Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Gabriel Winant Feb 23, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode we talk to Gabriel Winant, Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the University of Chicago, about his forthcoming book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. In it, he focuses on the political economy of Pittsburgh since World War II—specifically, how blue-collar manufacturing jobs were eventually replaced by female-dominated, yet lower-paid and less stable, positions in healthcare services. In this conversation, we mostly just try to understand his deep and informative argument. We also speculate about the future of work and discuss what this story should tell us about the working class.

Additional readings, including any referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

Claire Priest Feb 16, 2021

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On this episode we speak to our colleague, Claire Priest, about her new book, Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America. We discuss her research into the early American laws that commodified real and personal property as well as how those laws facilitated the rise of credit markets and helped entrench slavery. We also discuss the relationship between property owners and the state as well as the formalization of property rights during this period.

Additional readings, including any referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

Kate Shaw & Leah Litman Feb 09, 2021

Show notes

We’re kicking off Season 2 by chatting with the hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, Kate Shaw and Leah Litman, about the future of the Supreme Court, reform proposals, and the Court’s past and present legitimacy.

Additional reading, including any referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

Omar Wasow Dec 15, 2020

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On our last episode this season, we speak with Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics at Princeton, about his new article that studies how 1960s Black-led protests impacted voting patterns. A key finding is that, while peaceful protests improved Democratic vote share in the 1968 election, violent protests likely led to a shift towards Republicans. We discuss the role of media in framing the protests then and today, and the moral and ethical considerations behind violent and nonviolent protest. Lastly, we also discuss the conversation and controversy the article generated this summer.

Additional reading, including articles or books referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

Tracey Meares Dec 01, 2020

Show notes

Yale Law School professor Tracey Meares joins us to discuss the past and future of police reform, including her government and academic work in this area. We touch on what the Obama administration did and didn’t do after Ferguson. We also discuss how calls for defunding the police and prison abolition play out in the policy sphere.

Additional reading, including those referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

John Goldberg and Benjamin Zipursky Nov 24, 2020

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John Goldberg, professor at Harvard Law School, and Benjamin Zipursky, professor at Fordham University School of Law, join us this week to discuss their new book Recognizing Wrongs in which they outline what principles underly tort law and why tort law matters. We discuss why they think tort law is more than just “accident law” or “ regulation” or an archaic leftover from a different era of social policy. The authors also touch on how their theory of tort law fits into constitutional law, jurisprudence, the “new private law,” and other theories of tort and private law.

Additional reading, including those referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

Ross Douthat Nov 17, 2020

Show notes

Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist and conservative political analyst, joins us this week to unpack the election. We discuss the ongoing political realignment. We dig into the future of economic populism on the right and the left. We also debate how each party might build its future coalition, including who might win the hotly-contested neoliberal vote.

Additional reading, including those referenced during the episode, are available on our website: DiggingAHolePodcast.com.

Michael Klarman and Amna Akbar Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

Join us on this episode as we unpack the election with legal scholars Michael Klarman, Professor at Harvard Law School, and Amna Akbar, Professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Michael’s forthcoming Harvard Law Review foreword outlines the threat President Donald Trump and the Republicans pose to democracy and how the Supreme Court has enabled them. Amna’s response article outlines what she views as the key movements of our time, including defund the police, cancel rent, and others, that seek to deepen democratic participation.

Matt Yglesias Oct 30, 2020

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On this episode, we talk to Vox co-founder and noted political and economics journalist Matt Yglesias about his new book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. Matt argues that the U.S. should take active steps — allowing greater immigration and adopting a suite of policies that encourage people to have children — to increase the size of the U.S. population to one billion. Doing so, he argues, would improve the U.S. economy and allow the country to remain the most powerful nation in the world. The book then discusses a number of other policies that would have to change, from transportation to housing to environmental policy, to accommodate the increased population. We discuss the nationalist framing of the book, the politics of increasing the housing supply, mitigating climate change, the stability of American political institutions and the future of local governance in an age of national media.

Also, hang on to the end for a little surprise: a bonus question from David! Here’s a hint: Sveriges Riksbank hasn’t established the answer to this question yet.

Stephen Wertheim and Afroditi Giovanopoulou Oct 27, 2020

Show notes

On this episode we discuss the legal theory of the origins of American empire. Stephen Wertheim, Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and Afroditi Giovanopoulou, PhD Candidate at Columbia University, join us to discuss their recent works on this subject and debate the role law played in U.S. efforts to reshape the postwar global order.

Wertheim’s book, Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy, discusses intellectual developments during the crucial period before and during World War II when the U.S. decided to “extend its form of law and order to the globe and back it at gunpoint.” Rather than a dispute between internationalists and isolationists, Wertheim argues the period was marked by differences among those committed to an America playing a role in global affairs and a quick but radical shift toward American armed supremacy. Giovanopoulou’s article, “Pragmatic Legalism: Revisiting America’s Order After World War II,” argues that neither adherence to a norms-based international order nor realist dismissal of that project defined wartime and postwar efforts. Instead, the intellectual influence of legal realists and New Dealers led to a view of law as a tool rather than as a constraint, in reaction to the legal sensibilities of prewar foreign policy makers, who promoted the codification of international norms and the judicial resolution of international disputes.

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