Episode 177: The Hard Drive Has Always Been the Enemy

Oral Argument

It's our annual Supreme Court term roundup, with special guest Ian Samuel. We discuss, natch, one case, Carpenter v. United States, which concerns the need for a warrant to get records from cell phone companies concerning the location of your phone. But there's much more, including: hard drive upgrades, the sum total of human writing, audio vs. text for messaging, emojis, AI and grunts, Supreme Court-packing / balancing / restructuring (16:37), what rules of procedure an enlarged Court should set for itself and what rules should be imposed on it (29:00), podcast lengths and listening habits (51:04), Carpenter v. United States(01:02:06), Batman movies, and Hold-Up.

This show’s links:

• First Mondays
• Ian Samuel’s writing
• Ian Samuel, The New Writs of Assistance
• Snopes, Did Facebook Shut Down an AI Experiment Because Chatbots Developed Their Own Language? (no, but interesting)
• Oral Argument 134: Crossover
• Christian Turner, Amendment XXVIII: A First Draft
• Ian Ayres and John Witt, Democrats Need a Plan B for the Supreme Court. Here’s One Option.
• Oral Argument 37: Hammer Blow (with Michael Dorf); Oral Argument 38: You're Going to Hate this Answer_ (with Steve Vladeck); Christian Turner, Bound by Federal Law (including links to posts by Michael and Steve on the issue of state courts' not being bound by federal circuit courts)
• Carpenter v. United States
• Radiolab, Eye in the Sky
• Ian Samuel, Warrantless Location Tracking
• Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council
• Florida v. Jardines
• Justice Souter’s discussion of Plessy and the role of history in judging (watch from minute one until about minute fourteen) and his Harvard Commencement speech on Plessy
• Hold Up!

Special Guest: Ian Samuel.