My initial take on the criminal law governing the ICE shooting in MN: 609.066 of the MN Code controls a self-defense claim for a "peace officer" under state law. I'm not going to consider federal law given the capture of the DOJ by the Trump administration. 1/

I understand the pressures on the BBC, but Radio 4's coverage of the Minneapolis shooting is an example of "bad balance". It's all "the Trump regime says she was a terrorist, but Democrats say it was murder". The BBC has the footage. It doesn't have to treat truth and falsehood as equally valid.

ICE shot and killed a woman on camera today. We all saw the video. The Trump administration is lying.

NEWS: In a heartbreaking video, after ICE shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, a woman who was in the same SUV cries out: “They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do." “We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head,” the distraught woman sobs. www.advocate.com/news/minneso...

It's unfair to say that X is only a site for Nazis *or* porn - it's also a site for Nazi porn.

Professor Fired for Charlie Kirk Post Gets $500,000 From School, Is Reinstated

The Melian Dialogue really ended in the stone quarries of Syracuse. (Niche tweet directed at certain Defenders of Western Civilisation.)

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, WTO members stood up in Council and committees to condemn the invasion as a breach of international law. Will the same happen again for the US concerning the invasion and kidnapping in Venezuela? What happens if the US uses force in Greenland? In Cuba?

Strikingly little attention being paid in the UK to enactment of the Employment Rights Act 2025 - the most significant labour law reform in decades. HMG doesn't seem v. interested in claiming credit for it, via mainstream media outlets at least. Accurate take on voter enthusiasm?

The idea that London has become less safe in recent years is quite strange - just look at how once "dangerous" areas have been transformed in recent years. Gentrification comes with its own issues but streets are packed with visitors and city far more welcoming than when I moved here a decade ago.

This is probably true, and also means as people become more aware of this, you could cause a lot of market and political turmoil with some low seven figure sums.

There will be a level of reconstruction needed on this country not seen since the Marshall Plan come 2029 and I sincerely am trying to understand who the Democrat as well as Democratic leadership we believe will be willing to take on something of that scope

my sense is this: not only are trump and rubio and hegseth lying to the public about the purposes, impact, planning, etc of the attack on venezuela. they are lying to each other. they have no idea what they're doing or where this ends.

Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

one unexpected outlook change from being a dad is taking the self care people 10x more seriously when it comes to dealing with weirdly directed anger and rage (including Online). many angry posts should have been naps or little packets of crackers

When Mamdani becomes Mayor at midnight, it is a real political feat. Remember that. There aren't many of those. They won against the odds by getting their man into living rooms and churches. The press came late. We'll see what he does with it, but that is worthy of respect.

“The resistance is spreading beyond California. Dutch university faculty have issued an open letter calling for a moratorium on AI in academic settings, warning that its use ‘deskills critical thought’ and reduces students to operators of machines.” www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

In the latest wave of terrorist attacks on Ukraine, Russia is again targeting public transport attempting to injure and kill as many civilians as possible. So far they have launched over 40 missiles and 500 drones at Kyiv. Nearly a third of the city is without power and heating.

The chief innovation of European colonialism was being ship bastards instead of horse bastards.

Seeing a performer successfully hype the crowd with "When I say constitutional, you say crisis!" makes me wonder if we're doing public law conferences all wrong

Trouble is, all these US de-regulators grew up in a world where’s there’s a button saying ‘Game Over. Try Again.’

The State Department has just banned five Europeans from entering the U.S., falsely alleging they are involved in censorship of American citizens. The only censorship here is coming from the Trump administration. My statement is below. www.state.gov/releases/off...

Check out the Kavanaugh FN 4; I think it's pretty clear that the Kavanaugh Stop thing has gotten to him:

The thing about SCOTUS justices is that even the real fire-breathing ideologues aren't idiots. Kavanaugh knows that it might already be too late to avoid having "Kavanaugh Stop" become a permanent term in constitutional parlance, even if the decision is overturned. He's terrified for his legacy.

I think bigotry has become a kind of loyalty ritual among young republicans, it’s how you show you’re one of them www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Short thread on my most-played song of 2025, The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station by CMAT (1/5) www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTWg...

