case name. And links to news articles discussing the case in the show notes are not really all that helpful. Often those articles do not contain links to the case text or case names.

Crazy but I seem to be agreeing more and more with A.O hosts on purely legal issues that is or maybe its that I felt rewarded by guessing correctly that the paper discussed in the recent episode was written by Elena Kagan. Though I notice French tends to agrees with Isgur when she voices her opinion first. When he’s asked to opine without her point of view first his answers are more centrists. Isgur. 2 year + fan of LRC podcast going on a year of A.O fandom and going on 6 and 2 months + of the dispatch and Remnant following respectively. I thinks it’s cause even more than my progressive leftist ideologies I respect the intellectual discourse and breakdown of law, legal analysis and its application to politics and current events. So thank you both for the work you do for us who so enjoy hearing your discussion genuinely appreciate you so much so I often wish I could partake.

Neither host even nudged back gently on Judge Altman’s claims on 10/10/2024. We know, as it has and had been widely reported that it was PM Netanyahu gov and not “Hamas” that blew up hostage negotiations, nor the ICC or UN findings re: legality or justifications for (apparently) Islamophobic / apartheid occupations & settlements. I understand differences of opinions, but factual claims aren’t opinions when they’re incorrect. Please clarify ASAP - I’m checking for later eps myself.

Decided to unfollow the show because of this.

Sarah and David are an excellent team. What a clear and helpful discussion of pending cases and issues. Keep up the great work.

First, as an old, gray-haired, non-lawyer retiree, let me commend both Sarah and David for an outstanding podcast - it is by far my favorite. As a matter of background, I am a retired Air Force fighter pilot who has spent a significant portion of my professional career exploring non-kinetic effects in support of national security objectives. Given this, I would like to submit that the national security risks of a PRC-influenced TikTok go way beyond data harvesting and geo-location of troops and their families. Informational Power is one of the four elements of National Power (commonly known as DIME: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic power). Informational Power goes way beyond most people’s limited view of propaganda. If you can “outmaneuver” your adversary’s information decision loop at critical times (sorry, combining Sun Tzu and Boyd in one phrase), you can significantly impact an adversary response (known as D5: deny, delay, disrupt, deceive, destroy). By allowing the PRC complete control of TikTok content manipulation, the US would cede access to a popular information platform. The potential effects, in theory, could cause public sediment (important in democracies, not as much in autocracies) to yield delays, disruptions, and deceptions in order to interfere in US national responses. The Communications Act of 1934 limited foreign influence of broadcast media. I commend Congress for attempting to protect our 21st-century information systems from unfettered foreign influence.

While I’m really a Remnant fan just stopping by for occasional visits, this episode was like taking a brief online course. There’s nothing partisan or biased, in my opinion about how Yuval lays out one of our main problems (Congress’s failure to do its job) and the many unintended consequences of that failure on the judicial and executive branch. Everyone in American should listen to this episode.

Sarah is a 5 star. I will not listen anymore because of David. Hope Sarah ditches him soon.

Sarah is a Trumper through and through. The last couple episodes made me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Love Sarah, David, used to appreciate your approach but your NYT op Ed is a bridge too far. Sadly, I will unfollow today.

I’m a retired high school teacher and college mathematics professor. I started listening to this pod in order to learn more about SCOTUS. It is accessible in that they know they have a lot of listeners who aren’t attorneys, they review legal terms frequently, and I listen to each and every pod. I’ve learned a great deal not just about the current SCOTUS but also about law in general. It’s highly entertaining, and I’d recommend listening to it for any nerd.

This show is my jam. Almost every episode I would listen to again. The only one I would not replay is the one where they got several article III judges to sing show tunes. Impressive, but also uniquely cringey, in a funny way. Sort of like seeing The Office for the first time and starting with the first season.

