The Learned Sixth: "Run, Fun & Gun"

And now for something completely different.

If you’re traveling for the New Year’s holiday (or perhaps resting or exercising after the last one?), consider a Learned Sixth podcast for the road: SCOTUS 101’s interview with Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar. The episode, appropriately titled Guns and Gifts, covers both the recent Supreme Court Second Amendment/mootness argument in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. New York as well as Judge Thapar’s own experience with shooting ranges and ammo boxes.

The Covington-based Thapar, a Supreme Court very-short-lister, is no doubt well known to many readers of this blog. But unless you’re part of his extended clerk family, you’re practically guaranteed to learn something new during this wide-ranging interview. The SCOTUS 101 host, Louisville native Elizabeth Slattery, dives deep with Judge Thapar on all things Kentucky:

• Weller’s bourbon (“a poor man’s Pappy“),
• the most famous alum of Centre College–where Thapar sits on the board of trustees–Justice John Marshall Harlan the First (“the original originalist“),
• Pikeville (a (the?) “crown jewel of Kentucky”), and
• Fort Mitchell fried-chicken institution Greyhound Tavern (a favorite haunt and neighbor of not one but two Sixth Circuit Appellate Blog authors!).

Our friends on the northern side of the Ohio River will appreciate the love also shown to Graeter’s raspberry chocolate chip and Skyline Chili. Slattery and Thapar even discuss some law too, including Judge Thapar’s ten-page rule and his “Run, Fun & Gun” style as a trial-court judge.

We’re confident you won’t regret a little extra time spent with the Sixth Circuit in 2019. Thanks for reading (and listening). We’ll see you in 2020.

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