Rooker and Feldman and Treason | Season 4, Ep. 1
Podcast (bound-by-oath): Play in new window | Download
Next week, the Supreme Court is going to hear a huge civil rights case that no one is talking about—because the legal issue before the Court is the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, an obscure and slightly treasonous doctrine that lets federal judges throw worthy cases out of court without reaching the merits.
On this episode, we examine the doctrine’s impact as well as its origins, including the life and times of the litigants for whom it is named, William Rooker and Marc Feldman. Rooker was a big shot Indiana lawyer who represented lynching victims and Klansmen. And Marc Feldman was a professor of law who fought for the little guy.
Click here for transcript.
Resources
Pedagogy and Politics, Jay Feinman and Marc Feldman
Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland
T.M. v. Univ. of MD Medical System IJ amicus brief
Hohenberg v. Shelby County, TN
Recent Episodes
Younger abstention | Season 4, Ep. 4
In 1966, Los Angeles officials tried to put a man in prison for handing out leaflets in protest of a fatal police shooting. Today, we […]
Listen NowOath or Affirmation. (And Treason.) | Season 4, Ep. 3
On this episode, we recover a lost part of the Fourth Amendment that the Supreme Court essentially erased in 1960. In the case of Jones […]
Listen NowNeedless Friction. And Treason.
On this episode: the story of Pullman abstention, the first of several abstention doctrines the Supreme Court invented to let federal judges decline to decide […]
Listen NowIndian Country | Season 3, Ep. 14
In our final episode of the season, we head to Indian Country and survey several strands of Supreme Court precedent that prevent Native Americans from […]
Listen Now