I don’t know if anyone actually reads reviews of podcasts (I don’t), but for those who do, this is a great one! I found David French from reading his newsletters in a subreddit, ended up following him to the Dispatch and then, surprisingly, here! Up until a couple of years ago I cared very little about law and the Supreme Court, and now wish I had started learning about this fascinating area decades ago. Sarah Isgur and David French are just brilliant together. Do yourself a favor and check them out. Go ahead, be a nerd. You know you want to.

As a civil engineer (in a family of engineers) who went to law school at 49, I agree with David that STEM majors are great for those interested in law school. I would like to add one piece of advice I gave my own daughter. She was about to start her undergrad in environmental engineering when she called home to announce she was changing her major to political science. She said it was more interesting and she wanted to be a lawyer in the long run. Our advice to her was to choose a major which could pay her bills in case she needed a gap before law school or needed to pay her own way and take a minor in the one that’s more interesting. A lot changes in 4 years so my advice is to choose a major that can stand alone if you need it to! (She took our advice and wound up dropping the minor. Wound up going straight to law school on a full ride. Life’s funny!)

I used to listen to this regularly, but I have stopped caring what David French has to say. I don’t like Trump, but I find DF’s responses are no longer based in rational thinking, unless you presuppose that Trump is Satan incarnate. I am tired of trying to listen to him charitably. It hurts to come to this conclusion, but it takes too much energy to continue trying. I enjoy Sara’s perspective on legal issues.

David French is a fraud. Talk about a person with zero integrity. He purports to be a conservative and is anything but that. What real conservative who cares about America would ever vote for Kamala Harris? he's never been genuine whatsoever, but this is the icing on the cake. What a joke.

If I could get all of Sarah’s commentary without having to endure/support the ongoing David French grift, that’d be great. Four stars for Sarah. None for David. Willing to reassess if—when—he stops calling himself a conservative. For now, I’m out. Also, pretty weird of late having these two claim to be originalists and then repeatedly advocate for things like consequentialism and tiers of scrutiny. Originalists until it’s hard, I guess.

To answer David’s question in the latest episode, the stink eye is beyond the side eye.

I’m an independent who leans left (and a lawyer), and this is my favorite podcast! I appreciate how they are able to (relatively) quickly explain decisions and put them into the context of overall legal trends. They are civil towards all and well-reasoned. That’s not to say I agree with everything they say (Sarah especially has some blind spots that can be frustrating to see in someone of her intelligence) but I always end an episode better informed than I was before.

Sarah can be frustrating at times but she’s generally correct in her opinions and predictions. Amazingly smart and well produced—in my top three “must listen” podcasts

Excellent piece. I am not a lawyer, and it is good to listen to AO and know that I am not crazy. But yes, I think Sara was being two charitable in her judgment. In the same way that when aloud Lefties predict Judge Cannon is auditioning for the next Trump Supreme Court pick, they may be being too harsh in their judgment.

Really appreciate David’s thoughtful and not ideological analysis of key legal issues. However, it’s clear that Sarah is solely motivated by protecting Trump’s conduct at this point. Either she wants to avoid scrutiny for having worked for Trump, or, even worse, wants to preserve a call option to join the next Trump administration. Most of Sarah’s arguments are no longer on principle but rather a reverse engineering of what makes Trump look least criminal and corrupt. Textualism and originalism - all good if it helps Trump. If not, then find a different argument that works!

David is such a voice of judicial reason.

This podcast masquerades as objective but both hosts are apologists for the conservative legal movement. Tread very carefully.

Full disclosure, I consider myself a political moderate who leans slightly left. Sara and David provide engaging content on Supreme Court from a conservative perspective. Relative to the current state of conservative politics, this podcast provides good faith analysis of legal/political issues and engages with the merits of both sides. But given the current state of conservative politics, this is not saying much. In particular, I found Sara’s assertion that the upshot of the liberal’s dissent in Jarkesy is that the executive can divest criminal defendants jury trial rights, if a public right is involved, to be uninformed at best. Sara should know that the 6th Amendment, which, unlike the 7th Amendment, provides that the right to jury trials in criminal cases is categorical.

