One of the best parts of the day job is putting on document displays. Today, I got to show off this gorgeous 15th-century illuminated statute book [TNA E 164/10] #LegalRecords

Just in time for the grant in Slaughter, my latest with @andreascoseriakatz.bsky.social and @janemanners.bsky.social out in the @umichlaw.bsky.social Journal of Law Reform! repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Legal process’s executor

Enjoyed appearing on We the People to discuss the Federal Reserve and Sinking Fund Commission! constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/...

BREAKING: Historian Jane Manners filed a brief in Boyle v. Trump, challenging President Trump’s dismissal of three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. 1/ bit.ly/4mKYlN8

Literally the perfect guest. @levmenand.bsky.social is not only a leading historian and theorist of US banking regulation, he rote THE article on the meaning on "for cause" removal.

I don't think so. This removal was for cause--pretextual cause, to be sure, but the Article II argument won't be joined. The broader problem is that he's willing to use pretext in a 1001 different settings to accomplish what would otherwise be unlawful--and everyone knows it, but won't stop it.

Weighing in with some important legal background on President Trump's firing of Lisa Cook:

I found a cool Shakespeare document, but why was it missing in the first place? www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/s... [1/4]

3) @kexelchabot.bsky.social takes down the premise of advocates of the unitary executive.

Delighted to share my latest, History and Fetishism in the New Separation of Powers Formalism, now live in the Penn Law Review! The piece traces the emergence of the Supreme Court’s new approach to separation of powers law and argues that it is grounded in a set of basic mistakes. (1/3)

Got a book you all are going to love, just a few weeks now until it's available press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

By request, I updated my website with a list of all the essays and podcasts I have done on the civil service. I'll keep it updated as I write and speak. nbednar.com/civil-servic...

The Lloyd-LaFollette Act only permits removal "only for such cause as will promote the efficiency of the service." "Article II" is not a valid cause.

🚨@nicholasbednar.bsky.social and I have a new article titled Commission Quorums. In light of firings rendering the NLRB and MSPB quorum-less, we review caselaw, common law principles, and the quorum rules of 76 commissions to understand the law of quorums. 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The Supreme Court has stayed the AFGE case, which prohibited the Trump administration from moving forward with Reductions-in-Force. Several quick notes based on a cursory skim: 1/ www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

TFW you catch a tiny citation error in one of the last footnotes of your paper just BEFORE it goes to print!

A🧵Here are key nondelegation takeaways from today’s opinion in FCC v Consumers’ Research:

For folks following the UET debate, check out BK concurrence in FCC v Consumers Research, www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Looking forward to this event!

Hawley keeps having to interrupt @kateshaw.bsky.social because she sounds so much smarter than him

Thanks for the mention, @stevevladeck.bsky.social !

There's some great work on the intellectual history of this conservative project. See, e.g., @debpearlstein.bsky.social 's repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/medi...; @hollisbrusky.bsky.social 's digitalcommons.du.edu/dlr/vol89/is... & work by Steven Teles that I can't find offhand but it's v good!

this passage and its citation descendants are what the 18-judge Supreme Court will cite in 2050 when holding “Seila Law was wrong when it was decided, and it is now overruled” lot of judicial vandalism in the meantime though

1. 🧵, just read it 2. journos following Supreme Court, originalism, and separation of powers - @kexelchabot.bsky.social is a must follow

BTW the historical basis for the "unitary executive theory" that the Supreme Court embraced today is total bunk, just an egregious, bad-faith misreading of history. It's pure bullshit. A court with integrity would acknowledge its mistake instead of doubling down. ndlawreview.org/interring-th...

A 🧵 explaining why the majority’s use of history in Wilcox is deeply flawed. It carves out an exception for the Fed, based on the argument that the Fed is a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the historical tradition of the First and Second Banks.”

Big, bad legal news from "the shadow docket." 6-3 overturning the stay in Wilcox, the NLRB case. Less than 2 pages of assertions that have been proven historically incorrect. A preview of expanding presidential power and allowing the Trump removals: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

To be clear, the first and second banks looked NOTHING like the Fed. They did fundamentally different jobs!

FRB is a different acronym than NLRB and MSPB, therefore FRB is constitutional and the NLRB and MSPB are not. Oh, and the majority's gesture at history is way off base. See papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....; papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....; papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Expected result, but wild to do this on the orders docket. Goodbye agency independence!

The Court is legislating from the bench: it has eliminated removal restrictions it finds unimportant while keeping those it finds too consequential to kill (the Fed). Article II provides an undifferentiated grant of "the executive power," not one that applies to the NLRB and excepts the Fed.

I've been about 3 years behind in posting papers to SSRN but I just posted a new one, forthcoming soon in @usclaw.bsky.social 's Southern California Law Review. It's called "In the Name of Accountability." Here's a link & I'll thread the abstract text below. 1/2 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My loyal grading assistant.

My article, "The Unitary Executive and Politics," is forthcoming in the Ohio Northern University Law Review! I'm very excited to work with the student editors at ONU. Link to the paper below; comments are welcome. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

And the critical point here is that RESPONSIBILITY was the defining characteristic that the Framers associated with the whole theory of the unitary executive, more important than the "vigor & energy" stuff that Chief Justice mistakenly overvalued in his Trump v. U.S. (presidential immunity) opinion.

🧵Here’s the latest version of Rejecting the Unitary Executive, with a few thoughts on how it relates to the Wilcox litigation before the Supreme Court. My analysis shows that the unitary executive theory adopted in Seila Law was wrong on the day it was decided. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Important points here. It is critical to engage with primary sources. It is also critical to assess whether those sources reflect consensus/public meaning rather than individual viewpoints.

This is the U.S. Constitution’s original theory of executive power. It is “new” only because the conservative legal movement has led courts astray in recent decades.

I missed this earlier (it's from late March), but this is a terrific, if depressing summary, by @nicholasbednar.bsky.social of the many ways in which Trump is pushing the bounds of Article II. The Meaning of Article II and 'Executive Power' to Trump www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

And here we are. Yesterday a student asked for my Fall 2025 Administrative Law syllabus. When I mentioned that I would be updating it over the summer, I did not anticipate this. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

I may be wrong, but I think this is a good case to go up. The Court hasn't shown much interest in disturbing removal protections for civil service employees, and the MSPB is easy to distinguish from regulatory agencies that the Court wants to put under presidential control.

Great post on legal challenges to tariffs. I agree with Steve: MQD is better than NDD. Aren’t there strong parallels to WV v. EPA? SCT used MQD to block fundamental transformation of energy supply. Here tariffs are designed to transform US manufacturing capacity, without clear statutory lang.

Trump v. US is increasingly looking like a historically catastrophic Supreme Court ruling Dred Scott, Plessy, Lochner, Korematsu-level bad except on this one there may be no lever to with which to pull back

Looking forward to the LUC Law Journal symposium tomorrow!

For @newyorker.com: I wrote a crash course on how John Roberts empowered the current destruction and lawlessness in Washington. There’s a perception this began with the immunity ruling, but he has long been pushing the idea of an unrestrained, unchecked presidency. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Great post on the Neagle case. This case also make me wonder about personal liability for people who carry out the President’s orders without statutory authorization. For example could someone sue Musk for trespass?

We filed this amicus yesterday on Wilcox v Trump 1. Firing Wilcox from NLRB was illegal, b/c Humphrey's Executor remains good law. 2. New historical evidence confirms Humphrey's. 3. Unitary responses expose that they have no evidence. @ssrn.bsky.social link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....