A special Short Circuit Live in southern California with a special guest. We welcome Ken White, a/k/a Popehat to the show, along with IJ attorneys Patrick Jaicomo and Paul Avelar. Ken digs into Missouri v. Biden, the all-over-the-place litigation from the Fifth Circuit about pressure from the Biden Administration to have social media companies remove certain kinds of speech. Ken thinks the Fifth Circuit did a good job correcting some of the excesses of the district court ruling but ultimately agrees there seems to be something unconstitutional here. He also previews where this area of law might be going. We then turn to the Sixth Circuit where Patrick tells a tale of a judge who receives immunity for doing something that judges really aren’t supposed to do—jail someone without cause after they merely sat in his courtroom. And then Paul explains how you can’t copyright “the law,” and how that came up in a D.C. Circuit case involving private publishers of industry standards. Can a lawmaker co-opt J.K. Rowling’s copyrights by simply publishing her books in a statute book? Inquiring minds want to know.

PLEASE NOTE: This episode was recorded on October 1, 2023, before the Fifth Circuit issued an updated opinion in Missouri v. Biden. However, the only real change seems to have been that one agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was added back into the injunction.

Click here for transcript.

Missouri v. Biden (Sept 8 opinion)

Missouri v. Biden (Oct 3 opinion)

Orta v. Repp

American Soc for Testing & Materials v. Public.Resource.Org