In this episode, Stanford Law Professor Evelyn Douek, a First Amendment scholar and permanent U.S. resident, expands on her recent Atlantic essay, “Can I Teach the First Amendment If I Only Have a Green Card?” She reflects on the paradox of teaching constitutional protections for free speech while watching the U.S. government detain or revoke visas for foreign students and other non-citizen residents engaged in protest or student journalism. Douek joins fellow Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan to explore what these developments could mean for the future of American universities, long known for drawing global talent. Their conversation highlights the growing tension between the nation's commitment to free expression and policies that penalize dissent by non-citizens.Links:Evelyn Douek >>> Stanford Law page“Can I Teach the First Amendment If I Only Have a Green Card?” >>> The Atlantic pageModerated Content podcast >>> Stanford Law pageConnect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>> Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X(00:00:00) Introduction and Exercising First Amendment Rights(00:01:53) Writing the Essay(00:02:27) Teaching the First Amendment(00:15:25) Freedom of Speech and Religion(00:16:11) Challenges of Teaching the First Amendment
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32:59
Leveraging Technology to Improve Access to LA Courts
The LA Superior Court is the largest single unified trial court in the United States, serving the approximately 10 million residents of Los Angeles County—the cases it handles spanning a wide range of legal matters, from civil cases to criminal cases, family law, and juvenile matters.As the state and county have grown, so has demand on the legal system. Access to justice—the inability for Americans to find and/or afford legal representation—has been called a crisis. What does that mean? What can be done about it?Stanford Law School’s Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession and Legal Design Lab released a groundbreaking diagnostic report in April that outlines a blueprint for creating more innovative, modern, and accessible courts. The report marks a significant milestone in the unique partnership established in January 2024 between the Superior Court of Los Angeles County (the Court – SCLAC) and Stanford Law School. Created in collaboration with court leadership, frontline court staff, and community partners, the findings of the Stanford report demonstrate the Court’s commitment to enhancing the self-represented litigant experience and its dedication to leading in justice innovation.Our guests joining Pam Karlan for this episode include Stanford Law Professor David Freeman Engstrom, the co-director of the Rhode Center whose work focuses on access to justice in the millions of low-dollar but highly consequential cases, including debt collection, eviction, foreclosure, and child support actions, that shape the lives of Americans each year; Margaret Hagan, the executive director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford Law School whose researches, designs, and develops new ways to make the U.S. civil justice system work better for people; and Daniel Bernal, associate director of research at the Rhode Center whose work explores the intersection of civil procedure and access to justice, with a focus on designing and testing innovations to make state courts work better for people. Links:David Freeman Engstrom >>> Stanford Law pageMargaret Hagan >>> Stanford Law pageDaniel Bernal >>> Stanford Law pageA Blueprint for Expanding Access to Justice in Los Angeles Superior Court’s Eviction Docket >>> Stanford Law pageConnect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>> Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X(00:00:00) Introductions and Tour of the LA Superior Court(00:21:25) Use of Technology and the Pain Points in Court Systems (00:27:25) National Implications of Court Innovations (00:33:00 Court as a Central Hub for Legal Problem-Solving (00:35:04) Collaboration and Future Prospects
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35:43
Trump Takes on the Federal Bureaucracy, Putting Administrative Law in the Spotlight
On February 19 of this year, President Donald Trump issued one of his first executive orders, Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, leaving no doubt his aim to reduce its size and scope. As DOGE got to work firing federal workers—and cutting entire agencies, the president also fired heads of agencies—Democratic and Republican—cleaning house of leadership not deemed on side. As EO whiplash continues, so does pushback, with many in the public learning about the people behind the cost-cutting and loyalty tests—the federal workers and government agencies helping to make American life run smoothly and safely. What are the legal questions?Joining this episode is Anne Joseph O'Connell, a leading scholar of U.S. administrative law and the federal bureaucracy. She was a presidentially appointed member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency dedicated to improving regulatory procedures, from October 2022 to January 2025. She combines a lawyer's doctrinal acumen and institutional sensibilities with a political scientist's deep understanding of American politics and political theory and an empiricist's rigor about facts in the world. Her scholarship explains how government really works. She has done pioneering and award-winning work on previously unforeseen questions about the problem of vacancies in federal office and about the legal and normative implications of unorthodox government entities such as the U.S. Postal Service or Smithsonian.Links:Anne Joseph O’Connell >>> Stanford Law pageActings >>> Stanford Law pageConnect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>> Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X (00:00:00) Introduction to Anne Joseph O'Connell's background(00:03:44) Actings in Government(00:17:04) The Importance of Government Accountability(00:19:22) The Role of Detailees in Government and The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)(00:27:24) Government Waste and Fraud
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29:01
AI, Liability, and Hallucinations in a Changing Tech and Law Environment
