Last week the Short Circuit staff celebrated ten years of our inexhaustive coverage of the federal courts of appeals. At the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. we welcomed about 150 of our closest fri

Bad news for our AI listeners this week. The D.C. Circuit ruled that you cannot be the author of a copyrighted work. Only humans get that perk. Dan Knepper of IJ comes by to explain this latest vict

Most weeks we summarize two, sometimes three, cases from the federal courts of appeals. This week we provide to you free of charge (as always) one, single, case. But, hang on, it has four opinions! It

Is stretching out ones middle finger at the police protected by the First Amendment? And whether it is or not, can the police trump up charges and assault someone who flips that bird? We dig into tho

Often in old constitutional cases you see judges of yonder years invoking this mysterious substance called the police power. Its something that has fallen out of a lot of our constitutional convers

Whats the difference between a campaign contribution and a bribe? More than the Sixth Circuit seemed to think. Or so argues Paul Sherman of IJ about a recent appeal of a bribery prosecution of a Cinc

A long-time friend of the Institute for Justice, Robert Thomas, joins us this week. For years hes litigated property rights cases across the country, lately for the Pacific Legal Foundation, and also

Everyone agrees we need to build more homes. But what if those homes are going to be in your backyard? For some reason that possibility often leads to discoveries of endangered species. Ben Field of I

You probably know that all-too-many jobs require a license to work. But how is that license administered, who enforces its rules, and who makes the decision on whether to take the license away? Almost

Two cases, from the Fourth and Sixth Circuits, came out within just a few days of each other, and each was about a city tearing a house down. And whether that was OK. They came to different conclusion