Law touches most aspects of life. Here to help make sense of it is the Stanford Legal podcast, where we look at the cases, questions, conflicts, and legal stories that
affect us all every day.
Pam Karlan studies and teaches a range of constitutional law-related courses with a special focus on what is known as the “law of democracy,”—the law that regulates voting, elections, and the political process. She served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and (twice) as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She also co-directs the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which represents real clients before the highest court in the country, working on important cases including representing Edith Windsor in the landmark case striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and Donald Zarda in a case where the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBT individuals against discrimination in employment. She has argued before the Court ten times.
And Rich Ford’s teaching and writing look at the relationship between law and equality, cities and urban development, popular culture and everyday life. He teaches local government law, employment discrimination, and the often-misunderstood critical race theory. He studied with and advised governments around the world on questions of equality law, lectured at places like the Sorbonne in Paris on the relationship of law and popular culture, served as a commissioner for the San Francisco Housing Commission, and worked with cities on how to manage neighborhood change and volatile real estate markets. He writes about law and popular culture for lawyers, academics, and popular audiences. His latest book is Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History, a legal history of the rules and laws that influence what we wear.
Law matters. We hope you’ll listen to new episodes that will drop on Thursdays every two weeks.
To learn more, go to https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-legal-podcast/.
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Best of Stanford Legal: What Stands Between Voters and the Ballot?
Episode 209
Thursday, October 22, 2026 • Duration 33:40
The ACLU’s Sophia Lin Lakin discusses voting access and the redistricting battles shaping political power
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Sophia Lin Lakin, JD ’11 (MS ’04, BA ’02), director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, challenges the stated premises behind many current voting restrictions, including claims about widespread non-citizen voting. “If we’re worried about the integrity of our elections,” she tells Stanford Law professor and host Pam Karlan, “we should be worried about making sure that more people are participating in our elections and not chasing a fantasy.”
That concern—how long-standing efforts to restrict voting access can make it harder for eligible voters to participate—runs through the episode, which was recorded shortly before the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais. In a 6–3 ruling, the Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which had created a second majority-Black district, holding that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The decision could make it harder to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge maps that dilute minority voting strength.
Lakin and Karlan discuss what is at stake when access to the ballot becomes harder and the rules for translating votes into political power begin to shift. Their conversation focuses on proof-of-citizenship requirements, mail ballots, voter roll purges, and redistricting battles, offering a timely look at the legal fights shaping who can vote, whose ballots count, and whether communities can elect representatives of their choice.
(00:06:17) The Non-Citizen Voting Myth and the Dangers of Faulty Databases
(00:10:23) Citizenship Documentation Requirements
(00:16:19) Mail Voting Rules and the Materiality Provision
(00:21:00) Section Two of the Voting Rights Act and Redistricting Battles
(00:28:51) Race, Politics, and the Future of Fair Maps
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The Court Records We're Not Allowed to See
Episode 208
Thursday, October 15, 2026 • Duration 33:18
A sweeping Stanford Law study reveals how routinely federal courts seal records, sometimes concealing information with profound implications for public health and safety.
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Evidence of dangerous drugs, defective products, and corporate misconduct is often hidden from public view through sealed court records. And federal judges are granting requests to seal records at an astonishing rate, often without applying the proper legal standard, according to the largest-ever study of the issue.
Stanford Law professors Nora Freeman Engstrom, JD ’02, and David Freeman Engstrom, JD ’02, co-directors of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, join Pam Karlan to discuss their findings. Their research reveals that roughly 90 percent of sealing requests are granted, about three-quarters go unopposed, and judges frequently fail to cite any legal standard at all.
Why is secrecy so pervasive in a justice system built on public access? The Engstroms explain how the incentives of litigants, lawyers, and judges can leave no one looking out for the public's right to know. They also discuss their push for a new federal sealing rule and why, with civil trials increasingly rare, access to court records is more important than ever.
Deborah Sivas discusses the recent rollback of environmental laws, calls to streamline environmental review to speed up development, and the role communities should play in decisions about what gets built.
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As the push to build more infrastructure gains attention, so does debate over the role of environmental protections and public participation. How can communities have a voice in development while still allowing needed projects to move forward?
