Take a year off teaching con law, return to a different constitution.

Just another regular ol Saturday, hanging at the zoo, worrying about authoritarianism.

I experienced this last week & refused, saying I had never before been asked to provide the names of any analysts I was planning to quote to get a comment. Spox replied that maybe they were D donors. (In that case, it was 3 retired top military JAG officers.) I guess that was not a weird oneoff.

Nearly 50 college instructors across #Illinois landed on #CharlieKirk's “Professor Watchlist.” @wbez.org reached out to all of them and found the list triggered hateful messages, threats of rape or death, and intensification since Kirk's killing. #twill www.wbez.org/politics/202...

In this post I explain why the suspension of Kimmel’s show looks like a blatant 1A violation, as all NINE members of SCOTUS last year made clear.... but also why courts may not be able to do much about it (and yet Kimmel should still sue!) blog.dividedargument.com/p/did-brenda...

Genevieve Lakier is who everyone should be reading on the risks of government jawboning in the Jimmy Kimmel case. @genevievelakier.bsky.social

A thoughtful and provocative piece. Further thought (provocation?): perhaps the inversion is right-LPE (focus on power, but to ends of inequality/antidemocracy)? And, potentially a clearing of terrain for eventual return/realization of left/OG-LPE?

This forthcoming paper from @andrewshammond.bsky.social is a important contribution on the distributive impact of climate change. Should be of interest to scholars of US social policy and #climatejustice

Hey @iansociologo.bsky.social here's a potential guest speaker to help impress on students the downsides of AI...

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

This is alarming. I don’t normally recommend consuming Claremont products—they can be harmful to mental health—but if you want to hear how this fits into a broader roadmap for crackdown on left (including dreams of getting SCOTUS to revisit doctrine on 1A freedom of association) listen to this:

Hmm. 🤔 That seems a bit… unconstitutional.

👋 🙋‍♂️

Eh, back to spending the evening imagining how to transform the US a place where we have multiple parties and everyone votes. Is that the way? I dunno. Maybe part of it; other big changes also needed. But, whatever the case, *this* [gestures wildly at everything] sure isn’t working.

ah, well

Happy Constitution Day

After denial comes anger, Chuck. Join us.

Tbh if he still has a sense of job security on Friday it probably wasn’t hard enough

You figure Jimmy Fallon has a long night with his writers tonight calibrating just how hard to go at tomorrow’s taping.

That company should stop trying to de-extinct the woolly mammoth and the sabercat, and turn its full attention to Lenny Bruce.

The Dept of Education is now accepting comments on a proposed rule that would overhaul Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and make it too expensive for students to go into work that threatens the Trump administration Folks have til *Sept. 17* to oppose the changes ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...

Jeff Hiller, right on. I don't usually pay attention to the award shows because I don't usually have any clue who the people are because I haven't watched the shows. But I watched that one, and loved it, and he was fantastic.

I wrote a book that I hope helps people think about the relationship between law, science, social movements, &political economy. It tells the story of how feminists transformed the response to AIDS to ensure better access to healthcare. Avail for preorder! www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...

This is devastating for the media environment in central Pennsylvania. And not hard to imagine how that could foster even deeper urban/rural political polarization, deadlock, and dysfunction.

Envision and emulate what ol' Ben Franklin's social media and hot-take style might've been... "SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation." He offered this as a virtue, but you could also see it as a strategy.

Big thanks to @govpritzker.illinois.gov & @mayorofchicago.bsky.social for holding the line. 🙏💪 They helped protect not just Illinoians and Chicagoans but others around the country. A masterclass. I trust @governor.pa.gov, Mayor Parker, and @dalarrykrasner.bsky.social took good notes. 📝

We’re in a worsening “two-party doom loop” and to reverse it, we have to open up the system to more parties.

We're hiring in wonderful Copenhagen 🇩🇰 Two or more open rank sociology professorships (tt assistant, associate with tenure, or full prof with tenure). You'll join a leading sociology department in Europe with many core fields represented! #sociology More 👇 jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

This changes everything. (Actually, this website is pretty hilarious and worth checking out.)

Political violence is bad. It usually begets more political violence. Celebrating political violence is bad. It usually encourages more political violence, against various targets. Campus shootings are bad. They make everyone on campus less safe. It's bad that what I wrote here is controversial.

It’s not simply important to denounce political violence because it looks bad not to. It’s the right thing to do on the merits. Even more specifically to this moment it’s important because the forces of fascism are inherently better at political violence than the forces of civic democracy.

My parents took me out of a country where this was the norm and where it led to the execution and imprisonment of millions of innocent people. They brought me here, to America, believing that it would not happen here. And yet here we are.

Today's discovery of signs of past life on Mars is a legacy of President Obama's NASA direction from 2011-2015 to get the Mars program back on track. Earlier this year, President Trump cut NASA's 2026 science budget by 47%.

Fascinating discussion by @nedfoley.bsky.social and the @lawanddemocracy.bsky.social team about compulsory voting in Australia, and whether it could ever happen here. Worth a listen, and then [shameless plug] a look at how a US city made voting a duty in the 1800s... and could maybe do so again.

"And when push comes to shove / I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love."

Classic Philly

Fun and inspirational (and a bit of whiplash given news of the day) to see Jeff Rosen’s new song cycle at the @amphilsociety.bsky.social, based on Franklin’s twelve virtues to live by in the pursuit of happiness. With a bonus song cycle on the Greek gods, in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan!

This is one good illustration why diversity on the court matters: Sotomayor can imagine a version of the world where this ruling would affect a younger version of herself, her family and people that look like her. Kavanaugh cannot.

The Supreme Court is now directly overturning generations of precedent via the shadow docket.

Here’s my new @LPEBlog.bsky.social post about Friday’s FTC decision to stop defending its rule banning non-competes. I also highlight how red & blue states are stepping in to defend worker mobility with new legislation & existing consumer & antitrust laws: lpeproject.org/blog/after-t...

In authoritarian regimes, it makes sense to censor media outlets that expose dissent against the leader.

A couple more thoughts on this. There is exactly one crime defined in the U.S. Constitution: treason. The first definition is levying war against the United States. Trump is explicitly threatening that. U.S. soldiers are not only permitted, they are *obliged* to refuse an order to commit treason.

This is an actual exchange from a VP who took an oath to defend the constitution and, as a citizen, is expected to abide by the law. May we one day have accountability for the grotesque lawlessness of this regime.

it is always worth remembering that vance made a conscious decision to be a person of low character. he has eagerly contorted himself into evil for the sake of what amounts to a whiff of power.

This is abhorrent. America should not tolerate a president relishing in Pinochet-style rule over our own citizens.

The biggest analytical weakness of Americans in trying to understand the current moment is that their powers of analogy begin and end with US history. The idea that something qualitatively different might be arising simply doesn’t occur to them.

The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.

POTUS and the VP come out in favor of war on a US city, and extrajudicial killing by the military of alleged criminals.

🚨Trump drops all pretense and openly admits the mass raids in Chicago are about ICE raids and deportations (not crime), and essentially declares that he’s going to war with the city.