Short Circuit 219 | Threading the Federal Courts

Short Circuit is proud to present to you Professor Marin Levy of Duke University School of Law. She is a top scholar on the federal judiciary, including its history, how it has evolved, and how it actually works. Plus, she’s educated the world about the federal (and state!) courts through the magic of Twitter threads. We talk to her about what’s so interesting about the federal courts (with some “short” remarks about the “circuit” courts) and how she got started Tweeting them.

After that Kirby Thomas West of IJ tells us about a Second Circuit case where the government didn’t do enough to pass the First Amendment (at least for now) even though the plaintiff wasn’t the most sympathetic. And we go back to Marin to detail a Ninth Circuit case with an even less sympathetic party, but where the court overlooked the importance of some pretty intriguing issues, such as whether there’s a Fourth Amendment violation if the government comes in and copies all of your stuff.

Register for IJ’s Judicial Engagement Forum on the Michigan Constitution, https://ij.org/event/cje-forum-mi-constitution/

Duke Law Podcast on Marin’s many threads, https://law.duke.edu/video/duke-law-podcast-prof-marin-k-levy-strikes-twitter-gold-judicial-gems

Cornelio v. Connecticut, https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/a3e9962c-86fc-4de3-91af-d5775168c64e/13/doc/20-4106_opn.pdf#xml=https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/a3e9962c-86fc-4de3-91af-d5775168c64e/13/hilite/

U.S. v. Rosenow, https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2022/04/27/20-50052.pdf

Professor Marin Levy, https://law.duke.edu/fac/levy/bibliography/

Kirby Thomas West, https://ij.org/staff/kirby-thomas-west/

Anthony Sanders, https://ij.org/staff/asanders/