Episodes

Two executive orders came from the same desk, and the government gave the same defense for both: the challenge came too early, because nothing had happened to anyone yet. The argument lost against the birthright citizenship order, and it has lost every time since. Against the mail voting order, the ...

Loper Bright Enterprises sued the Secretary of Commerce, and the case had no trial, no depositions, and no discovery. It was decided on cross-motions for summary judgment, on a record the agency finished building before anyone filed a complaint. That's not an anomaly — that's what challenging agency...

Fritz Miot has lived in California for fifteen years under Temporary Protected Status, working in an Alzheimer's research lab while managing a diabetes diagnosis that Haiti's collapsed healthcare system can't treat. On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court told him a federal court isn't allowed to ask wh...

For ninety years, Congress could build federal agencies designed to operate at arm's length from the president. Bipartisan commissions, staggered terms, for-cause removal — a whole architecture of institutional independence protected by Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935). On June 29, 2026, ...

A visitation room in a private detention facility in rural Louisiana. Cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, two plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Elena is on one side. A lawyer who drove three hours from New Orleans is on the other. They have ninety minutes. Elena has eight months until the heari...

Two asylum seekers cross the southern border six months apart. Same country, same persecution, same statute. A clerk neither of them has ever met routes one to the regular docket and the other to an expedited docket. One gets heard in eight months. The other is waiting until 2028. That single routin...

Until June 2024, the Social Security Administration was denying disability claims on the grounds that applicants could work as pneumatic tube operators — a job that functionally disappeared decades ago. The agency's catalog of occupations hadn't been updated since 1991. Congress noticed. Courts comp...

In the final episode of a three-part series on how agencies actually produce outcomes, Gwen and Marc trace the mechanisms that did the work — all of them upstream of the hearing room and mostly invisible from outside: Case completion targets that measure speed but not thoroughness — and a Seventh Ci...

In 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reached into a single immigration case, certified it to himself, and overruled the precedent that had let domestic violence survivors qualify for asylum. In 2021, Garland certified it back. In 2025, Bondy certified it away again. Three reversals on the same do...

A 2017 GAO study found that Social Security disability outcomes could swing by forty-six percentage points based solely on which ALJ heard the case. Same claimant, same record, same hearing office, different judge. Individual ALJ approval rates range from under ten percent to over ninety. That's not...

Two claimants walk into two hearing rooms in the same building on the same day. Same herniated disc, same imaging, same attorneys, same legal standard. One walks out with benefits. The other doesn't. The difference isn't the evidence — it's that one ALJ believed her claimant and the other didn't. In...

An insurance adjuster spends thirty minutes on your roof, photographs what they photograph, and writes "minor cosmetic damage" instead of "structural compromise." That characterization is now in the record — and every reviewer after that is seeing the damage through that adjuster's eyes. Gwen and Ma...

Less than two years after the Supreme Court's decision in SEC v. Jarkesy , the Fifth Circuit has applied the same constitutional logic to the FTC — and the implications are far bigger than one agency. In Intuit v. FTC , the court vacated a cease-and-desist order against TurboTax's "free" advertising...

The parents leave a rule: milk with dinner. The babysitter enforces it — no problem. But when one kid hits the other, does the babysitter handle that too? She saw the whole thing, she knows the context, and she's been managing exactly these situations for years. But hitting was wrong before she ever...

Can the government send you to a foreign prison without giving you any way to say, "You've got the wrong person"? In this companion episode to their Matthews v. Eldridge discussion, Gwen and Marc apply the due process framework to three developments unfolding in real time: the administration's use o...

Tornado watches, warnings, and sirens don't all mean the same thing — and if you live in Oklahoma, you know you don't even run to a shelter every time a siren goes off. You calibrate your response to the actual level of threat. The Supreme Court says due process works the same way. In this episode, ...

Gwen and Marc cover the cases that define what counts as "property" for due process purposes—and why the answer to that question determines whether the Constitution shows up at all. They contrast two nurses: Linda, who has her license suspended without a hearing, and Kevin, who is denied a license a...

Gwen and Marc cover the foundational question of procedural due process: Why does the Constitution require the government to give you notice and a hearing before taking something away? They distinguish procedural due process (how the government acts) from substantive due process (whether it can act ...

You walk into a hearing expecting a neutral judge who will listen to both sides. Instead, you find a judge who spent months building your case file—ordering exams, gathering records, forming preliminary views. Is this a fair hearing or a predetermined outcome? This episode explores the Social Securi...

When you challenge a government decision, the outcome may depend less on the facts of your case than on which kind of judge you happen to get. Federal administrative adjudication runs on a spectrum — and most people don't know where they fall on it until they're already in the room. In this episode,...

Seven opinions. One hundred and seventy pages. Six justices agree the tariffs are unlawful — but they can't agree on why, and the reason matters for every future case where the executive claims sweeping power from an old statute. In Part 2, we walk through all seven opinions in Learning Resources v....

On February 20, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. In Part 1 of our emergency coverage, we break down the textual holding that all six majority justices agreed on — why "regulate" has never meant "tax" ...

When an agency decides your case, what kind of process do you get? Sometimes it’s a full trial-type hearing with witnesses, cross-examination, an independent decisionmaker, and a written opinion. Other times it’s a paper review and a short explanation. In this episode, we map the adjudication spectr...

This episode introduces one of the most important structural distinctions in administrative law: the difference between rulemaking and adjudication. Agencies don’t just enforce law — they also create policy. Sometimes they do it prospectively through general rules. Other times they do it case-by-cas...

In the season finale, Gwen and Marc turn to Corner Post v. Board of Governors , a decision that reshapes when federal regulations can be challenged—and potentially destabilizes decades of settled law. They open with a property-law analogy, explaining the doctrine of “coming to the nuisance” and why ...

In this episode, Gwen and Marc examine Loper Bright v. Raimondo , the Supreme Court decision that formally overruled Chevron deference after forty years. They begin with an analogy about inconsistent babysitters to explain the core concern motivating the Court: agency interpretations that change acr...

In this episode, Gwen and Marc step back from Chevron to examine the older doctrine that both preceded it and now survives it: Skidmore deference . They begin with a medical analogy that contrasts expert judgment grounded in examination and experience with advice that merely sounds confident—setting...

Who gets to decide what the law means—Congress, agencies, or courts? For forty years, that question was largely answered by a single Supreme Court case: Chevron . Under what became known as “Chevron deference,” courts were required to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous st...

Picking up where they left off, Gwen and Marc turn to the two competing versions of the Major Questions Doctrine: the weak , interpretive version and the strong version that demands near-microscopic specificity. And to show how these versions operate in real life, they walk straight into the blockbu...

Gwen and Marc open this episode with a deceptively simple babysitter analogy: you tell the sitter “use anything in the kitchen,” but you don’t expect her to mount a cutting board to the wall and teach knife-throwing, or install a $6,000 closet system. The permission technically covers those choices ...