99% Invisible

Intro to a new Roman Mars podcast: What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

— ·99% Invisible ·9 min read

Brief

What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law is a conversational, public‑facing podcast from Roman Mars and UC Davis law professor Elizabeth Cho that uses President Trump’s provocative acts and tweets as classroom hypotheticals to teach core constitutional doctrines. Mars frames the series as a way to turn political anxiety into constructive civic learning; Cho explains that the Trump presidency has forced her to incorporate real‑time tweets and fringe scenarios into class to probe the limits of separation of powers, federalism, and other structural rules. They retain traditional anchors (Marbury v. Madison) while adding contemporary dilemmas.

The show will unpack concrete questions raised by recent events: whether foreign honors or business income implicate the emoluments clause, how and when the 25th Amendment could be invoked to declare a president unfit, the practical prospects for impeachment (Cho calls it unlikely), and what Trump’s attacks on courts mean for judicial legitimacy (with a historical tie to Youngstown). Episodes will also cover the spending clause and sanctuary cities, takings for a proposed border wall, and border‑searches of electronic devices under the Fourth Amendment. The format is intentionally accessible — “cheaper than law school” — with weekly chats at Mars’s house, musical interludes from Doomtree, and calls to subscribe at trumpconlaw.com.

Cleaned source text

title: Intro to a new Roman Mars podcast: What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

author: 99% Invisible

content_type: podcast

publication: 99% Invisible

word_count: 1983

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment.

UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions.

It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things.

Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu.

This is not 99% of its bowl, but I am Roman Mars.

So I created a secret side project podcast with a friend of mine.

The goal was to take some of my anxiety about the political news and turn it into something

constructive and fun and interesting and share it with people.

And I hope you like it, I hope you subscribe, I hope you tell all your friends, let's send

it to the top of the charts, that would be nice.

I want to take all of this energy and do something good, like learning the US Constitution.

So here's the introductory episode, thanks. The whole idea for this series came from a tweet.

It was by Elizabeth Jo, she's a professor at the UC Davis School of Law, and I know

her personally because our kids go to the same elementary school.

Elizabeth's tweet read, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit so it sounds better when I read

it out loud.

Teaching constitutional law in 2017 means glancing at Twitter every five minutes before a class

First I laughed then I retweeted it and then I wondered

What does that mean exactly? I mean I kind of have an idea what constitutional law is

It's a class that's sometimes called the structural aspect of the Constitution that is the aforementioned law professor Elizabeth Cho

So I talk about things like the separation of powers.

What are the different powers of the president versus Congress?

I also talk about federalism, so how much power Congress has as opposed to state legislatures?

It's nothing but it's usually a requirement if you're going to be a lawyer.

It's a class I love teaching a lot.

I admit that not every student loves it.

And I can see why.

For example, the very first case I assign

on the first day of class every year

is a case that was written in 1803.

It's called Marbury versus Madison.

It's a big deal and we'll talk about it at some point.

But all you need to know right now

is that the first sentence of that case is 60 words long.

And the verb comes in the middle, so it's pretty dry, but this year has been a little

bit different.

And why is it different?

Oh, you know why.

This is what Trump can teach us about Con Law, an ongoing series of indefinite length

where we take the extreme actions of the Chief Executive of the United States

and channel that chaos into learning our Constitution like we never have before.

I'm your fellow student and host, Roman Mars.

Coming up, we're going to law school, but in a fun way, and it's meant for everybody.

But first, we gotta pay some bills. It's still gonna be cheaper than law school.

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As you can tell from the existence of this side project podcast of mine,

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So the bread and butter of law professors are hypotheticals.

Professors love hypotheticals, crazy things that happen,

that they sort of think about in their minds, what if?

What could happen?

And so it's the sort of thing that is not realistic always,

but it's a way to get law students to think about

what are the limits of law.

For example, here's a crazy hypothetical. Could a former president sue a sitting president

for libel for making false statements about him? I'm sure you're like, well, that's impossible,

but it is possible. In this new reality, that's not a crazy hypothetical. President Trump tweeted that

President Obama had illegally tapped his phones during the

election process.

He said it was at the level of Watergate, and he called him a bad or sick guy.

It doesn't appear to have any proof, but that's what he tweeted.

And this new window into the mind of Trump has changed the way Professor Joe prepares for

class.

Before this year, when I prepared to teach each day's class for a constitutional law,