Stanford's Deborah Sivas, JD ’87, environmental law expert and co-director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School, joins Pam Karlan to discuss the “climate abundance” movement and its implications for environmental law. Sivas examines whether changes to environmental permitting would address the challenges of building new infrastructure and how communities can have a meaningful say in those decisions. “It’s not durable if you don’t have a population to support it,” she says. “If people can see it as a win-win coming into their communities in a way that benefits them as well as larger policy goals, to me, that’s the right way forward—not disenfranchising them.”
Sivas and Karlan discuss how environmental law is evolving amid new policy and legal developments, including the current administration’s push for expanded fossil fuel development, changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and a proposal to open some of Alaska’s last old-growth forests to logging.
Nate Persily joins Pam Karlan to discuss efforts to change the rules governing the 2026 elections and the legal battles over how those changes would affect voting.
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As the push to build more infrastructure gains attention, so does debate over the role of environmental protections and public participation. How can communities have a voice in development while still allowing needed projects to move forward?
As the 2026 elections approach, questions about how Americans vote are increasingly becoming questions for the courts. Disputes over redistricting, mail-in voting, and how elections are run are raising broader questions about tensions between states and a federal government for control over who sets the rules and when they can be changed. Stanford's Nate Persily, JD ’98, a leading expert on election law, joins Pam Karlan to discuss the legal and constitutional questions surrounding elections.
Persily and Karlan discuss Missouri’s effort to redraw its congressional districts in the middle of an election cycle, the current administration’s efforts to change mail voting rules through the U.S. Postal Service, and the Supreme Court’s handling of election disputes. They also look ahead to the 2030 census, including questions about citizenship and who should be counted, and consider the broader consequences when election rules remain unsettled as voting gets underway.
Stanford’s Anne Joseph O’Connell examines who can step in when a top federal position is vacant and what recent court decisions could mean for how those positions are filled.
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When a top federal position is vacant, someone still has to run the office. But who gets to step in, and what powers can they exercise while the position remains unfilled? Those questions are at the center of recent legal disputes over how the federal government operates when permanent officials are not yet in place.
In this episode, Stanford Law School Professor Anne Joseph O’Connell, a leading scholar of administrative law and the federal bureaucracy, joins host Professor Pam Karlan to discuss the rules governing temporary officials and the way federal agencies are organized and staffed.
O’Connell and Karlan examine recent disputes over U.S. attorneys and what happens when the usual process for putting a permanent leader in place does not happen quickly. They discuss how courts have interpreted the rules for temporary officials and what those decisions could mean for other federal agencies and future administrations. The conversation also considers how much authority the president has over the people who work for him and where the law draws the line.
Can the President Appoint Principal Officers Without the Senate? >>> Lawfare page
Bureaucracy’s Boundaries >>>
Best of Stanford Legal: Inside the ACLU’s Docket with Anthony Romero
Episode 204
Thursday, August 20, 2026 • Duration 34:34
The ACLU’s Anthony Romero unpacks a sweeping docket—from a Supreme Court showdown over birthright citizenship to voting rights and free speech—as the rule of law is tested.
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In a timely conversation about the ACLU’s massive docket of cases, Pam Karlan speaks with Anthony Romero, JD ’90, executive director of the ACLU, about the surge of civil rights and civil liberties battles facing the country right now.
Romero discusses major pieces of litigation spanning immigration, free speech, voting rights, and government accountability. A key focus is the Supreme Court showdown over birthright citizenship, where the Trump administration is attempting to deny citizenship to certain children born in the U.S., a move Romero calls an attack on one of the core promises of the Fourteenth Amendment. They also explore what happens when the government pushes the boundaries of compliance with court rulings and what that means for the rule of law.
Tune in for a compelling conversation about the cases that could help define the next chapter of civil liberties law in the United States.
The Declaration as a “promissory note”—and what it demands now
In the final discussion of The Declaration at 250 series, Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, argues that the Declaration of Independence should be read in the Lincoln–King tradition: not as proof that the American project was completed in 1776, but as a promissory note that sets enduring standards for justice. He confronts the central tension head-on—slavery alongside the Declaration’s equality claims—contending that the nation’s gravest wrongs were never the result of too much devotion to the Declaration’s ideals, but rather repeated failures to honor them. For George, the Declaration’s moral architecture depends on natural law and natural rights: rights are not gifts from the state, courts, or political majorities, but are grounded in a “more-than-merely human” authority and therefore cannot be legitimately revoked by human power. He then reframes the most familiar triad—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—arguing that “liberty” is freedom for worthy ends (not license) and “happiness” is flourishing and character (not mere pleasure or desire satisfaction), which means the founding principles carry substantive moral content rather than a thin, value-neutral individualism.
