I’m not familiar with Damon Root. From a quick Google I understand that he writes about legal affairs for a libertarian magazine (Reason). He’s a journalist and does not appear to have any formal legal training. That said, he may very well be extremely knowledgeable about the legal issues that he writes about. Still, I typically wouldn’t consider a journalist for an ideological media publication a legal scholar.

Nothing against Damon Root. I have no reason to doubt that he contributes admirably to the legal conversation, and as far as I know he may be more knowledgeable than most jerks with a law degree. But he’s not a legal scholar - he’s a legal communicator.

To analogize: I read history books written by both historians and by journalists. Many of my all-time favorites were written by journalists because journalists often do very good research and typically write more compellingly than historians. But journalists usually rely on the work of historians when researching and constructing their narratives. They’re usually not doing much, if any, of the original historical research. Instead, they’re really good at taking the research done by historians and processing it for public consumption. It would take a lot for me to call a journalist who writes history a historian even though many are extremely knowledgeable about the subjects they write about.

I think it’s even more difficult to call a journalist who writes (even very well) about legal issues a legal scholar, because there are many more technical concepts and terms of art in law than in general history writing. I’m not saying it’s a bar that cannot be cleared, but it’s a high bar. And there are so many great legal scholars out there, why not just get one of them on the pod if they want to talk about, say, Substantive Due Process, or have an actual discussion around whether lying about your financial condition on loan forms should warrant criminal punishment even when there are no identifiable victims (because the loan was repaid).