Stanford Legal

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced it was rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding, the legal foundation for federal regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The administration has called the move the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. What does it actually do? And what happens next?

On this episode of Stanford Legal, Professor Deborah Sivas, an expert in environmental law, joins co-host Pam Karlan to unpack the legal strategy behind the repeal, the role of recent Supreme Court decisions, and what’s likely to unfold in the courts. Among other ramifications, they also explore California’s authority to adopt its own, more aggressive emissions standards and what this latest move by the Trump administration signals for the future of federal climate regulation.

Links:

Deborah Sivas >>> Stanford Law page

Environmental Law Clinic >>> Stanford Law page

Connect:

Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website

Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page

Rich Ford >>>  Twitter/X

Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page

Diego Zambrano >>> Stanford Law School Page

Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X

Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X

(00:00:00): The EPA’s rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding

(00:06:43): Climate science consensus and legal strategy

(00:16:01): The litigation roadmap: process vs. substance

(00:29:53): Wind power on the cusp

(00:30:10): Solar economics and federal land authority

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In a timely conversation about the ACLU’s massive docket of cases, Pam Karlan speaks with Anthony Romero, JD ’90, executive director of the ACLU, about the surge of civil rights and civil liberties battles facing the country right now.
Romero discusses major pieces of litigation spanning immigration, free speech, voting rights, and government accountability. A key focus is the Supreme Court showdown over birthright citizenship, where the Trump administration is attempting to deny citizenship to certain children born in the U.S., a move Romero calls an attack on one of the core promises of the Fourteenth Amendment. They also explore what happens when the government pushes the boundaries of compliance with court rulings and what that means for the rule of law.
Tune in for a compelling conversation about the cases that could help define the next chapter of civil liberties law in the United States.
Links:
Anthony Romero >>> ACLU page
Connect:
Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website
Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page
Rich Ford >>>  Twitter/X
Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page
Diego Zambrano >>> Stanford Law School Page
Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X
Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X
(00:00) Introduction and ACLU’s Rapidly Expanding Docket
(02:30) Small but Mighty—ACLU vs. Federal Power
(07:00) Inside a Burgeoning Docket
(11:30) Birthright Citizenship at the Supreme Court
(16:00) Enforcement at Scale and the Rule of Law
(21:00): An Inflection Point in Public Sentiment

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In a world where confidence is rewarded and humility can feel like a liability, Stanford Law professor Robert MacCoun argues for something radical: fewer unwavering opinions, more critical reflection, and a better way to disagree. On Stanford Legal, MacCoun joins co-hosts Pamela Karlan and Diego Zambrano for a conversation about how “habits of mind” borrowed from science can help citizens, lawyers, and policymakers think more clearly and function more effectively in a pluralistic society.
MacCoun is the James and Patricia Kowal Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, a professor by courtesy in Stanford’s Psychology Department, and the university’s senior associate vice provost for research. Trained as a social psychologist, his work sits at the intersection of law, science, and public policy, with decades of research on decision-making, bias, and the social dynamics that shape how evidence is interpreted. In the episode, he draws on his most recent book, Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense, co-authored with Nobel Prize–winning physicist Saul Perlmutter and philosopher John Campbell, to explain why probabilistic thinking, intellectual humility, and what he calls an “opinion diet” are essential tools for modern civic life.
 
Links:
Robert MacCoun >>> Stanford Law page
Third Millennium Thinking >>> Stanford Law page
Connect:
Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website
Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page
Rich Ford >>>  Twitter/X
Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page
Diego Zambrano >>> Stanford Law School Page
Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X
Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X
 
(00:00:00) Introduction and Noise vs. Bias
(00:04:42) The Power of Probabilistic Thinking
(00:12:20) Juries, Community Judgment, and Reasonable Doubt
(00:13:23) Habits of Community
(00:25:08) Motivation, Tools, and Decision Processes
(00:26:14) When Evidence Won’t Settle It

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Professor Kim Scheppele has spent much of her career watching democracies rise and fall. She went to Hungary in the early 1990s expecting to study democratic optimism after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead, decades later, she found herself documenting how constitutional democracy can be dismantled from the inside out.
That experience frames a wide-ranging conversation on the latest episode of Stanford Legal, where host Professor Pam Karlan speaks with Scheppele, the Lawrence S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton and a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, about how democracies crumble, and why the United States is not exempt.
Drawing on years of on-the-ground research in Hungary, Russia, and other countries, Scheppele explains a central shift in democratic collapse: it no longer arrives through overt rupture, but through elections followed by legal and constitutional maneuvering. Leaders campaign as democrats, win office, and then use technical changes to the law, including court rules, budgetary controls, and civil-service structures, to weaken checks and rig the system in their favor.
The discussion turns to the United States, examining how party polarization, shifting institutional loyalties, and expanding claims of executive power have made familiar safeguards less reliable than many assumed.
Links:
Kim Scheppele >>> Stanford Law page
Connect:
Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website
Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page
Rich Ford >>>  Twitter/X
Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page
Diego Zambrano >>> Stanford Law School Page
Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X
Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X
 
(00:00:00)  Learning in Wartime: A scholar’s antidote to the “cataract of nonsense”
(00:08:17) Patterns abroad and at home—are U.S. checks in danger?
(00:15:04) Naming the playbook
(00:32:07) More litigation—access, risk, and the pace of change
(00:32:39) Restoring democracy through law

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Can the United States arrest a foreign head of state by sending FBI agents—and military troops—into another country? On the latest episode of Stanford Legal,  Professor Pam Karlan sits down with international law expert and Stanford Law lecturer Allen Weiner to discuss the recent extraction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Their wide-ranging conversation focuses on the uneasy space where U.S. law collides with the constraints of international law.
Weiner, a former U.S. State Department legal adviser and now director of several international law–and humanitarian-focused programs at Stanford Law School, explains how domestic legal theories advanced to justify Operation Absolute Resolve in contrast with the UN Charter’s ban on the use of force. He situates the episode in a longer arc of U.S. efforts to reconcile military action with international legal limits, including earlier debates over actions in Kosovo and Libya.
The legal questions are substantial, but the stakes ultimately turn on precedent and norms: how U.S. actions are understood by other states, what they signal to rivals such as Russia and China, and whether the international system begins to resemble the logic captured in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars—that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Links:
Allen Weiner >>> Stanford Law page
Connect:
Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website
Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page
Rich Ford >>>  Twitter/X
Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page
Diego Zambrano >>> Stanford Law School Page
Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X
Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X
 
(00:00) Is a threat a use of force? 
(00:16:18) Pressure, coercion, and the non-intervention line 
(00:17:02) Venezuela policy and the specter of escalation 
(00:28:24) Law, power, and the South China Sea 

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