5-4 is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. It's a progressive and occasionally profane take on the ideological battles at the heart of the Court's most important landmark cases; an irreverent tour of all the ways in which the law is shaped by politics.
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Listen each week as hosts Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon dismantle the Justices’ legal reasoning on hot-button issues like affirmative action, gun rights, and campaign finance, and use dark humor to reveal the high court's biases. Presented by Slow Burn co-creator Leon Neyfakh, and hosted by Rhiannon Hamam, Peter Shamshiri, and Michael Morbius. 5-4 is a production of Prologue Projects.
Even more. Wait. So you think Trump did it again? Rhiannon, you think Biden did it as well? Oh, no. I meant Trump did it again, but from an, obviously, not at the White House. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't put it past Biden. That'd be the dumb fuck too. Is it is that you, Jill? He had a whole conversation with it. Alright. Today's case holder, the humanitarian law project, This is a case about the Patriot Act and terrorism and also free speech. Yeah. As you probably know, the Patriot Act was a piece of legislation passed in the wake of 911, ostensibly to combat terrorism. Though it is most famous for being a little light on its respect for civil liberties. Right. Yeah. You could say that. So it's against the law. To provide a material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations. And then the Patriot Act comes along and goes even farther than that, and says that this includes providing training or expert advice or assistance to terrorist organizations. Now the humanitarian law project and some other plaintiffs brought this to court on the grounds that it potentially violates the First Amendment they pointed out that they provide material support, quote, unquote, to the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, and the liberation tigers of Tamil Ilham or the Tamil Tigers, both designated terrorist organizations. Right. But the support that they provide to those organizations is decidedly nonviolent in facts they are trying to train them on peaceful conflict resolutions such as how to bring human rights violations before the UN. So they're saying, hey, we're not actually providing support to terrorism We have a right to free speech and free association as long as we're not actually facilitating violence, so this law is unconstitutional.
Is about the hottest constitutional crisis in the country right now. The well, maybe the second hottest because he got the Trump one too. Oh. There are so many constitutional crises. Yeah. We got multiple. It's like the QB prospects in the NFL draft folks. Yeah. It's exactly like that. The standoff at the border between Texas and the federal government is what we're talking about today. As our listeners may know, there is ostensibly a crisis at the border. Yeah. What exactly the nature of that crisis is depends on what your favorite news channel is. Mhmm. But I think the bottom line, incontrovertible fact is that encounters between border patrol and immigrants at the border are way up over the past few years Yes. Multiples of what they were a decade ago. Yeah. That's true. And we're when we're talking about encounter specifically, like, using that word, that's a word that border patrol itself uses to count the number of times that somebody is apprehended by border patrol. A migrant is apprehended by border patrol when that migrant is trying to cross the border. It's not a concert. You can't put, like, a drone over the border and measure how many people are crossing. You know what I mean? All we have is what border patrol sees. But in general, yes, interaction between border patrol and migrants at the border are up for a lot of different reasons. One of them being that more migrants are at the border trying to get into the United States than usual, and then those interactions between migrants and border patrol. There are so many reasons why that's the case. Trump had the remain in Mexico policy. Biden extended that policy and sort of realities on the ground that mean that, yes, border patrol is interacting with migrants at the border much more than they have in years prior. Safe to say that some large portion of it is the result of instability in Central America and
We'll hear arguments first this morning in, Jones against the United States. Hey, everyone. This is Leon from prologue projects. On this episode of 5 to 4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about United States v Jones. In this case, a man was arrested for petty larceny and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecution did not challenge his plea. And so, he was automatically committed to a mental institution. Had petitioner plead guilty to that offense, or been convicted of it after trial, he could have received a maximum sentence of 1 year in jail. He would now long since have been a free man. In the end, the man spent more time in confinement than he would have spent in jail had he simply plead guilty. But he appealed Supreme Court held that being found guilty by reason of insanity is proof enough that someone is dangerous and can be committed indefinitely. This is 5 to 4. A podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. Welcome to 5 TO 4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have drained our nation like trying to buy a house has drained me. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael. Hey, everybody. And Rhiannon. Hi. Just wait till you have to try to sell a house. That is the fucking pits, my friend. I don't care about this being draining. Move on. Look. I've leaned into the metaphor being just whatever is making me personally miserable every single week. I'm no longer doing big picture metaphors. This is now just an update. Peter's life. It's a Peter update. An update on what's going on with Peter. Yes. I'm, like, 5 days into house hunting, and let me tell you, I don't like it at all. It's not fun, and it's scary. And I don't know what's happening. And when I look up house hunting for beginners, it's basically the most overwhelming stuff I've ever consumed in my life.
There is a glaring issue with this. Big. Big one. Big. And it is the question of false positives. Right? The court says that drug sniffing dogs aren't invading your privacy because the only thing they are capable of finding is illegal drugs. That's not actually true because drug sniffing dogs aren't a 100% accurate. There are false positives. Right? Of course. This is an argument that Caballus raised. And all Steven says in response to that is, quote, although respondent argues that the error rates, particularly the existence of false positives, call into question the premise that drug detection dogs alert only to contraband, the record contains no evidence or findings that support his argument. Now first of all, I don't think that's true because Souter in his dissent points out the state cited a study that included false positive rates. But So it is in the record. Right? Right. I mean, maybe he meant the lower court record. Right? But what Right. But second, if it's true that there's no evidence of error rates on the record, then why is the court assuming that the error rate is 0%. Right. Right. Why do you need evidence to show that false positives exist, but no evidence to show a 100% success rate. Right? It's wild. Dumb. On top of that, there is an issue that the court doesn't address at all, which is that even if it's not a false positive, you may have situations where an innocent person is searched and drugs are found. Mhmm. So the most obvious case is if a passenger, unbeknownst to the driver and owner of the car, is holding drugs. Right? Yeah. In that case, the dog identifies drugs, and the car can be legally searched even though the driver himself has committed no crime. Meaning the driver, who again has done nothing wrong, is having his or her privacy violated. Right? Right. Right. Right. The majority just ignores all of these realities. We
With this dynamic. Yes. Right. And it's a privilege to be on this week to be replacement Peter, of course, in his honor. Mhmm. I will be putting on my thickest New Jersey accent and telling you guys an anecdote about what's going on outside my apartment in Queens. He's gonna be extra mad because he's from Philly. Perfect. It's all the same as far as I understand it. Yeah. That's right. So Peter, of course, didn't actually abandon the podcast. He's in South America scouting potential non extradition countries in case Donald Trump should retake power. Yeah. You are hearing from us today outside our regular recording schedule because we had to do an emergency episode Mhmm. About Trump v Anderson. The case about whether Colorado can bar Donald Trump from appearing on ballots for president in the state given that he, you know, tried to overthrow the United States government just a few years ago. Right. Details. A slight little coup. Yeah. The reasoning was, hey, this is actually in the constitution. I don't know if you guys noticed, but, specifically, section 3 of the 14th amendment, which reads in per and in part, no person shall hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same. But Congress may, by a vote of 2 thirds of each house, remove such a disability. And just a few days ago, the supreme court held in a 9 o ruling. Yep. That, actually, never mind about all that. Donald Trump's gotta be on the ballot. Yeah. We gotta do this all again. Yeah. Old Donnie