Since ChatGPT came on the scene, numerous incidents have surfaced involving attorneys submitting court filings riddled with AI-generated hallucinations—plausible-sounding case citations that purport to support key legal propositions but are, in fact, entirely fictitious. As sanctions against attorneys mount, it seems clear there are a few kinks in the tech. Even AI tools designed specifically for lawyers can be prone to hallucinations. In this episode, we look at the potential and risks of AI-assisted tech in law and policy with two Stanford Law researchers at the forefront of this issue: RegLab Director Professor Daniel Ho and JD/PhD student and computer science researcher Mirac Suzgun. Together with several co-authors, they examine the emerging risks in two recent papers, “Profiling Legal Hallucinations in Large Language Models” (Oxford Journal of Legal Analysis, 2024) and the forthcoming “Hallucination-Free?” in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Ho and Suzgun offer new insights into how legal AI is working, where it’s failing, and what’s at stake.Links:Daniel Ho >>> Stanford Law pageStanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) >>> Stanford University pageRegulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab) >>> Stanford University pageConnect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>> Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X (00:00:00) Introduction to AI in Legal Education (00:05:01) AI Tools in Legal Research and Writing(00:12:01) Challenges of AI-Generated Content (00:20:0) Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback(00:30:01) Audience Q&A
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39:31
The Trump Administration and the Rule of Law Under Pressure
On March 6, President Trump issued the executive order “Addressing Risk from Perkins Coie LLP,” essentially preventing the firm from doing business with the federal government, stripping its staff of security clearances. It was the first of several presidential orders aimed at law firms that represented clients and/or employed attorneys at odds with Trump.At the same time, Trump and members of his administration have voiced loud opposition to judges who rule against him and, in what many see as a weaponization of justice, have fired members of the Department of Justice without cause. Even the new Attorney General Pam Bondi is breaking with long held protocol by openly defending the administration, taking a partisan position when defending her decision not to investigate the Signal scandal of top national security officers sharing war plans via the public ap, saying: “If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home. Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage that Hunter Biden had access to.”Are the norms and practices that have maintained the rule of law in the United States straining under the pressure of the Trump administration?Stanford Law Professor David Sklansky, a criminal law expert, joins Pam Karlan for a look at the first 100 days of the Trump administration—and the unprecedented number of executive orders targeting rule of law norms. Sklansky, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center who teaches and writes about policing, prosecution, criminal law, and the law of evidence, is the author, most recently of Criminal Justice in Divided America: Police, Punishment, and the Future of Our Democracy, was published earlier this year by Harvard University Press. Earlier he practiced labor law in Washington D.C. and served as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.Links:David Sklansky >>> Stanford Law pageCriminal Justice in Divided America >>> Stanford Law pageConnect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>> Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X (00:00:00) The Rule of Law and Executive Orders(00:15:01) Legal Profession's Response to Political Pressure(00:27:01) Impact on Universities and Academic Freedom(00:37:01) Redefining Pro Bono Work(00:44:42) The Importance of the Rule of Law
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.
Stanford Legal launched in 2017 as a radio show on Sirius XM. We’re now a standalone podcast and we’re back after taking some time away, so don’t forget to subscribe or follow this feed. That way you’ll have access to new episodes as soon as they’re available.
We know that the law can be complicated. In past episodes we discussed a broad range of topics from the legal rights of someone in a conservatorship like Britney Spears to the Supreme Court’s abortion decision to how American law firms had to untangle their Russian businesses after the invasion of Ukraine. Past episodes are still available in our back catalog of episodes.
In future shows, we’ll bring on experts to help make sense of things like machine learning and developments in the regulation of artificial intelligence, how the states draw voting maps, and ways that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling will change college admissions.
Our co-hosts know a bit about these topics because it’s their life’s work.
Pam Karlan studies and teaches 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 Stanford’s 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 marriage equality win and David Riley in a case where the Supreme Court held that the police generally can’t search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested unless they first get a warrant. She has argued before the Court nine times.
And Rich Ford’s teaching and writing looks 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.
The law is personal for all of us—and pivotal. The landmark civil rights laws of the 1960s have made discrimination illegal but the consequences of the Jim Crow laws imposed after the civil war are still with us, reflected in racially segregated schools and neighborhoods and racial imbalances in our prisons and conflict between minority communities and police. Unequal gender roles and stereotypes still keep women from achieving equality in professional status and income. Laws barring gay people from marrying meant that millions lived lives of secrecy and shame. New technologies present new legal questions: should AI decide who gets hired or how long convicted criminals go to prison? What can we do about social media’s influence on our elections? Can Chat GPT get copyright in a novel?
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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