Jonathan Gienapp, Professor of History at Stanford University, broadens and complicates this account by bringing the Declaration’s historical context into sharper focus. He emphasizes that the document’s immediate purpose was political: to justify revolution and to define legitimate liberty as non-domination—being governed by laws made with genuine representation and consent rather than by an alien will. Gienapp presses George to connect moral freedom-for-flourishing to political freedom-as-self-government: what changes if we place republicanism and democracy at the center of the Declaration’s promise, alongside natural rights? He also signals that the Declaration did not simply announce shared principles; it generated intense argument almost immediately over what “liberty” and “licentiousness” meant in practice, setting up a long-running contest over whose interpretation truly carried forward the Revolution’s aims.
Former state solicitors general Michael Mongan and Kevin Gallagher discuss the evolving role of state solicitors general and how states work together to shape legal battles before the Supreme Court.
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When states go to court, the battles are not always divided along party lines. State solicitors general often work across state lines to defend shared interests, coordinate legal strategy, and help shape cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In this episode, former California Solicitor General Michael Mongan, JD '06 (BA '01), and former Virginia Solicitor General Kevin Gallagher, now partners at WilmerHale, join podcast host Professor Pam Karlan to discuss how the role of state solicitors general has evolved. They discuss multistate litigation, bipartisan coalitions, and how states can work together when their legal interests align. Mongan explains that bipartisan cooperation often happens when “they share sovereign interests as states and those interests are genuinely threatened.”
Countering Contemporary Criticism of America's Founding Principles
Episode 201
Tuesday, August 4, 2026 • Duration 01:04:01
The real crisis isn’t the Declaration—it’s what we’ve stopped teaching.
Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, contends that universities have failed at liberal education—the cultivation of citizens prepared to exercise freedom and responsibility. He attributes the breakdown to politicized classrooms, overreliance on narrow “scientistic” approaches in the social sciences, and a professional culture that trains future scholars instead of educating future citizens—leaving graduates with little serious exposure to the Declaration, the Constitution, and the moral logic of self-government. Stephen Haber, Stanford Professor of Political Science, History, and Economics, presses the discussion toward causes and incentives, setting up a debate about who is responsible for the drift and what reforms could realistically restore civic learning.
[00:00:26 – 00:04:11] Chapter 1: Setting the stakes—The Declaration at 250 and today’s critiques
Michael McConnell frames the episode around renewed skepticism of the Declaration’s natural-rights claims—from progressive critiques focused on slavery and domination to post-liberal arguments against “abstract” rights. [00:04:11 – 00:06:54] Chapter 2: Berkowitz’s opening—What the Declaration claims and why critics converge
Peter Berkowitz restates the Declaration’s core logic (equality, unalienable rights, consent, and the right to alter/abolish destructive government) and argues that left/right critiques increasingly overlap in their indictment of universal rights.
Berkowitz contends civic understanding is collapsing because colleges no longer ensure a shared, rigorous education in founding principles, constitutional traditions, and the broader intellectual inheritance needed for citizenship.
Berkowitz argues that criticism without charitable interpretation becomes a “rage to criticize,” then traces postmodern progressive and post-liberal arguments (including Deneen and Vermeule) that reject the Declaration’s rights framework and flirt with radical alternatives.
Berkowitz ties the Declaration to U.S. foreign policy via the UDHR and the Commission on Unalienable Rights, including its aims and controversies; Stephen Haber responds that boards, presidents, and provosts shape campus ideology and that governance-level changes could enable a revival of civic education.
The Declaration In the Age of General Purpose AI
Episode 199
Tuesday, July 28, 2026 • Duration 01:07:13
"The Declaration meets the machine age"
In this episode of The Declaration at 250, Michael McConnell frames a question the Founders never confronted: if the Declaration grounds rights in human nature, what happens when machines can generate persuasive, human-like language at scale? Constitutional scholar Alexander Tsesis argues that the Declaration’s conception of rights is inherently human-centered—rooted in consciousness, moral agency, intentionality, and the capacity to participate in a constitutional republic—so AI systems are not and should not become First Amendment rights-holders. He warns that treating large language models as protected “speakers” would be a major break from the Declaration’s principles and could make ordinary democratic regulation—transparency requirements, labeling of synthetic content, safety rules, data practices, and restrictions on deceptive election deepfakes—far harder by forcing courts into strict scrutiny review.
