In the Kansas Law Review: Anti-McCarthyism and the Right to “Fair and Just Treatment” in State Constitutions People treated unfairly during executive or legislative investigations often lack a remedy. But two state constitutions guarantee "fair and just treatment." papers.ssrn.com/abstract=687...

A very helpful (if disconcerting) thread on what today's FCC decision represents re: the relationship between the Court and the administrative state.

No textual reason why not.

Pleased to post my draft article, “Discovering the Historical Anglo-American Constitution.” I study the history of birthright citizenship from the 1100s to the 1700s. The English common-law rule of natural-born subjects was always tied to territory and jurisdiction. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

In fact, the only way to win a constitutional claim against racial gerrymandering is if the the state was doing it to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Working on a proposal for Court expansion in which, for every voting age adult in the U.S., there is exactly one (1) Supreme Court justice. The justices cast their votes at local precincts, subject to time, place, and manner regulations passed by Congress.

At oral argument in Shelby County, Justice Scalia invoked the Senate's 98-0 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act *as support* for exercising judicial power to invalidate Section 5.

This is a sign I'm going to be annoying about tapping so apologies in advance, but: do the free speech rights of Black voters who are being systematically gerrymandered out of their representation carry the same force as the free speech rights of voters in competitive districts?

Time to start the next thing. If you're a person who wants to talk about free speech, democracy, or the complicated relationship between the two, let me know!

After a grueling 9 months on the academic job market, I’m thrilled to announce that on July 1, I will start as an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School! I’m so excited to bring Native American law and legal history to HLS, and I cannot wait to join the incredible faculty there!

Sellner is the person so far on the right that AfD members were sanctioned for meeting with him.

What I learned at this year's Law & Society Association conference tomkeck.beehiiv.com/p/what-i-lea...

Wow. I really did not like BEEF season 2!

move over Hemingway

On the personal news front: this fall I'll be teaching Constitutional Law and the First Amendment as an Assistant Professor of Law at Cleveland State University. I'm excited to go back home to northeast Ohio and to teach in the same communities that invested so much in teaching me.

It's good he's now saying explicitly what was clear at the time, I suppose.

A friend of mine who was TA’ing for an AmLit course found a copy of Moby Dick a student had left behind. It had only one marginal annotation, around page 100, that simply said “whale is important.”

I don't really care about this discourse we apparently need to have every two weeks, but let me just say that I have never been told "shut up, Jew" on Bluesky.

"Against First Amendment Traditionalism" is now officially published in the Kentucky Law Journal! I'm grateful to everyone who shared comments or otherwise interacted with the piece, and my thanks as well to the student editors at KLJ. The journal version is available here:

This, from Jon's reporting, is both interesting and maddening. Federal judges need to stop affording this Department of Justice the presumption of regularity, even if they don't announce as much formally. There's simply no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt like this.

Great piece.

New essay for @knightcolumbia.org that argues for why democracies must fund robust public media systems and begins to develop what I've been calling the "Public Media Center" model. I will be expanding on this work for @rooseveltinstitute.org in the months ahead: knightcolumbia.org/blog/reimagi...

This photoshop looking nonsense is real.

I read this short book yesterday after listening to its author, Anton Jäger, on Digging a Hole. Its framework, distinguishing between mass politics, post-politics, antipolitics, and "hyperpolitics," was thought provoking.

What I'm saying: I wish there was more sports talk on here. What I mean: I want to post about why I think Kenny Atkinson has made several catastrophic rotational moves this game without feeling like I'm screaming in an empty room.

interesting the way the VRA is presented as some kind of imposition from above, and not the product of one of the greatest social movements this country has ever seen

More reason no institution should be knuckling under to these abusive subpoenas.

Democracy is not formally compatible with the exercise of judicial power being contemplated here.

I read this entire article and could not for the life of me figure out why it was news. They picked a speaker, some students wrote a letter saying they don’t like the speaker. This is the sum total of what happened. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/u...

Olly-Wolly Polliwoggy Ump-Bump-Fizz!

It's almost like it was all part of an a-factual ideological project!

I’m no big city lawyer but this is also what I was wondering

I just want to make sure I'm understanding: the Allen litigation initially concluded that Alabama's maps violated the VRA on grounds that Callais, by its own express terms, did not disturb. Yet SCOTUS vacates Allen and remands, asking the lower court to reconsider it in light of Callais.

The real question isn't "did you do nothing," which is basically what Surovell objects to. It's more specific: when your program is thwarted by courts, what are you willing to do? Now, VA is different from Congress, but if the Dem response remains "public lamentations," democracy is in deep trouble.

folks, the idea is out there. Virginia Democrats are talking about it. this could happen. gift link to the NYT: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/u...

I am now over a year with a flip phone. Excited to listen to this conversation (on my laptop).

Alwayes back up to zipdryve, cloude, and even papir. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

[the one person in the world to make their social security number a Canvas module header] damn :(

the news: massive security breach lets hackers shut down major education platform, raising deep questions about the ubiquity of data, institutional integrity, and technological vulnerability me: well how the hell am i supposed to post grades