Opening Arguments

Latest Episodes:

75% of Exonerated Women Were Convicted of Crimes That Didn't Even Happen (!) Jun 03, 2025

Show notes

OA1163 - No really. That's a real stat. It may actually be WORSE than that. So uh... how in the hell? Professor Valena Beety is here to break it down. She's done a ton of great work in this area, and has a new legal research paper, "Unfit": Gender, Ableism and Reproductive Wrongful Convictions by Valena Elizabeth Beety, which goes into this and much more!

Content note: this episode does involve discussion of events where young children died. We don't dwell on these events much at all other than to mention them as needed.

More links: Indiana Innocence Project, Kristine Bunch | National Registry of Exonerations, Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, Op ed: Why has Brenda Andrew been on death row for two decades? It has everything to do with sex.

Courts Handed Trump Some Huge Losses This Week May 30, 2025

Show notes

OA1162 - It’s all good news from our favorite branch of government today! We review recent judicial wins in everything from illegal deportations to tariffs to the Trump administration’s wars on international students, private law firms, and common-sense understandings of the expression “foreign policy.” Plus, Matt shares a footnote from the front lines of Trump’s mass deportation efforts to explain why an immigration judge 2000 miles away just left him an angry voicemail.

MA District Court judge Brian Murphy’s preliminary injunction in DVD v. DHS (4/18/25)
Judge Murphy’s denial of DHS’s motion to reconsider (5/26/25)
Order to return O.C.G. to Guatemala (5/23/25)
Judge Michael Fabiarz’s order on Mahmoud Khalil’s habeas claim (5/28/25)
VOS v. USA decision from the Court of International Trade (5/28/25)
DC Circuit judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision in New Mexico v. Musk (5/27/2025)
Judge Richard Leon’s order in Wilmer Hale’s challenge to Trump EO (5/27/25)

You're a...... CROOK Captain Hook May 29, 2025

Show notes

T3BE71

If you'd like to play along with T3BE, here's what to do: hop on Bluesky, follow Openargs, find the post that has this episode, and quote it with your answer! Or, go to our Subreddit and look for the appropriate T3BE posting. Or best of all, become a patron at patreon.com/law and play there!

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The Battle Over Cop City May 27, 2025

Show notes

OA1161 - Micah Herskind is an activist, Harvard law student, and most recently a co-editor of the essay collection No Cop City, No Cop World with Mariah Parker and Kamau Franklin. We welcome Micah on to discuss his experience with Atlanta’s Stop Cop City movement and the lessons which activists and advocates around the US can learn from it in these times of mass dissent in the face of American authoritarianism.

No Cop City, No Cop World, ed. Micah Herskind, Mariah Parker, & Kamau Franklin (2025)
Cop City RICO Indictment, Fulton County Superior Court (8/29/2023)
“The Tools of Repression,” Hanah Riley & Micah Herskind, Inquest (4/24/25)
The Free Speech Forest Fund

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A 'Pay What You Can' Law Practice? Prosecutors Say That Encourages Crime. May 23, 2025

Show notes

OA1160 - Sheryl Weikal is an Illinois trial lawyer with a name-your own-price practice representing marginalized people facing eviction, foreclosure, discrimination, and incarceration--which is all incredibly cool unto itself, but she also has a story like no one else you’ve heard. Sheryl won an incredible victory three years ago against the Illinois state bar for trans attorneys throughout the state in the face of years of open prejudice which she suffered from fellow lawyers, court staff, and even judges from the bench, and has written the story of her personal and professional life in a memoir which will be out June 3rd. This isn’t one to miss!

Preorder I Was an Abomination: A Story of Trans Survival in Conservative America by Sheryl Weikal (to be released 6/3/2025)
“Transgender lawyer wins suit for declaration that trans discrimination violates attorney ethics rules,” ABA Journal (4/18/2022)
Follow Sheryl on Bluesky

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Can a Priest Rat You Out? May 22, 2025

Show notes

T3BE70 - As is typical for Wednesdays these days, we've got some Lydia and Thomas nonsense to kick off the show, but Heather swiftly swoops in to save us from ourselves, reveal the answer to last week's T3BE69 (nice), and set up the question for T3BE70.

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

It Took Years, but Guatemala Held a Brutal Dictator Accountable. What Can We Learn? May 20, 2025

Show notes

OA1159 - We are so pleased to have Temple Law Professor Rachel López on the show to discuss her work in shining light and digitally preserving court records related to the trials following the Guatemalan Civil War. Not only is the archiving of this material so important to those impacted by the government regime over the 30 year conflict, it also demonstrates early examples of transitional justice and what we might learn from it when applying it in the future to governments that commit human rights abuses. Listen in to hear the efforts she undertook to be sure these stories would not be forgotten.

Truth Commission Report (February 1999)

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

The Birthright Citizenship Case Is Actually Something Differently Terrible May 16, 2025

Show notes

OA1158 - We start off with some patron questions about what to do when ICE comes to your neighborhood, the one thing that the world’s most annoying white libertarians got right, and how to best exercise the very few rights US citizens have coming back into the country. Then in our main story: This week the Supreme Court heard arguments over birthright citizenship--or did it? Matt explains how they might do something even worse than expected while still striking down Trump’s attempt to end the Constitutional right to citizenship for everyone born on US soil by executive order.

Finally, we polish off today’s episode with a meaty footnote about the lies and tyranny of a very different kind of would-be monarch.

Oral arguments in Trump v. CASA (5/15/25)
Trump v. CASA docket
Western District of PA federal judge Stephanie Haines’s ruling upholding the application of the Alien Enemies Act to members of Tren de Aragua
“Sense of the community” memo dated 4/7/25 finding that Tren de Aragua is not working with the Venezuelan government
Complaint in Coleman et al v. Burger King

Getting Our Dramshop Act Together May 15, 2025

Show notes

After some Thomas-Lydia nonsense and updates, Heather gives us the answer to question 68, a fiendishly difficult real property one. Did you get the right answer? Then we get a new question 69!

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

The Supreme Court Sucks. But at Least We Can Talk to Leah Litman About It! May 13, 2025

Show notes

OA1157 - Leah Litman is a co-host of Crooked Media’s Strict Scrutiny podcast and professor at University of Michigan Law School, and most recently the author of Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. We are pleased to welcome Professor Litman to discuss everything from what it’s like to teach American Constitutional law 2025 to what the Supreme Court has in common with the Bluth family.