I am so surprised by how much I enjoy this podcast. I’m a longtime Dispatch reader but never gave this pod a chance since I’m not a lawyer and thought it would be kind of boring, but I bychance listened to one and was hooked. Its so outside of my professional (and typical interest) wheelhouse but it’s fascinating to me to hear about how court rulings are decided and just about the law in general. David and Rachel are great and have a fantastic engaging dynamic.

Not a lawyer but have long enjoyed listening to this podcast. I recommend it to everyone I know and they almost always become regular listeners. I disagree with one of the hosts pretty frequently and try to learn from that person’s takes.

If you want to be told how your own common sense and intuition is wrong Sarah is your gal. I prefer an honest critique of SCOTUS which Sara is not capable of.

🙄

This is a “good faith” podcast that should be enjoyed by those more interested in law and principles than pure politics. While I have great respect for both David and Sarah, I do often feel as if one of the host’s deep attachment to and instinct to protect institutions and principles can lead to the exact opposite of “my child would never do that!” In my opinion, conservatives are sometimes held to a higher standard than liberals by that host. For what it’s worth, my personal political identification is non-partisan. Five stars because both hosts are very well informed, entertaining, and kind. I always learn and always enjoy it. Thank you.

........

Sarah shows up prepared to lead a provocative legal discussion. David is always ready to consider and analyze with a open mind. But they do not agree on a good many things, but that is still okay, because they both clearly hold the law and the High Court, and one another, in such high esteem. The tone is one of professional agreement where agreement is warranted, open mindedness to other ideas, and the hosts thoroughly chew on serious issues from - wow - different perspectives. And they still get along - mostly. Each episode is a highly concentrated learning experience.

As a non-lawyer who is interested in the law, the hosts do an excellent job of explaining high-brow law concepts in a way that even *I* can understand, and then highlight how those concepts affect –and are affected by– politics. And, while doing so, they also manage to be genuine in their friendship with each other, and hilarious in general!

David’s comments are cringe-inducing with his personal prejudices transparently informing his opinions.

This has become the Sarah show and it’s quite annoying. Maybe more guests would help? Akhil Amar was a great change of pace and then the rest of the episode fell apart as Sarah monologued her opinions and David loosely followed along.

The Alito flag thing got quite testy between the hosts and I get enough of that kind of thing elsewhere. If both were as good a listener as one of them is, I wouldn’t have unfollowed.

Topics are discussed fairly by considering both sides of the story. Excellent podcast.

David’s work for NYTs makes this podcast inconsistent and insincere. Love Sarah…

I was a longtime listener of this podcast, I’ve probably listened to 80% of episodes since its inception, but the episode “When to Recuse” is probably my last. It is ironic that the topic of gaslighting was prominent because when it comes to Justice Alito, Sarah is a boundless one woman source of gaslighting, Rather than look at the court objectively, this podcast has devolved into an endless unquestioning pep rally celebrating FedSoc approved judges and their apparently divine powers of intellect. Naw’ dawg.

Thanks for the pod. I love the listen and it’s gotten me back into listening to SC oral arguments. I live in a medium sized Republican leaning town in upstate NY. The Dems tend to be blue collar union folks and republicans trend libertarian. It’s the kind of place where you get joint endorsements of judges for a quality candidate. I appreciate that sometimes one of you need to take a side you’re not really into in order to make the pod interesting and get both sides of an issue aired. I had no idea about flag rules until the most recent pod. My only experience with the upside down flag is seeing it flown in front of suburban neighborhood homes with “f —— Biden” signs out front. The upside down flag is also seen on t-shirts and cars with accompanying slogans in support of the actions on J6. It’s not hidden. It’s ubiquitous. I’m open to the possibility that living in DC or the surrounding area might not leave one with the same exposure, but the explanation that Alito’s wife was unaware of its use in 2021 is so implausible to me that it made me think, “oh, that’s nice. They’re doing the both sides thing. That’s an important part of the podcast.”