Christian, Joe, and frequent co-host Sonja West dig into the mail and tweet bags and discuss nonsense, sense, and antisense. Topics include: Judge John Hodgman’s weighing in on speed trap law, podcast listening speeds, the Slate Supreme Court Breakfast Table, the insurable liability approach to the gun crisis, Joe sings (yes) a line from “The Externality Song” and (relatedly, obv) Hamilton vs. Upstream Color, price matching and the morality quiz, footnoting and in-text citation and madness, an argument over Guantanamo and rights, more on the culturally polarized gun debate and on rights generally, Posner’s skepticism of academia, and how things change and get better.

This show’s links:

• Sonja West’s faculty profile and writing
• Oral Argument 1: Send Joe to Prison (guest Sonja West)
• Judge John Hodgman on flashing lights to warn of speed traps
• Slate: The Supreme Court Breakfast Table
• Oral Argument 101: Tug of War
• Oral Argument 100: A Few Minutes in the Rear-View Mirror
• Oral Argument 96: Students as Means
• Kedar Bhatia, Footnotes in Supreme Court Opinions
• David Foster Wallace, 2001-04-0070913.pdf">Tense Present (an earlier version of Authority and American Usage in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
• The brief Christian helped with in Rasul v. Bush, making the Mathews v. Eldridge argument the Court wound up adopting in the simultaneously decided Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (see pp. 17-21)
• Sonja West, The Second Amendment Is Not Absolute
• The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that confers immunity on gun manufacturers for most gun deaths; see also the wiki article on the act
• Oral Argument 102: Precautionary Federalism (guest Sarah Light)
• Dissent from denial of cert. in Stormans v. Wiesman
• Mark Graber, religion-v-alito-abortion.html">Alito (Religion) v. Alito (Abortion)
• Richard Posner, Entry 9: The Academy Is out of Its Depth
• Akhil Amar, Entry 10: Who Judges the Judges
• Richard Posner, Entry 11: The Immigration Decision Won’t Do Much
• Dawn Johnsen, Entry 12: How can a judge dismiss the importance of the Constitution?
• Richard Posner, Entry 27: Broad Interpretations