Thanks www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/b...

Cambridge just posted the first ten pages of my manuscript, In Congress We Trust? Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era. Check it out here: assets.cambridge.org/97810097/816...

Is it weird that this book has only one- and five-star ratings when it is so balanced and non-divisive? a.co/d/08tHBe3j

@samuelmoyn.bsky.social is on to discuss “Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It" (@fsgbooks.bsky.social). We also had this week's Hangover Cure, Question from Hell!, Rotten History and more! Join to keep us free! www.patreon.com/thisishell/p...

Interesting @lsolum post and chart about how far both sides (and each of the justices) were in originalist mode in Trump v. Barbara. legaltheoryblog.com/2026/07/01/t...

Great review www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/b...

Devastating www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

On the politics of knowledge: Kavanaugh calls both the Court’s and Thomas dissent “scholarly,” yet Roberts cites zero contemporary articles from the controversy. Both KBJ and Thomas and cite academics on their teams, KBJ explicitly contrasting “revisionist law profs” with “trained historians.”

Outlandish now

Wow, only 5-4 on the constitutional holding. Trump came within one vote of successfully revising the Fourteenth Amendment almost out of nowhere. Victory for birthright citizenship -- for sure. But almost a defeat. Raising the question of why we are playing this game.

Wow, Roberts refers to the right to have rights #HannahArendt

"It could mean provisions stripping the Supreme Court of the power to hear challenges to certain newly enacted laws, or legislating supermajority voting requirements so that only a showing of unanimity or close to it can justify invalidating certain laws." Now it's mainstream.

More reax: 1/ The Gorsuch concurrence is a roadmap to a libertarian paradise: the empowerment of the president requires deconstructing the state he now directs. 2/ The libs go full-bore liberal originalist (congrats to @jedshug.bsky.social on the cites!), playing on the terrain of their enemies.

There's no sugar-coating Slaughter. It's an enormously important ruling (far more important than the other three decisions #SCOTUS handed down today). It's a huge win for Trump/the executive. And it's going to have massive ramifications for the functioning of the government long after Trump is gone.

Great convo theorymatters.substack.com/p/samuel-moy...

Lovely piece. ‘When the most powerful people in the world don’t just ignore cruelty but actively embrace it, Shklar’s decision to deem the deliberate infliction of pain the worst of all vices doesn’t seem like a matter of diminished expectations.’ www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/b...

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial “Our need is not for restoration but for transformation.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social yalereview.org/article/samu...

One of his best ever: “In retrospect it seems we might have gotten ahead of ourselves in tabulating all the things, beyond who was in power, that had really changed about the country as a whole.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/o...

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain

Excellent piece www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/o...

‘Hobsbawm’s canonization was a Western tribute to a great historian who had erected a monument to Europe amid its decline, when the lights and shadows of its civilization appeared, in retrospect, as a vanished past, as impressive as it was tragic.’ www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-ce...

Week in review: @akapczynski.bsky.social on LPE and social science, @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on the class reductionist response to Gerontocracy, and @rmabud.bsky.social on why the affordability frame needs a power analysis. Plus, the hottest new essays, papers, and events from the around the web 🧵

Can someone research the age demographics of “Boston Globe” subscribers for me? www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/27/o...

“I’m from the government, and I’m here to teach you pickleball.” Great line-though as a tennis player I specifically troll pickleball! www.economist.com/culture/2026...

The age of the median voter is now 52. In primaries, 65. The most common age of donors in recent elections is 70. "The oldest voters ordain the choices for the rest of us." How America became a gerontocracy in which the aged hoard power and wealth: www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

Cisco is yet more fodder for the shorter-running debate about the viability of federal courts for progressive causes, and — for the human rights community — the longer-running debate about the viability of a privileged form of activism. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/time...

Chapter 1? “May I say this without any hesitation: When the history of higher education in America is written, Chapter 1 will be an homage to the incomparable Leon Botstein,” said Mr. Murphy, drawing loud jeers from the crowd. “Period. Mark my words.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/n...

Remarkable: “True judicial humility is following precedent and respecting the wisdom of the jurists who precede us” (Sotomayor in Cisco).

ATS RIP

"We already know class reductionism is problematic from decades of hard work to recognize its shortcomings when it comes to gender and race. It’s been a breakthrough for social thought, in fact, that the most vulgar forms of the phenomenon are even seen as outrageous, and rightly so."

Yay! @lpeblog.bsky.social asked if I would reply to progressive skeptics of the very idea of #gerontocracy, and I elevated the great James Chappel while reflecting on age and the lure of class reductionism, What do you think? lpeproject.org/blog/age-and...

Every word www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/o...

This is excellent www.chronicle.com/article/who-...

Gr8 post. “If there has been this great disavowal, where is the evidence? How have the casebooks changed, how has legal education changed? And where are the renunciations of Coase, Posner, and other canonical works, by a new generation of L&E scholars?” lpeproject.org/blog/two-dog...

Boston Globe www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/22/o...

This was a darling I had to kill and omit from the book - but it was my favorite and I hope you can get around the paywall

Anthony Trollope, prophet of gerontocracy www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/0...

Carlo Ginzburg denounced Hayden White wtf

HHhH is terrific and this podcast about it is too podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

Another brief excerpt: How to Put an End to the Problem of American Gerontocracy (in the Nicest Possible Way) lithub.com/how-to-put-a...

In GERONTOCRACY IN AMERICA, the historian and social critic Samuel Moyn offers a piercing diagnosis of our age divide and its consequences. us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

Essential. Congrats @samuelmoyn.bsky.social

Excellent: “As Dylan Thomas wrote, wise men at their end know dark is right. Yet the Bidens still rage, rage against the dying of the spotlight.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/o...

Not my favorite headline - my case is about age and power when they intersect - but anyway imho the best part of this convo is toward the end when we debate who was right after 2016. www.persuasion.community/p/samuel-moy...

Pub date!

Nice piece (well-informed and -written). If we take its thesis seriously-that Adorno’s pessimism about public reason has been vindicated-we ought to glaze such figures as Jay Bernstein or Raymond Geuss who protested where Habermas took critical theory. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I wrote a book! The pub date is tomorrow! It's about age as a big factor in the distribution of power in American society (including, most important, the sociology of class)! It's full of facts and stories! Last day to preorder it-which would mean a lot! bookshop.org/p/books/gero...

Fascinating especially on "method." lpeproject.org/blog/what-is...