The Capitol Mob and their cell phones

The Capitol Mob and their cell phones

Author: Roman Mars March 27, 2021 Duration: 27:19
On January 6th, a mob stormed the US Capitol to try to stop the certification of the presidential election results. Many of the insurrectionists will be tracked down and charged with crimes, in part, because their cell phone placed them in the Capitol Building during the attack. The case of Carpenter v. United States is the closest the Supreme Court has come to weighing in on the matter of historical cell phone data, but the decision didn’t not offer an opinion on law enforcement’s use of a location specific cell phone tower data dump without an individual suspect in mind. This brings up questions about the way warrants usually work under the Fourth Amendment.

Roman Mars hosts What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law, a series that uses the unprecedented events of a single presidency as a live case study in American government. The core of the podcast comes from constitutional law professor Elizabeth Joh, who found her usual curriculum upended during those four years. Instead of relying solely on settled historical cases, she began scrambling to reconcile the latest presidential tweet or statement with centuries of judicial precedent minutes before walking into her classroom. Each episode digs into one of those real-time constitutional puzzles-questions about pardons, emoluments, executive orders, and presidential power that moved from theoretical to urgently practical. Listening feels like auditing a dynamic, topical seminar where complex legal concepts are unpacked through the lens of recent history. You’ll hear how the foundational document is stretched, tested, and interpreted not in the abstract, but through the actions of the 45th president. This isn’t about politics; it’s about the machinery of the constitution itself, examined at a moment when it was under extraordinary public scrutiny. The podcast makes the often-opaque world of constitutional law accessible and immediately relevant, showing how its principles are constantly being defined by the present.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law
Podcast Episodes
The Disqualification Clause [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:31
Does the 14th Amendment's Disqualification Clause apply to Trump?
Gag [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:47
Why do courts issue gag orders and when do they conflict with the First Amendment?
Comstock Zombies [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:26
19th century "zombie" laws are shambling into the abortion debate
On the Eve of Trump's Arraignment [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:50
The presumed criminal charges against former President Trump and role of the New York Grand Jury
Weddings, Websites, and Forced Speech [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:11
What if a business owner asserts that serving a gay customer violates their first amendment rights?
The War Between the States [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:19
How the Dormant Commerce Clause tries to stop states from passing laws that put an undue burden on interstate commerce. Plus, what's going on with student debt relief: who filed a lawsuit against it and why.
Trump's Bet on Cannon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:19
When the FBI executed a search warrant on his home, Trump and his lawyers filed their complaints in a district where they thought they’d get sympathetic treatment from Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed. The assign…
The Mar-a-Lago Warrant [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:58
Elizabeth teaches Roman about which crimes the Justice Department is interested in as described in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant