“Age-­related class advantages are in many cases far more profound than the intersection of class with gender or race. There is no way to ignore them if we want a fairer future.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on America’s gerontocratic crisis

Another excellent piece. “One could be forgiven, these days, for wishing that the United States were a little less central in world affairs. That its inhabitants were one people among many, just like everyone else.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Excellent first reading rec! www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/o...

Democracy or barbarism www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/o...

I’m down

Must-have new compilation from Hackett, edited and introduced by Greg Conti

“Where the NRA’s guns kill people, the AARP reflects, like a mirror, a country dying by conservative sclerosis.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on America’s gerontocratic crisis

“Scholars of the new history of capitalism have no more sense of a system now than when they began. What went wrong?” Must-read. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

“If we never ask openly what people are doing with the law, we don’t obtain the distance to ask what matters.” A packed hall yesterday for the annual Cyril Foster Lecture, delivered by Prof Samuel Moyn: “Gaza, the Humanisation of War, and the Politics of International Law.”Recording available soon.

“The story of Tithonus no longer feels so outlandish, because our society postpones death to an unprecedented degree. Unlike immortals, we still pass. But the great majority of us, and not only the bad, now die old.” —Samuel Moyn

What Was AI? Our Summer issue features Annie Ernaux, Namwali Serpell, Samuel Moyn, Lauren Oyler, Sheila Heti, and more. Subscribe by May 11 to get your copy.

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

"She compares Alito's role in modern jurisprudence to that of the prophet Isaiah, who was told by the Lord to ignore the intelligentsia and the masses to preach to the biblical Remnant, the faithful few who remain loyal to God after disaster has rent their world." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/b...

Justin Driver’s Currie lecture, “Judging Requires Judgment,” is out! scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcont...

The vast majority of Americans — 8 in 10 — say there should be age caps for members of Congress, as well as term limits, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll. n.pr/4ngwZiW

“At least half the Democrats in the House who are seventy-­five or older—there are nearly thirty in all—are running again this year.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on America’s gerontocratic crisis

"Liberalism must now be something more than a doctrine of minimal consensus, mind-your-own-business pluralism, or the administration of things." www.commonwealmagazine.org/divinity-sch...

Oh www.wsj.com/articles/the...

Helena Rosenblatt’s @HelenaRosenblat star turn! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

See you in Oxford Thursday www.politics.ox.ac.uk/event/cyril-...

Great post. Ryan @ryandoerfler.bsky.social and I argue for more recourse to legislative override of statutory interp (not just constitutional invalidation) cases. Not sure tho why we’re hostage to experiments successful in the past, when there are a lot to run. www.stevevladeck.com/p/225-how-co...

Chilling: “The Democrats’ fundamental condition is a late-Trumpian stasis — in which the president’s stark unpopularity encourages his opponents to imagine that they can keep everything basically as it was in the Biden era.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/o...

Good piece www.justsecurity.org/137669/60-da...

"Centrist legalism becomes the most effective defense the Roberts Court has. More effective, by a mile, than anything on offer by conservatives on X." Great stuff @beaubaumann.bsky.social bbaumann.substack.com/p/its-a-real...

“Voters couldn’t have been clearer that they want to move on from the gerontocracy and status quo.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/u...

“Maybe God himself is lost and needs help.”—Tom Waits Now in print: “Reasoning From Injustice,” 30 Michigan Journal of Race & Law 261 (2026). What else has Judith Shklar, Job, Harriett Beecher Stowe, and Frederick Douglass? Legal Theory Blog says,“Highly Recommended.” Read: bit.ly/4aGgvKY

Must-read by @samuelmoyn.bsky.social here. It's also in the current print edition.

Sounds great/right legaltheoryblog.com/2026/04/30/b...

The most plausible version is that Biden pouring cold water on reform efforts contributed to the Court's perception there would be no political retaliation in the foreseeable future for anything it was doing. Decisions like yesterday's suggest the conservative justices still believe that.

Good letters www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/o...

It would indeed be better if Congress pushed back. But that begs the question: why should it have to do so in the first place? www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-223-...

The US and the Ends of Empire is now out in the US! Come for the kind blurbs from @samuelmoyn.bsky.social and Tim Shenk, stay for the (relevant?) discussion of American empire. Great for classrooms, zoom backdrops, and readers of all kinds—available everywhere. www.bloomsbury.com/us/united-st...

Wonderful piece www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/b...

@jamiemartin2.bsky.social with a review of Eddie Fishman's book on sanctions that begins with references to the Japanese Red Army Faction, counterfeit Newport cigarettes, and the cult psychedelic rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

It is worth, I think, emphasizing that in trampling congressional attempts to protect the rights of Black people, the Court is basically doing what it has always done, with the exception of a couple decades in the mid-20th century when it often worked with Congress to protect the rights of Black ppl

But at least the court is there to resist Trump www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

@samuelmoyn.bsky.social is visiting us @uva.nl @aissr.bsky.social in Amsterdam in May! @enzoreds.bsky.social (with a salt of AI?) is the artist of the poster.

Did you know I have a book on the verge of publication? “Gerontocracy in America” The blurbs are up on book sites — with deep thanks to @jedpurdy.bsky.social, @rickpildes.bsky.social and others untaggable. Check it out!

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “America needs to confront gerontocracy before the system collapses under the weight of its inequality and injustice,” Samuel Moyn writes.

Interesting. verfassungsblog.de/trump-derang...

“The No Kings movement centers largely on the idea of restoration. Precisely because the No Kings protests evoke the past, they fail to appeal to our appetite for change..” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/o...

Gerontocracy-academia edition www.chronicle.com/article/prof...

Cool

“Our gerontocracy is not the result of a malevolent plan, exactly. It is, more than anything, an accidental byproduct of the legitimate and understandable desire to survive.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on America’s gerontocratic crisis