Essential reading for those interested in the process of reform of the European Convention on Human Rights and the risks involved, by @drandrewforde.bsky.social and @alicedonald.bsky.social on @ejiltalk.bsky.social www.ejiltalk.org/countdown-to...

And the irrationality of this war is as important as the immorality--it reflects a MAGA movement that has effectively zero connection to reality and is lashing out violently in the belief that if they tantrum violently enough, they can *force* the world to be the way they want it through sheer will.

An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...

The @nihrc.bsky.social are today launching a major new report, by @anuragdeb.bsky.social, @sylviademars.me, @aoifemod.bsky.social, Eleni Frantziou and me, on the novel arrangements for remedying breaches of the UK's obligations for rights and equality in NI under Art 2 WF: nihrc.org/assets/uploa...

A symposium on my book 'Why Cicero Matters' has just been published online, with analysis by some of the most eminent classics scholars in the world: Victoria Rimell, Gesine Manuwald, Scott F. Aikin, Massimo Pigliucci, Lynn Fotheringham. syndicate.network/symposia/phi...

Conservative judges in 2025: "the founders did not understand the First Amendment to extend to aliens." James Madison, the author of the First Amendment, in 1800: "wtf are you talking about."

And then there’s the story about Alex Karp’s not-at-all-weird interview (for lack of a better word) with Oswald Mosley’s grandson for a senior position at Palantir.

What's happening to the ICC judges could happen to all of us if the US cuts off access to the basic infrastructure that Europe's economy runs on. As I argue in my new book The Owned Continent, Europe needs to urgently transition to sovereign economic infrastructure. www.TheOwnedContinent.eu

It's wild. We have so many real problems as a country, and instead a large chunk of our political class would rather hallucinate that one of the safest big global cities in the world is actually dangerous.

So this week shall I write about how killing unarmed civilians is murder or about how unwise it would be to limit the human right against torture. Western liberal democracies in 2025.

Donald Trump, the transactional president

The divergence between what the Master of the Rolls thinks AI can do for litigation (left) and the reality of it (right) is stark. I wish he spent more time dealing with cases infected by it. (The 2nd quote is from Re: D [2025] EWCA Civ 1570, handed down yesterday).

Very honoured to deliver the FLAC Annual Lecture last night, talking about rights, legal activism & Daniel O'Connell's contemporary relevance - and to share a podium with Stephen Rea.

"In the vast majority of cases in which a journalist is killed, whether in peacetime, or in a democracy, or in a dictatorship, in the middle of conflict, wherever in the world — in nine out of ten cases they’re killed with total impunity.” @caoilfhionn.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

Reform is also more hostile to the institutional foundations of the European system

Today's customs union vote is entirely symbolic, it's true. But what does it symbolise that no one is now arguing *for* Brexit? thecritic.co.uk/regr...

Blogged The EU Commission has finally fined X - the Digital Services Act's main character My analysis - eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

The GFA provides for two types of unification referendum, the mandatory one we talk about often, and the little-discussed discretionary type. The refusal of the political establishment here to plan for a border poll is a strategic error that leaves us wide open to the threat described in this piece.

So there's a lot of lore here, but essentially the PQ went from being a social democratic pro-sovereignty party to turning into an anti-woke party that takes its strategy named Mathieu Bock-Cote, who is famous in French politics for being known as "Zemmour with a human face"

Very honoured to deliver the FLAC Annual Lecture last night, talking about rights, legal activism & Daniel O'Connell's contemporary relevance - and to share a podium with Stephen Rea.

Racing headlong down this particular slippery slope. Not really British unless you are only British.

Every legal story now is either Ancient Circuit Judge Delivers Crystal Clear 100 Page Rebuke To Trumpist Overreach or In Unsigned Shadow Docket Decision, 6-3 Majority Declares Trump Can Hunt People For Sport

my great-grandparents arrived in the UK in the 1890s with nothing. they sold pickles from the front room window, took in laundry, worked as tailors. their children were nurses, teachers, salesmen. their grandchildren were professors, designers, opticians, doctors, magistrates, entrepreneurs.