10 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
Shoe of Damocles
Two August per curiams find no one with standing to challenge the mail-ballot order or the White House ballroom—and a third drops while we're recording.
- New episodes
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 1 hr 9 min
- Latest
- 10 Sep 2026
- Language
- English
Latest episode
Earlier episodes 29 most recent
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S6 · E29 · 19 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
A Thriving Atrocities Practice
Cisco Systems v. Doe shuts the Alien Tort Statute door Sosa left open — pirates, ambassadors, and one Phoenix bar band excepted.
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S6 · E28 · 12 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
Very Civilized Orangutans
Hunter v. United States makes appeal waivers yield to "miscarriages of justice" — and nobody, including the Court, can quite say why.
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S6 · E27 · 3 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
Ice by Magneto
We finally tackle the trans-sports cases and walk through the Court’s Equal Protection and Title IX analysis.
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S6 · E26 · 27 Jul 2026 · 55 min
The Based Direction
Rooker-Feldman, pronounced dead two decades ago, turns out to be alive — and the Court's formalists split right down the middle.
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S6 · E25 · 13 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
Norway-Sweden Worshippers
We cover two immigration wins in one day: the Court clears the way to end TPS for Haiti and Syria, then decides asylum turns on whether you "arrive in" the country — or merely at its border.
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S6 · E24 · 6 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 25 min
Smart Microwave
We break down Chatrie v. United States, the Court's ruling that a geofence warrant is a Fourth Amendment search — what it does to the third-party doctrine and the mosaic theory, and where the separate opinions leave the law.
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S6 · E23 · 2 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
Weird Islands
The birthright-citizenship order goes down — but the vote is closer than anyone bet, and the four dissenters can't agree on why.
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S6 · E22 · 1 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Always Already
Humphrey's Executor falls and independent agencies lose for-cause protection — but the Fed, alone, somehow survives.
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S6 · E21 · 28 Jun 2026 · 56 min
Mechanical / Animal
We're in triage mode as the Court clears its end-of-term backlog. We run through the week's opinion dump before focusing on two cases that look unrelated but turn on the same question: when may a state rewrite background property law to limit a constitutional right? In Wolford v. Lopez , the Court strikes down Hawaii's rule requiring a property owner's express consent before a firearm may be carried onto otherwise-public premises. Then to Pung v. Isabella County , a takings case asking whether a homeowner whose property is sold for back taxes is owed only the sale proceeds or full…
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S6 · E20 · 26 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
Alcoholic Originalism
The big opinions are starting to drop, and we're doing our best to keep pace. We first discuss Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections , which concerns religious liberty, the scope of Congress's power to create remedies against individuals under the Spending Clause, and whether there's any redress if government officials literally throw your rights into a trash can. We then turn to United States v. Hemani, where the Court found that a federal law barring gun possession by unlawful drug users violated the Second Amendment and revealed that some of the Justices are surprisingly…
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S6 · E19 · 14 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 17 min
Watch Snobs
We open with the usual grab bag—the "foot fault" pun buried in a Justice Thomas opinion, reading Justice Alito's clerk-hiring tea leaves, and a detour into the metaphysics of conditional resignations and whether you can be confirmed to a vacancy that doesn't exist yet. Then to the merits: Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction , a 9-0 judicial-estoppel case that lets us ask where the doctrine even came from (Tennessee, 1857, apparently), and Abouammo v. United States , the venue case about a former Twitter employee who fabricated a document while the FBI sat downstairs. The venue talk wanders,…
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S6 · E18 · 8 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Impregnable Citadel of Technicality
After puzzling over an interesting follow-up question about Pitchford v. Cain, we unpack a summary vacatur in Whitton v. Dixon . We then spend a while breaking down the latest developments in Allen v. Milligan line, in which we discuss the future of the Purcell principle and whether the Court should be unusually attentive to public appearances in election cases. We finish with Sripetch v. Jarkesy , where the Court rejects a requirement that the SEC prove victims suffered pecuniary loss before seeking disgorgement, with specific attention to the interesting Seventh Amendment question raised…
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S6 · E17 · 1 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 11 min
Smooth Stone in the River
The Court has been busy, and we somehow manage to cover a number of developments with unpredictable efficiency. We talk about the Court's latest summary reversal on the "party presentation principle"; Justice Kavanaugh's vindication of his law journal student note in Pitchford v. Cain ; Rutherford and Fernandez, two related cases about the intersection of compassionate release and habeas; and the DIG in Hamm v. Smith , a case about capital punishment and intellectual disability. Along the way, we also get into backlash against a certain SCOTUS advocate's TED talk and further Alabama…
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S6 · E16 · 19 May 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
Ninja Court Packing
Live from the American Law Institute with Pam Karlan, we untangle a chaotic stretch of the interim docket—the Alabama redistricting GVR, Virginia's denied stay, and the mifepristone cases—then turn to executive power and the Term's big looming decisions.
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S6 · E15 · 7 May 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Majordoma
We dissect the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision and its sweeping narrowing of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, exploring how it could reshape redistricting, weaken majority‑minority districts, and intensify debates over race and partisanship in elections. We unpack the Court’s reasoning, its treatment of precedents like Allen v. Milligan, the updated Gingles framework, and the procedural moves after judgment, while weighing whether this is primarily a textual ruling, a constitutional avoidance maneuver, or a broader shift in how political power and racial representation are…
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S6 · E14 · 29 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Even Eve-ier
We cover leaked SCOTUS memos, shadow docket reversals, Sotomayor's Kavanaugh apology, and a contractor preemption case narrowing an infamous Scalia opinion.
