All Too Common Law

 Unfortunately, this episode is going to both begin and end on a down note. It couldn’t be helped. There’s no getting around it, I’m going to have to talk about the Second Amendment. I’m Oliver, and you are listening to episode 15-11 of All Too Common Law.

Coming up this episode: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says Title VII makes it illegal to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and in doing so pretty much guarantees we’ll have another major gay rights decision from the Supreme Court in the next few years; and I’ll talk about one of the key components of the […]

CORRECTION: In this episode I mention in passing that the Supreme Court decision Katz v. United States was handed down in 1977. I meant to say Whalen v. Roe was handed down in 1977. Katz was handed down in 1967. The Supreme Court may be on vacation, but that doesn’t mean we’re done talking about […]

This episode is a long one, so get comfortable! We’ve got hate crimes, patent law (which wound up being more fun than you’d think thanks to Justice Elena Kagan), Obamacare has survived another challenge, Facebook threats, employment discrimination, plus there is the small matter of the seminal civil rights decision of a generation.

Coming up this episode: I’m finally going to talk about the home more than a little of my own emotional turmoil, the City of Baltimore. It may not be dominating the news right now, but that story isn’t going anywhere anytime soon; Nebraska’s state legislature has abolished capital punishment, even overriding a veto from Governor […]

My grandfather died late last week. As a result, Amanda and I did not record our usual episode. We’ll be back this time next week, though, so please be patient.

This episode, Amanda and I discuss the Supreme Court’s decision in Rodriguez v. United States and how the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment continues to evolve, plus Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard are being sued over their cult classic horror film, The Cabin in the Woods. But the big story is that it’s now almost […]

Editor’s note: This episode was recorded prior to the declaration of a state of emergency in Baltimore. Coming up this episode: The U.S. Supreme Court says police can’t drag out a traffic stop in order to bring out a drug dog; A child in Philadelphia dies, landing his parents in prison, finally; and A court […]

This episode: Indiana passes it’s own Religious Freedom Restoration Act, with a surprise double twist ending! Congress is poised to scuttle the deal struck between Iran, the United States, Europe, Russia… pretty much everybody. ‘Cause that’s just how they roll. The shooting death of Walter Scott A clip in this episode is from Episode 219 […]

In this episode: Vaccinations and the recent measles outbreak; The Slender Man trial moves forward in Wisconsin; What Hillary Clinton’s emails mean for open government laws; and a couple other things in between. We’re Oliver and Amanda and here’s Docket #15-003 of All Too Common Law.

Amanda Knief, Managing Director of American Atheists, joins the podcast in her first episode as co-host. Amanda is a fellow lawyer, though not practicing at present, since her time is mostly spent managing a national non-profit organization. She’s the author of Citizen Lobbyist: A How-to Manual for Making Your Voice Heard in Government, worked as […]

Hey guys! It’s been two weeks… and then another eight weeks… and then another eight weeks. Did I miss anything? Fucking hell, I don’t even know where to start.

The news stories today are all about the judges. I think I'll title this one Judges Behaving Badly. In Tennessee and Louisiana, two judges let their freak flag fly by deciding against equal rights for gay and lesbian couples, despite every decision since the Supreme Court handed down Windsor last year coming down the other way. In New Jersey, a municipal judge tries and convicts two defendants in less than hour without the help of lawyers of any kind. In Washington, D.C., Justice Scalia shocks no one by saying something completely stupid. Finally, a Montana teacher is sentenced to 10 years for raping a 14-year-old girl, which is way better than the first time they sentenced him for it.

It's been a while, and I had plenty of stories lined up, but not very many of them aged well. My bad. Still, there are new developments in the world of copyright law and I'm finally going to dig deep into the events in Ferguson.

One of these days, I'm going to get an episode out on time. Not sure when that will be, but the day is coming. This time around, Missouri erupts into chaos, which, let's face it, we all knew was going to happen eventually, the IRS grudgingly agrees to enforce its own tax code, Rick Perry gets indicted, and Canadian history provides some perspective on events in Ukraine and the Gulf of Mexico. I'm Oliver and this is the sixth episode of All Too Common Law.

So, it's been a month. Finally back. Took the bar exam...which was fun. This was almost immediately dubbed Barmageddon, because nothing like what happened last week across the country has ever happened before. I'm not being hyperbolic; this was unprecedented. And, yeah, the House of Representatives voted to authorize a lawsuit against the President, and it's hard to even know where to start with that story. Finally, a documentarian doing a film on the history of the song decided that it was high time that Warner/Chappell put its money where its mouth is, so the documentarian and another artist filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in California alleging, essentially, copyright fraud arising from the company's claim of ownership over the song "Happy Birthday to You."

It's been a busy couple of weeks in the legal world. Even after splitting this episode into two parts so that I could address Hobby Lobby in-depth, I've still got a pile of news stories to get to, including an update on the battle over marriage equality, some ridiculous lawsuits filed by former law students, a declaration by a federal court that the No-Fly List may be unconstitutional in its current form, and the Supreme Court strengthens a person's privacy when it comes to their cell phones, even as they undermine that privacy where contraception is concerned. Finally, British Airways faces a lawsuit after the airline confuses Spain with the Caribbean and ruins a couple's vacation. I'm Oliver and that's all coming up in this, the conclusion to the fourth episode of All Too Common Law.

It's hard to figure out where to begin when it comes to the Hobby Lobby decision. I guess the first thing to say is that this is a bad decision. In pretty much every way. It's internally contradictory. It lays down legal conclusions without providing any support for them. It undermines the basic principles of American corporate law. It gives preferential treatment to certain religious beliefs over other religious beliefs. And, depending on how literally you want to interpret it, solidifies the remedies created by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act so that they're only available to those who practice a religion.

It's an election themed episode of All Too Common Law! Sort of! “But, Oliver, wait,” you're saying, “it's June! The elections are still nearly five months away!” Good eye, anonymous audience member. Election day is a ways away. Deal with it! I want to get it out of my system now. In the news over the last couple weeks: Eric Cantor lost his bid for reelection before he even made it to the ballot, so now we're really going to see what it's like to get nothing done. On the same day that the Supreme Court lets stand an appellate decision stating that public school graduations held in churches violate the Constitution, the Court goes on to strengthen the freedom of speech. Meanwhile the Far Right equates limits on campaign spending to censorship …again.

This episode's a short one, so I can get this damn thing out and move on to Episode Three before all my stories are out of date, so: It turns out that the UN has really taken all those James Cameron movies to heart, Apple is having trouble enforcing those terms and conditions no one reads, and I'll take an in-depth look at the Supreme Court's upcoming Hobby Lobby decision and how it might have some unintended consequences when it comes to discrimination in the workplace.