Opening Arguments

Opening Arguments is a law show that helps you make sense of the news! Comedian Thomas Smith brings on legal analysts to help you understand not only current events, but also deeper legal concepts and areas! The typical schedule will be M-W-F with Monday being a deep-dive, Wednesday being Thomas Takes the Bar Exam and patron shoutouts, and Friday being a rapid response to legal issues in the news!

Maxwell's Silver Yammer, Part 2 08/27/2025

The Ghislaine Maxwell Interview Was Institutional Corruption Like We've Never Seen Before. Truly. 08/27/2025

Republicans Are Messing with Texas 08/22/2025

The Boston Globe put out two bootlicking Trump op-eds in one week. What are we DOING 08/20/2025

The Most Important LGTBQ Rights Case You’ve Never Heard Of 08/18/2025

What Can We Do To Stop ICE? 08/15/2025

“ICE Is No Gestapo!” Complain Gestapo Enthusiasts 08/13/2025

Project 2025, Six Months Later 08/11/2025

Why the Whole Alligator Alcatraz Thing Is Somehow Worse Than It Sounds 08/08/2025

NYTimes lets awful Harvard Law prof lie his ass off for some reason 08/06/2025

NYTimes lets awful Harvard Law prof lie his ass off for some reason VR2 - Vapid Response Wednesday returns live on video for another round of bad-faith legal takes from the American right’s leading--well, let’s just go with “minds.” We begin with a quick check-in on the divided state of the U.S. “sovereign citizen” movement via a short explainer video in which one of its leading grifters denounces a whole new set of grifters who are promoting the concept of an “American State National.” We then plumb new depths of dumbassery from Harvard Law school professor/crypto-theocrat Adrian Vermeule. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Vermeule has called out the true villains of the American judiciary: lower court judges who aren’t doing exactly what Adrian Vermeule imagines the Supreme Court has told them to do. Matt breaks down why this column doesn’t provide a single example of the trend it purports to be exposing, and Lydia has the details on one of MAGA’s favorite legal scholars. Who is Adrian Vermeule, what is “Catholic integralism,” and why is a man who has previously gone to so much effort to hide his true beliefs behind “common-good Constitutionalism” showing his entire ass in the pages of the NYT? Then, we preview a *patron-only* bonus where we go into overtime to witness the spectacle of Alan Dershowitz’s lengthy but extremely unconvincing arguments as to why everyone should be required to sell him pierogi under force of law. If you want to be sure to not miss that, you'll have to go to patreon.com/law! Watch this episode on YouTube! "?" Kelby Smith (Youtube link) The New York Times, Adrian Vermeule (7/25/25) SCOTUS shadow docket order in SCOTUS shadow docket order in SCOTUS shadow docket order in SCOTUS shadow docket order in (11/09/2020) to Students re: The Rule of Law under the Trump Administration (03/30/2025) Check out the OA for all the places to go and things to do! To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at ! /episode/index/show/openargs/id/37698985