Episode

7/5 The Nightmarish SCOTUS Term And What’s Next w/ Peter Shamshiri

July 5, 2022

Sam and Emma host Peter Shamshiri, or Law Boy on Twitter, co-host of the 5-4 Podcast, to discuss the recent Supreme Court term and what the big decisions mean for us going forward. Sam and Emma first run through the terrifying updates from this weekend, including a longer conversation on the Highland Park shooting (of the multiple mass shootings), Brittany Griner’s plea to Biden, Ohio successfully forcing a 10-year-old to escape the state to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape, and updates on Russia’s bombing of a mall in Ukraine. Then, Peter Shamshiri joins as dive into the West Virginia v EPA case and the conservative Court’s ultimate goal of unwinding the administrative state all the way back to the Lochner Era, looking at how the case addresses the Clean Air Act, claiming the EPA only has authority to police specific facilities rather than preemptively impose standards on the energy industry as a whole, even though the policy they were addressing had already been rolled back. Next, they look into the history of Justice Roberts’ “Major Questions Doctrine,” first exploring the emergence of the Chevron Doctrine towards the end of the 20th Century asking that courts defer to administration on the interpretation of statutes, followed by the beginning of its undoing in an FDA case in the 2000s (despite the same court supporting it for Bush’s EPA), before getting into the accelerated takedown of the Chevron doctrine throughout the pandemic, from the CDC’s eviction moratorium to OSHA’s workplace vaccine mandate. They then shift to the court granting cert to a North Carolina case addressing the independent state legislature theory, another idea that came to prevalence under John Roberts and during the Bush administration, central to Bush v. Gore (a project worked on by Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett), with an extended conversation on the worst (and most likely) outcomes from this case and the contrast it draws in undermining state courts and putting the powerfully in their own hands. They wrap up the interview with a conversation on the Dobbs case, this Court’s emphasis on religious freedom and how it can shape a world where non-fundamentalists are ostracized, the absolute meaninglessness of the abortion “exemptions” in such a society, and the constitutional right to interstate travel.

And in the Fun Half: Chris from the Bay Area calls in to discuss Sam’s clear violation of Saul’s Second Amendment rights by refusing to purchase him a genuine Kyber-crystal-powered lightsaber and to engage Emma’s discussion on the BS abortion “exemptions” being pushed by Democrats. Diving deeper into this, Sam and Emma cover the Democratic Party’s complete impotence in response to Dobbs, walking through the countless millionaires whose only reaction was, “gimme money and I’ll do it next time.” Kowalski discusses the tropical twister that hit his Nebraskan farm last night, Sam and Emma walk through the wonderful GOP primary debate for AZ Governor, and Jordan Peterson holds back the tears as he gets banned from Twitter for deciding that Elliot Page must be held responsible for his transphobic fears, plus, your calls and IMs!

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