Debuting new 60s jacket from Brimfield for commencement weekend. Paired with old alumni Yale tie.

Debuting new 60s jacket from Brimfield for commencement weekend. Paired with old alumni Yale tie.

History is what happened

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There’s no reason to perpetuate the legal myth that human beings in robes can save democracy

some wisdom from james wilson, framer. "The truth is that, in our governments, the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power remains in the people."

Announcing!! On June 2, the day of my book launch, I'm doing an virtual reading (all free!). Would you do me the honor of joining me? Sign up here. www.eventbrite.com/e/unlocking-...

Someone described Platner as neither good nor bad but inevitable. This is a good illustration.

whoa

There gotta be a book waiting to be written comparing our dumb-dumb oligarchs to the first Gilded Age’s tycoons.

David Macauley had a fun book (Motel of the Mysteries) about future archaeologists clumsily understanding modern life from motel ruins. What one would make of a found trove of these car-seat videos? "Was this their living space? Confessional? Asylum?" I suppose we could ask any non-American.

it’s so crazy that Virginia voters amended the constitution to allow redistricting while Florida voters amended the constitution to ban gerrymandering… but the Republican hacks on both state supreme courts overturned the will of the voters to ensure that republicans get their preferred outcome

If you know any Virginia legislators, I have a book they could probably use. And look! It’s about Congress! Doesn’t even feel pointed! 😉

You know it’s bad when the government drops a bunch of classified UFO files and that feels like an anti-climactic distraction from world-historic events.

Calling it, new post of the day right here.

My graduation experience was to start work in 2016 and then watch powerlessly as all of this became inevitable.

I read this and didn't really interpret it as a critique of legal education. Those anecdotes struck me as something of rhetorical hyperbole in service of the actual, substantive argument: liberal legalism is ill equipped to answer what's happening to and within our institutions right now.

I found law school "strange but clarifying" twenty-five years ago buttondown.com/judgmentproo...

A recent law school grad can’t *really* make generalizable assertions about the American legal academy. When I graduated from CLS, I thought my experience was everything. Not so. But still worth listening to former students’ reflections on learning law in an illiberal era.

On graduating from law school in the Trump era

I look at this as an account from the trenches. Reflections of a recent law school grad on the distance between what he was taught and what he’s seeing in the world. Not agreeing w/ all substantive characterizations. But important reading for law prawfs.

“None of this drew any objection from the Supreme Court. Some of it they explicitly endorsed. That semester, my professors informed me that the Supreme Court is our nation’s bulwark against strongmen, and its justices are the last great protectors of minority rights and the separation of powers.”

Yikes. “Virginia’s Top Court Blocks Democrats’ New Congressional Map”

Many such cases

Aiming sights even higher: we haven’t yet fully theorized what legislatures are and what their role is in our constitutional system. Congress and state legislatures have changed dramatically across history—as has their relationship to “administration“ and the public. (lobbying and campaign finance)

Good morning. Here's my story on the House of Representatives Modernization Subcommittee, which is trying to upgrade Congress for the 21st century. www.washingtonexaminer.com/premium/4554...

This is such a no-brainer. There’s the big sexy stuff like the filibuster, but massive capacity investments and the reconstruction of Congress’s dead science agency are great places to start. Need to start the convo around inherent contempt *sooner* rather than later.

this is also one of my hobbyhorses. you want a better caliber of lawmaker? you want to reduce the odds of corruption? pay them more. a lot more.

Great discussion in this🧵

This is a great insight

Justice Barrett has joined the bandwagon complaining that folks only describe as “big” cases those that divide #SCOTUS ideologically. That’s not only belied by tons of actual evidence, but it obscures the extent to which it’s often the holdings the Court *chooses* to adopt that provoke such splits:

This is right way more often than it’s wrong, imho. I’ll just add that when a “big” case doesn’t lead to a big outcome, that’s often because the outcomes in “big” cases are often partially constructed in politics. A fizzling out is just the result of a lot of complex processes.

1/2 Feeling very thankful today. So l’ll just note that I really have learned a tremendous amount from @asumrall.bsky.social and @joshchafetz.bsky.social. In particular, observing their careful use of language was absolutely necessary to my acculturation within the academy.

1/x I am glad this piece is out in the world. One additional friendly amendment: the usage of the phrase “judicial supremacy” here is kind of slippery. Better to use the academically built out terms, “juristocracy” and “judicial aggrandizement.”

1/3 Passing thought: I am sometimes accused (wrongly) of being a nihilist on courts and law. (I deeply value RoL virtues that are at the core of the Anglo-American constitutional project.) But sometimes those people think the justices of the Roberts Court are just carrying the GOP’s water …

I feel like my Bluesky experience has just become half me and @kalimurray.bsky.social ginning each other up and I love it. ❤️❤️❤️

Contrary to popular belief, Congress tends to do this pretty well across time. Exceptions obvi, but Congress is an excellent site for building historical memory. There is a spectacle to legislative politics just the same as w/ the juristocrats.

Gotta 👏 sell 👏 that 👏 old 👏 time 👏 religion 👏

And I implore everyone on BlueSky and beyond to understand the FBI’s refusal to investigate—at all—Renee Good’s death should be understood as racialized mechanism to police white allies of Black and Brown people. You have to see a name a Redeemer Project.

One of the most under-reported scandals of the 21st ca.

1/2 So maybe one upshot into my recent forays into secular theology gives me the space to discuss “doubt.” I think this is probably right. I think we’d be better off with savvy and honorable politicians on the Court. But I contain pangs of doubt on this front.

I think we have not entirely met the moment in describing legal machinations and events through the lens of the longstanding motifs of American racial violence and/or racial subordination. But better than last time for sure!

The game is thinking that politics is normatively unconstrained. They think that law is different because it has ceremony, processes, procedures. But like . . . Have you ever looked at a legislature???

1/x I am glad this piece is out in the world. One additional friendly amendment: the usage of the phrase “judicial supremacy” here is kind of slippery. Better to use the academically built out terms, “juristocracy” and “judicial aggrandizement.”

Take her up on it and then buy this sucker. I am confident that it will be remembered as one of the best works of this year.

Side note; this tie is from Viola Milano. I really admire the craft behind this brand. The ties are perfect, many in the untiped style that was prominent in America around mid-century. They require very little work on the dimple. And there is a vibrant secondary market for getting them.

This is great, but two friendly amendments. The consolidation of judicial supremacy began long before the 1990s. And even as the Court holds that Congress may not respond to its decisions, Congress *does not need this majority’s approval* to check the Court’s power and respond anyway.

There is a unique sting to the FOMO of missing a panel this good due to childcare restraints 😭😭😭 @emilysbremer.bsky.social @dfroomkin.bsky.social