Marc: How do you think students sort of process all this and how do you see this affecting the next generation of lawyers?
Leah: I hesitate to make wide generalizations, however, I think it has to be incredibly formative and instructive to have grown up and only known a political world that has been deeply influenced by Donald Trump. I think the first core political memory that I have is the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore and waiting to see what happened in Florida. That has been very influential on how I have thought about government and the Court.
Some people come to law school thinking lawyers are there to fight and we're gonna lose a lot of the time, but it's still worth fighting and trying to slow things down. Some come and want to change things and engage in more systematic, systemic change. There are still some people who come to law school and think I'm not going to have to concern myself with this. And I think the initial period of the Trump administration has been disabusing them of that idea, as the administration has destabilized public service, attacked law firms, etc. There's no escaping this kind of politics right now for people who are engaged in the practice of law.
And of course there are some people who are excited about what is happening and view it as an opportunity. I don't exactly know what this generation of lawyers is going to do when they are further into practice, but I have no doubt that what they experienced and grew up with is definitely going to shape their views.
Marc: I'm curious, since you undoubtedly coach your students on careers and write letters of recommendations and clerkships and the like, one of the things that shocked me was judges and justices hiring law clerks with a little bit of heterodox, you know?
Leah: Yes.
Marc: Not every law clerk for a liberal justice or judge would be a liberal. Not every clerk for a conservative judge or justice would be a conservative. Law professors would be solicited for recommendations from conservative students if they're liberal, vice versa. Harvard Law professor Michael Klarman came on the podcast recently and painted a picture of something a little more bleak, that it has become much more ideological.
Leah: Yes.
Marc: I wonder if it doesn't also negatively impact the judiciary, where it's just like everything is separated from the get-go?
Leah: That is definitely my experience. At the Supreme Court, there's just no non-ideological hiring. It's just not a thing anymore.
That has also become more prevalent at the Court of Appeals. There are certainly still some Court of Appeals judges who are just not interested in ideology or who are firmly looking to hire someone with a different perspective than they have. But there are today many more who just want ideological allies.
This is going to have horribly negative effects on the judiciary and the legal profession because now people are being credentialed based on their ideological leanings and political views. The class of people who have been able to or who are going to be able to have this experience of seeing the Supreme Court up close or seeing the Court of Appeals from behind the scenes are going to have that, in many cases just because they had the right political views, that is not a great system when we are thinking about how to train the next generation of people who are supposed to be enforcing the rule of law.
Marc: You also spent a small amount of time at a Big Law firm, WilmerHale, one of the firms that fought against Donald Trump. And you are now at a university, which I don't know if your particular university has been targeted by Donald Trump yet, but you have seen the administration target large institutions, the media organizations. You're a very prominent media figure yourself with an award-winning podcast.
I have been very critical of Big Law. I run out of adjectives to describe [Paul Weiss Chairman] Brad Karp as spineless, gutless, without dignity. I don't know how Paul Weiss partners wake up in the morning. They should be ashamed of themselves—
Leah: Same dignity as the former Confederacy.
Marc: Do you feel pressure, either internal or external about how you do your job? Do you worry that Donald Trump will hear your podcast or read your — he'll never read your book. You don't have to worry about that, but does that affect you at all?
Leah: I don't feel pressure from the institution to change what I'm doing or to censor myself. I do watch with some concern how MAGA and the Trump administration sometimes identify particular critics and just attack them on social media.
During, I think, the first Trump administration, there was a group that put together a mock list of individuals they wanted to warn might be potential judicial nominees in the Biden administration and my name was on that list, even though that was never going to happen. But it was shown on some right-wing media and I just got a barrage of absolutely horrible messages, some of which coded as threats and that was not fun.
My podcast co-host has testified before the House Judiciary Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee and was basically shamed and yelled at because of some things, very harmless things, that she had said on the podcast. I think the reality is that the choices I am making are going to close some doors, and they come with some risks. But those are risks that I have to be willing to kind of suck it up and bear right now.
Marc: You referenced what I wanted to end with discussing with you, which is you are also a pioneer in the area of media. Democrats right now are looking for their new Joe Rogan, and I'm happy to be interviewing among the candidates for—
Leah: I don't think anyone would identify me as the Democrats' Joe Rogan.
Marc: You and your co-hosts started Strict Scrutiny in I think in 2019, right? You were very early to podcasting. Now everyone wants to have a podcast. Now everyone wants to have a podcast on YouTube. But you all recognize the power of this form of journalism, which it is to educate, to inspire, to advance political positions, legal positions.
You deserve an enormous amount of congratulations, but must also have a lot of wisdom about what the left is generally not doing right in this space, because there is a lot of discussion in the ether about the sort of collapse of legacy media and the relative advantage that the right has generated in the podcast new media space. I'm just curious what you make of all of that and what your secret to success is.
Leah: Our secret to success is we believe in what we're doing and we enjoy doing it. And what we believe in is messaging about the importance of people understanding the Supreme Court and what the Supreme Court is doing. As far as more general lessons, what the left or Democrats are or aren't doing, some of it is, I think, a failure among Democratic political officials of being unwilling to fight, unwilling to meet the moment and generally not being willing to take a stand and feeling like they need to run everything through some sort of political calculus that is based on what the polls say right now, rather than recognizing their own power to shape public opinion and to move public opinion.
That's just my own personal view of the Democratic Party. I think there has also been an unwillingness to recognize the moment we are in. This is true not only of how they look at the Trump administration, but also of how they look at the Supreme Court and their willingness just to mindlessly defend institutions that have fundamentally changed and are no longer institutionally equipped to protect our democracy.
Those are some of the failings. I think that the search for the Democratic Joe Rogan though, just misses some of what Joe Rogan is, which is he's not an engine for generating information or theories in the right-wing ecosystem. He just amplifies them. The search for a Democratic Joe Rogan misses that aspect of the misinformation or disinformation media ecosystem on the right.
I certainly think Democrats could improve on communication, but I think that the search for the Democratic Joe Rogan is just kind of silly in some ways.
Marc: All right, well, you still have my vote.
Leah: Thanks. I think I might introduce myself in the future as the Democrat’s Joe Rogan and see how that goes over.