Sharon McMahon
speaker
324 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 25 Feb
Sharon McMahon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
They're very related. You can't learn government without learning the history of government. So in terms of like a class that I preferred to teach, government was always my preferred class. I also taught upper class electives in law. Those are also a big favorite of mine.
What's your understanding of it?
Scary.
That's roughly right. The judicial branch does more than just constitutional challenges, but that is part of what they're doing. Yes.
That's right.
Well, yeah, they can determine whether or not a certain governmental action, for example, is in the confines of the way the law was written. OK, so it's not just is this law constitutional? It is the way the Voting Rights Act was implemented in Alabama in keeping with the original intent of the Voting Rights Act or things along those lines, too.
They hear far fewer constitutional challenges because a lot of the constitutional challenges have been adjudicated. We're still hearing new constitutional challenges. Like right now, the Supreme Court is just coming back into session and they are hearing a case this term. They work in these terms.
They start in October and they end in June and then they're done from July to September. I didn't know that. Yeah. I already didn't know. They are still hearing emergencies during the summer, but they're not hearing their regularly scheduled or what they call oral arguments. they get about 7,000 requests a year for oral arguments. Like, please take my case.
And of those 7,000 requests, they take about 80 of them. So it's a tiny percentage of the cases that make it to the Supreme Court. One of the big cases they're going to be hearing this term is about transgender medical care for minors. and whether a state banning transgender medical care for minors violates their constitutional right to be free from gender discrimination.
So, for example, if you are a teenage girl who wants to get breast reduction surgery because your back hurts and you have medical issues with the size, why is that permissible? But it's not permissible if you are a trans boy who wants to have surgery to be in alignment with your perceived gender. Right. Right. Is one of those discriminating against somebody because of their gender?
Of course, these are issues that the Supreme Court did not take up in 1792. So these are sort of like the new generation of constitutional challenges that are coming down the pike. Another case that they're hearing, the founders never would have seen this one coming, is whether or not a state law in Texas that requires the operator of a porn site to verify the identity and age of the user.
in the state of Texas, whether that violates their First Amendment rights or not.
Yes, it's already been implemented. And some people have sued. The porn site operators, of course, are not into this because people want to watch TV instead. Watch TV instead. But also your friend might not want his name to be recorded. Yeah.
But I understand the age component. Right. The other things like if you're going to purchase alcohol or you're going to purchase tobacco products, they have to verify your age. They can't just be like, oh, First Amendment. Right. So it's a unique question about how do we enforce the law to keep certain materials out of the hands of minors, but yet not infringe on the rights of adults? Right.
That's a legit question. These are things that people have not thought of before that are finally getting to be decided by the Supreme Court this season.
There is absolutely a perception that the Supreme Court has been overtly politicized. The number of people who think that they're doing a good job, that everything's above board, non-biased, it's very low. This is one of the lowest points in U.S. history in terms of perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court. And some of that has to do with abortion.
The majority of Americans are pro-choice in at least some circumstances. I think some people don't realize that if you believe that there should be exceptions for things like rape and incest, that that actually falls under the purview of being pro-choice. That there are some circumstances in which abortion should be legal. Overwhelming majority of Americans think that.
And so some people, they really, really view the Supreme Court's recent actions on abortion as delegitimizing the court process. And then the other aspect of it is the ethics concerns related to a couple of the justices on the court now where they're taking all these trips with billionaires and they're not disclosing them and they're supposed to be disclosing them.
And then they're like, oh, my bad. I didn't realize the form was supposed to be filled out that way. And it's a little bit like, but you're in charge of determining if people fill out the forms right.
Exactly.
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