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S6 · E13 · 6 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
Backup backup backup backup argument
We recap and reflect on the oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara (the birthright citizenship case) and then analyze the Court's recent decision in Chiles v. Salazar, about the First Amendment limits on Colorado's conversion therapy ban. We also confront the taboo question: Are judicial opinions too long?
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S6 · E12 · 2 Apr 2026 · 38 min
Jezebel Shouting
We're live at WashU Law's Admitted Students Day! After catching up on some shadow docket activity, we dig into Olivier v. City of Brandon, the Court's unanimous March 2026 decision by Justice Kagan. A Mississippi street preacher pleads no-contest to violating an amphitheater protest-zone ordinance, pays his $304 fine, then sues under §1983 to stop future enforcement — and the Fifth Circuit says the puzzling Heck v. Humphrey rule bars the whole thing. We work through why Heck is stranger than it first appears, what the Court got right in resolving the circuit split, and what the decision…
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S6 · E11 · 11 Mar 2026 · 51 min
A Subversive Mission
We announce an exciting new partnership with SCOTUSblog and introduce the show to new listeners. We then return to the mysterious origins of the Chief Justice's "no, no, a thousand times no," debate the Court's new policy designed to maintain secrecy, and then take a close look at Galette v. NJ Transit Corporation, a sovereign immunity decision in which the Court may, or may not, have paid attention to Will's amicus brief.
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S6 · E10 · 6 Mar 2026 · 48 min
Cruel and Unusual and Stupid
It's our live show at the University of Chicago! Hosted by the University of Chicago Federalist Society, we discuss this week's big shadow-docket rulings about gender transitions in California Schools (Mirabelli v. Bonta) and redistricting in New York (Malliotakis v. Williams), and also break down the recent merits decision about the right to counsel when a defendant is testifying (Villareal v. Texas).
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S6 · E9 · 21 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 26 min
Betty Boop or Shakespeare
We take a close look at the tariffs decision.
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S6 · E8 · 4 Feb 2026 · 57 min
Ayn Rand Graffiti
We're back for another live show at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, hosted by the Northwestern Federalist Society! We discuss the term's two Second Amendment arguments -- first recapping the oral argument in Wolford v. Lopez, featuring Hawaii's law about getting consent to bear arms on private property; and then previewing the oral argument in United States v. Hemani, about the ban on possession of guns by drug users.
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S6 · E7 · 22 Jan 2026 · 47 min
Bok Choy
With shocking and uncharacteristic efficiency, we manage to discuss three merits opinions and one orders list dissent in only 47 minutes. Specifically, we revisit Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton (time limits for moving to vacate void judgments) and break down Berk v. Choy (an interesting Erie doctrine puzzle), and Ellingburg v. United States (criminal restitution and the Ex Post Facto Clause), while also managing to discuss Justice Jackson's broadside against the Court's practice of "martinization."
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S6 · E6 · 16 Jan 2026 · 54 min
Lake Shrimp
We didn't get the tariffs decision this week, but we discuss two of the opinions we did get -- Bost v. Illinois Board of Elections, a decision about standing and election law, and Case v. Montana, a rare Fourth Amendment case -- in a remarkably efficient episode (after a brief detour into Grok's jurisprudence and the announcement of a major gift to the Constitutional Law Institute).
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S6 · E5 · 12 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
The Marshal and the Margarine
We're back with the first episode of the new year, breaking down the interim docket opinion/order in Trump v. Illinois, the national guard case, after first warming up with new Erie scholarship, state criminal jurisdiction over federal officers, and some recent online discourse.
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S6 · E4 · 19 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 17 min
Non-Cake Physical Object
We're back to break down a month's worth of shadow docket activity -- three recent summary reversals, plus the stay in the Texas gerrymandering case (Abbott v. LULAC). We also discuss the launch of the SCOTUSblog "interim docket blog."
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S6 · E3 · 20 Nov 2025 · 55 min
Counter-Counter-Counter-Designations
Will and Dan record a rare live show in an unusual venue: the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Virginia, at the annual attorney retreat for trial boutique Wilkinson Stekloff. Dan teaches Will some of the new lingo he's learned from the firm's trial experts before a deep dive into civil procedure. First, we dig into the recently argued Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited v. Burton, which presents a seemingly easy legal question and harder questions about SCOTUS advocacy and ethics. Then we look back at last Term's LabCorp v. Davis, which the Court DIG'd but which raises some fundamental…
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S6 · E2 · 15 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 18 min
Proximity Mines in the Facility
After a predictably unpredictable set of detours through Latin grammar, parenting philosophies, and 90s video games, we catch up on the latest shadow (interim?) docket activity and recap the oral argument in the tariffs cases.
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S6 · E1 · 31 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
Crazy Half-Drunk Unreliable Research Assistant
Divided Argument is in its sixth season! Our first episode of the term focuses, of course, on the latest developments on the shadow docket. These include several grants of interim relief to the Trump administration, as well as some dissents from the denial of certiorari. But first, an update on Dan's travel schedule and ChatGPT usage, and an important correction to our previous episode.
About Divided Argument
An unscheduled, unpredictable Supreme Court podcast. Hosted by Will Baude and Dan Epps. In partnership with SCOTUSblog.
Divided Argument is a English news podcast from Will Baude & Dan Epps. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
- Publisher
- Will Baude & Dan Epps
- Language
- English
- Category
- News
- New episodes
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 1 hr 9 min
- Latest episode
- 10 Sep 2026
- Feed
- RSS — paste into any podcast app
- Apple Podcasts
- podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567718103
- Rights
- © 2026. Will Baude & Dan Epps
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