How does history inform our interpretation of the Constitution? In all kinds of ways, it seems, and perhaps in too many of them. We once again look at how history and the Second Amendment are mixing together, in a case from the Eighth Circuit. The opinion lets us do a bit of digging into a less-well-known founding father, Benjamin Rush, and his enthusiastic embrace of putting people behind bars. But before that IJ’s Bobbi Taylor details some of the latest class-action shenanigans in the Seventh Circuit. For the first time we address “mootness fees,” settlements extracted in some disclosure litigation against public corporations. And we consider whether they’re “a racket” as the court suggests.
Recent Episodes
Short Circuit 372 | VHS Privacy

An old friend returns to Short Circuit, but it’s not a guest. It’s a case, Villarreal v. City of Laredo, where police retaliated against a […]
Listen NowShort Circuit 371 | Ten Years of Short Circuit

Last week the Short Circuit staff celebrated ten years of our inexhaustive coverage of the federal courts of appeals. At the Studio Theatre in Washington, […]
Listen NowShort Circuit 370 | Humans Only in the Copyright Office

Bad news for our AI listeners this week. The D.C. Circuit ruled that you cannot be the “author” of a copyrighted work. Only humans get […]
Listen NowShort Circuit 369 | Substantive Due Process, The Podcast

Most weeks we summarize two, sometimes three, cases from the federal courts of appeals. This week we provide to you free of charge (as always) […]
Listen Now