by Digging a Hole Podcast
Yale Law School professors Samuel Moyn and David Schleicher interview legal scholars and dig into the debates heard inside law school halls.
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9/30/2020
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April 7, 2025
<p>In the face of what is inarguably bad governance and fake—but spectacular!—technocracy (the list goes on and on, but we’ll stop at <a href="https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">AI-generated tariffs</a>), we thought we’d take a moment to join the conversation about what good governance looks like. A couple of weeks ago, one of us <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/books/review/abundance-ezra-klein-derek-thompson.html" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">reviewed</a> Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/9781668023488" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Abundance</a>, for the New York Times, and then the other one of us <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/what-left-wing-critics-dont-get-about-abundance/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">reviewed</a> the review. So we figured: let’s work it out on the pod? No guests on this episode, just the two of us in a brass-tacks, brass-knuckles discussion of the abundance agenda and the goals of twenty-first century economic policy.</p><p>We dive right into what the abundance agenda is and who its enemies are: innovators and builders against NIMBYs and environmentalists on David’s account; techno-utopians who discount the environment and politics on Sam’s. We agree that housing policy, at least, has helped the better-off create a cycle of entrenching their position through stymieing construction and production. We find another point of agreement on how Klein and Thomson’s abundance agenda attempts to harness the power of the state to build, and that certain left-wing critiques are off base, but disagree about whether their proposal is a break from the neoliberal era of governance and what that even was. In some ways, we end up right where we started, disagreeing about whether the abundance agenda seeks to unleash a dammed-up tide that can lift all boats, or whether the abundance agenda leaves behind everyone but a vanguard of “innovators” in the technology and finance sectors. Let us know if you’ve got a convincing answer.</p><p>This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.</p><p><strong>Referenced Readings</strong></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/marc-j-dunkelman/why-nothing-works/9781541700215/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back</a> by Marc Dunkelman</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580/stuck-by-yoni-appelbaum/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity</a> by Yoni Appelbaum</p></li><li><p><a href="https://zandoprojects.com/books/on-the-housing-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy</a> by Jerusalem Demsas</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/636499/one-billion-americans-by-matthew-yglesias/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger</a> by Matthew Yglesias</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/4209-kludgeocracy-the-american-way-of-policy/Teles_Steven_Kludgeocracy_NAF_Dec2012.d8a805aa40e34bca9e2fecb018a3dcb0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Kludgeocracy: The American Way of Policy</a>” by Steven Teles</p></li><li><p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175805/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-growth" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War</a> by Robert Gordon</p></li><li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era</a> by Gary Gerstle</p></li><li><p><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393634044" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism</a> by Paul Sabin</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188510" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The State Capacity Crisis</a>” by Nicholas Bagley and David Schleicher</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/red-state-blues/79FF52A9FCDDE94A9D6948044EE86662" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States</a> by Matt Grossmann</p></li><li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-captured-economy-9780190627768?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality</a> by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119017300591" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Why has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?</a>” by Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://wlr.law.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1263/2021/11/15-Schleicher-Camera-Ready.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Exclusionary Zoning’s Confused Defenders</a>” by David Schleicher</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cost-Disease-Socialism.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Cost Disease Socialism: How Subsidizing Costs While Restricting Supply Drives America’s Fiscal Imbalance</a>” by Steven Teles, Samuel Hammond, and Daniel Takash</p></li><li><p>”<a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/on_productivism.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">On Productivism</a>” by Dani Rodrik </p></li></ul>
February 18, 2025
<p>Happy February, listeners, and welcome to season ten of Digging a Hole! When we started the pod five years ago, we had our eyes on the Grammys, or maybe the Emmys, whatever award show we could finagle our way into. Turns out we have bigger fish to fry than whether or not we’re more deserving of an award than Call Her Daddy — Greenland, anyone? We’re thrilled to be kicking off this season with someone who knows a great deal about United States Empire: Allison Powers Useche, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of the new book, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/58922?login=true">Arbitrating Empire</a>: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law.</p><p>Powers Useche kicks us off with a discussion of the use of the arbitration forum as a place to hear what we now think of as international public law claims, including challenges to racial violence and Jim Crow. We dive into some case studies about how ordinary people across the Americas fought the United States in arbitration and offer competing interpretations about how to think about what happened from a legal realist perspective. Finally, we get Powers Useche’s take on how environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and others are using the tools of private economic law to contest empire today. </p><p>This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.</p><p><strong>Referenced Readings</strong></p><ul> <li><p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/mestizo-international-law/337681C12C70A6F686ABF2C49F022F92">Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933</a> by Arnulf Becker Lorca</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-hidden-history-of-international-law-in-the-americas-9780190622343?cc=us&lang=en&">The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks</a> by Juan Pablo Scarfi</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/2480">Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century</a> by Benjamin Allen Coates</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674244825">The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas</a> by Monica Muñoz Martinez</p></li></ul>
January 3, 2025
<p>The start of a new year, the slouch towards the first days of the new semester, the last episode of yet another season of the pod: we’re feeling sentimental here at Digging a Hole HQ. As you take down your old calendars and put up the new, we’re going to take some time to engage in a tradition of ours at the pod and discuss the 2024 Harvard Law Review Supreme Court foreword, “<a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/curation-narration-erasure-power-and-possibility-at-the-u-s-supreme-court/" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Curation, Narration, Erasure: Power and Possibility at the U.S. Supreme Court</a>,” with its indomitable author and the Seaman Family University Professor at Penn Carey Law, Karen M. Tani.</p> <p>We begin by discussing the genre of the Harvard Law Review foreword, and how Tani’s approach differs from forewords of yore. Next, we dive deeply into each prong of Tani’s framework of curation, narration, and erasure. We turn to familiar themes of the law-politics divide and the relationship between law and history, with Tani clarifying how this past Supreme Court term adds to our understanding of these big ideas. Finally, we conclude the pod with a discussion of prophecy (and here’s one: you’re going to have a ball with this episode, so hurry up and hit play!).</p> <p>This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.</p> <p><strong>Referenced Readings</strong></p> <ul> <li><p>“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/us/politics/supreme-court-judiciary-act.html" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A Century-Old Law’s Aftershocks Are Still Felt at the Supreme Court</a>” by Adam Liptak</p> </li> <li><p>“<a href="https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/2047/Nomos_and_Narrative.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nomos and Narrative</a>” by Robert M. Cover</p> </li> <li><p>“<a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230161852.pdf" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Selling Originalism</a>” by Jamal Greene</p> </li> <li><p><a href="https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9781506449302/The-Prophetic-Imagination" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Prophetic Imagination</a> by Walter Brueggemann</p> </li> <li><p>“<a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/122HarvLRev4.pdf" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Demosprudence Through Dissent</a>” by Lani Guinier</p> </li> <li><p>“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/opinion/supreme-court-liberal-dissent.html" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A Plea to Liberals on the Supreme Court: Dissent With Democracy in Mind</a>” by Ryan D. Doerfler and Samuel Moyn</p> </li> </ul>
Akhil Reed Amar
Matthew Sitman
National Constitution Center
Foreign Policy
Slate Podcasts
The Lawfare Institute
New York Times Opinion
Crooked Media
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Bloomberg
New York Times Opinion
Slate Podcasts
Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz
The Lawfare Institute
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