Season 1

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" ...

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 ...

In this episode, Gwen and Marc break down the Supreme Court’s oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter , the case that could upend nearly a century of precedent on independent agencies. Building on Part 1’s explanation of how the case reached the Court, this episode examines what happened in the courtroo...

Trump v. Slaughter, Part 1: How We Got Here In this episode, Gwen and Marc explore the road leading to Trump v. Slaughter , the Supreme Court case that places the very existence of independent agencies under constitutional scrutiny. After two episodes explaining why independent agencies exist and ho...