Stanford historian Anne Twitty broadens the lens by situating abolitionists’ use of the Declaration within wider 19th-century conflicts over speech and constitutional meaning, reminding listeners that rival traditions—including censorship and suppression—also shaped American practice. She also presses a key tension in Tsesis’s framework: abolitionists championed not only the right to speak, but the public’s right to hear, circulate, and access contested ideas (as seen in the abolitionist postal campaign and opposition to the congressional gag rule). That listener-centered strand, she suggests, could potentially be invoked by scholars arguing for some constitutional shelter for AI-generated communications—an argument Tsesis acknowledges but ultimately resists by emphasizing that the First Amendment’s core purpose is protecting human expression and self-government, not machine output.
[00:00:26 – 00:04:40] Chapter 1 — Series finale setup + introducing the speakers
Host Michael McConnell closes out The Declaration at 250 and tees up the theme: the Declaration as a “promissory note,” then introduces Robert P. George and Jonathan Gienapp and frames the conversation as a capstone debate. [00:04:40 – 00:42:48] Chapter 2 — Robert P. George’s case: natural rights, civic virtue, and “freedom for” flourishing
George argues America’s failures come from infidelity to the Declaration, not devotion to it, and grounds rights in a Creator and natural law. He reframes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as moral claims aimed at virtue, ordered liberty, and human flourishing—not license or pleasure. [00:43:00 – 00:47:45] Chapter 3 — Jonathan Gienapp’s first question: liberty as non-domination and self-government
Gienapp presses the political meaning of liberty at the founding—freedom as non-domination under representative institutions and consent. He asks how George’s moral account of liberty connects to republican self-rule and the Declaration’s grievance-driven justification for revolution. [00:47:45 – 01:00:19] Chapter 4 — Jonathan Gienapp’s second and third questions: wealth inequality + early fights over “liberty vs. licentiousness”
Gienapp adds the material foundations of republicanism—property distribution, anti-aristocracy reforms like abolishing primogeniture/entail—and asks how inequality threatens civic virtue and ordered liberty. He then argues the Declaration sparked immediate, bitter disputes (Federalists vs. Jeffersonians/Jacksonians) over what counted as true liberty and who “captured the soul” of American democracy. [01:00:27 – 01:09:09] Chapter 5 — George’s replies: non-domination affirmed, inequality debated, polarization then vs. now
George embraces the non-domination point and explains how founders linked freedom and republican self-government, while suggesting leading founders worried more about forced leveling than wealth gaps. He reflects on early partisan conflict but argues today’s divide is deeper because Americans no longer share a common moral vocabulary or civic framework.
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Chapters: [00:00:26] Chapter 1- Framing Question: Do constitutional rights grounded in “human nature” apply to AI?
Host Michael McConnell introduces the episode’s core dilemma: the Declaration’s natural-rights logic underwrites later constitutional protections like free speech—so where does that leave generative AI?
[00:01:18] Chapter 2 - Thesis: Why Tsesis says AI can’t be a First Amendment rights-holder
Alexander Tsesis argues the Declaration and Constitution are human-centered: AI lacks consciousness, moral agency, and political personhood, so extending rights to LLMs would depart from founding principles and hinder regulation.
[00:10:08] Chapter 3 - Regulatory Stakes: What happens if courts treat LLM outputs as protected “speech”?
Tsesis warns that First Amendment coverage for AI could trigger strict scrutiny and undermine laws on transparency, labeling, safety, data practices, and election deepfakes—citing recent doctrine and cases like Reed v. Town of Gilbert.
[00:52:35] Chapter 4 - Historical Challenge: Do abolitionists’ “right to hear” arguments support listener-centric AI rights?
Historian Anne Twitty complicates the record: abolitionists elevated the Declaration, but censorship traditions were strong; she highlights abolitionist campaigns (postal campaign, gag rule) to argue listener rights might bolster pro-AI speech theories.
[01:04:17] Chapter 5 - Tsesis Response: Listener rights matter—but is the First Amendment still speaker-centered?
Tsesis agrees the right to receive information is important, yet maintains free speech is fundamentally about protecting human intention and self-expression, not conferring constitutional status on machine outputs.
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