"Golden got it. Our electoral rules are obsolete. He understood why representatives who don’t fit easily into either party are so rare: the electoral system works against them." leedrutman.substack.com/p/politics-k...

Law Profs teaching First Amendment: I have put together a FREE, recently updated, and easy to use casebook for use in free speech classes. If you are interested in using such a casebook, send me an email or DM and I would be happy to share!

Happy Four Seasons Total Landscaping Day to all who celebrate in Philly and beyond. Go Birds.

To put this in scale, Elon Musk's salary from Tesla alone could fund the SNAP program for the entire country into 2034.

Here's Bergen County. Clearly -- at the very, very least in New Jersey -- there is substantial evidence that the Republican Party failed to maintain partisan shifts among Latinos

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis just took the bench. She's expected to rule on a request for a preliminary injunction governing the use of force by federal agents in Chicago.

More New Yorkers voted Working Families Party than voted Republican.

~fusion voting~ Mamdani (D) 42.75% + Working Families 7.64% =50.39% Cuomo (Fight and Deliver) 41.59% Sliwa (R) 6.63% + Protect Animals 0.48% =7.11% Adams (inc.) (Safe&AffordableEndAntiSemitism) 0.31% Estrada (Con.) 0.13% Walden (Integrity) 0.11% Hernandez (Quality of Life) 0.06% write-in: 0.31%

The President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is one of the most coveted & prestigious positions for UC graduates. It gives a hiring incentive to campuses who hire recipients for a tenure track position. What a DAMN travesty. This is capitulation to Trump's demand letter & anti-diversity agenda.

City as metaphor in American political rhetoric, from "shining city upon a hill" to Vermeulean city under siege. Discuss.

The horror

Jesus Christ. This is going to hurt so many kids if it happens. I just saw Heightened Scrutiny last night - great film by Sam Feder following Chase Strangio as he prepares to argue Skrmetti at the Supreme Court - defending kids' access to exactly this care. Kids deserve to live who they are.

It's good to ensure that everyone at a university is Compliant and I'm especially proud that I now know how to communicate about Pyrophoric gases that might ignite spontaneously at a temperature of 130º F or below. Going to keep a sharp eye out around the law school for those.

Hale, “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State” (1923)

I'm shaking almost too hard to type. I entered SLC airport and heard screams and cries for help. I could see people gathered around, watching. I sped over to discover this woman face down on the floor, four grown men pushing her down, while she cried "HELP ME" and pled for her child.

Excellent @leedrutman.bsky.social on how it is nearly impossible for moderation to matter much when electoral outcomes are almost perfectly polarized along one dimension - why we need to move toward a multi-party system leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...

Blue Wave Incoming #earlyvote numbers for three states where I have party registration, percentage point change in Dem party registration among early voters, same day before the election comparison to 2024 general: PA: +10.3 points NJ: +7.5 points CT: +7.3 points

🚨New predoc positions!🚨 Join @alexbartik.bsky.social and me to work on developing LLM tools to analyze zoning regulations and their impacts on housing affordability. One position starting at the "normal" cycle next year, and another ASAP. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/176538

TIL that my land use students are all fascinated by Tunnel Girl and also that Tunnel Boy has wrangled subsurface rights that risk subsidence, which reminds me of Pennsylvania Coal… it’s that time of fall when the fact-pattern gears really start turning.

Here are some data to drive this point home in sociology. Over the last 10 years we saw a decline from 333 to 200 asst prof jobs posted to the ASA job board - and that's until 2024, which was widely seen as a better market year than 2025

"What the Trump-Vance Administration is doing is not law enforcement. It is retribution—with a KGB-style 'show me the philanthropist, and I will show you the crime' vindictiveness." You don't know what you've got till its gone.... www.aei.org/society-and-...

tfw your kids’ school didn’t have to dismiss early bc of armed group marching through town, but also other schools did dismiss early to keep their kids clear of the armed group marching through town oh, america

We’re gonna party like it’s (Purdy 1999)

After adding new data to our spreadsheet, our central estimate of turnout for the No Kings Day protests yesterday has risen to 5.5 million, with an upper bound of 8.7 www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...

They promised me standard $750/hr rate like everyone else, but I could only be there for an hour and what with the I-9, 1099-MISC, calculating mileage and per diem, and dealing with concur and lost receipts just not sure it’s worth the effort.

No Kings, Philadelphia

#nokings #philly

Have fun today friends! #NoKings www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvOZ...

A [President], whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 🚫👑

As far as I’m concerned all the money being put into data centers could just be spent on cloning Edoardo Ballerini and we’d be much better off

To cancel this $ would sink climate resilience efforts by coastal cities. Cutting off our collective future to spite the other side’s base.

This is a fascinating and intriguing argument

Kavanaugh Stops everywhere you look these days

I can’t overstate how entirely untethered to the constitution and past practice this unilateral move to repurpose funds to pay for military pay is. The commander-in-chief clause has precisely 0 bearing on the ability to expend funds. Here’s a list of authorities that do:

One funny thing about Philly is that sometimes they’ll do a ton of fireworks for no apparent reason

Today I wrote in @lpeblog.bsky.social with Amna Akbar & @sameer-ashar.bsky.social about how legal scholars & teachers might act in solidarity with movements in this moment, in the face of fascism: lpeproject.org/blog/movemen...

Great piece www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

When I wrote this 2021 law review article on TRAPs (Training Repayment Agreement Provisions), I had no clue that it would spark a nat'l movement that today culminated in CA banning them: ssrn.com/abstract=364.... Respect to the advocates & workers for making it happen @borrowerjustice.bsky.social

Du Bois basically did a version of this in his bibliography in Black Reconstruction

On Saturday, we wear yellow. ❌👑

Remembering all those numbers was actually pretty easy before our brains got gummed up with microplastics

Dispiriting to see that the Prez axing a tenured prof for off-campus speech is (was?) a sociologist who self-describes as “steadfast in ensuring that all are welcome, all belong, and all are heard.”

A seat here, a seat there, pretty soon you’re talking real antidemocracy

At a workshop this afternoon the main feedback on my paper was “do you have a normative theory of production?” And I was like 🤔 “yeah, I need one...” As a staring point, maybe: Not this 👇

The calls for a circular economy have been answered. Except it’s a game of telephone and they didn’t understand.