Liberals say the Supreme Court had destroyed our democracy. They're wrong—it has destroyed our Republic.

Prince used to do impromptu shows at Paisley Park. Total word of mouth affairs, but you knew it was gonna be a late night. One night I had good info that a show was gonna happen. But some work thing the next day seemed more important. Bad call. Also, missing Tom Waits.

"My main job this morning is to point out to you that it is not yet too late to withdraw." I gave my section of 1Ls their first taste of the law-school classroom this morning. Doing that always reminds me of Karl Llewellyn's 1957 introductory lecture, which is worth a listen:

If you’re looking for rules to live by, allow me to suggest “Stop at every lemonade stand.” (Photo at a distance to respect the privacy of the grandmother helping her two young granddaughters sell lemonade to raise money for Milwaukee public schools.)

The landscape of my youth, under a Canadian-wildfire-created haze.

"There may be no city with more urbanist strengths on offer but less attention than Milwaukee." "Might be the most underrated urbanist gem in America." A pretty fair overview of the situation here, I'd say. There's plenty of work still to be done, but this town's got some really good bones.

I'm talking to Milwaukee Public TV this morning about Chief Justice William Rehnquist. His boyhood home is just a few blocks from where I live, and I often walk the dogs down that street. This is from a yard across the street and a few houses down. Definite vibe shift on Prospect Ave since the 40s.

Fun fact: The phrase "torch wielding mob" yields 71 hits in Google Scholar. And only two* in Westlaw's Law Reviews & Journals database. *By the close of 2025 it'll be (at least) three.

20 Second Ad.

"This is a song about feudalism and 18th-century European primogeniture and their combined effects on modern American redneck culture." It's also a pretty good song.

Recently reminded of just how strongly positive an impression the brick sidewalks of Cambridge made on my young Midwestern soul several decades ago. Glad I don’t have to shovel them, though.

We need to build some real social stigma around being afraid of cities. You don't have to like them or live there, but a politics built this strongly around watching TV and going "ewww" is embarrassing, and people should be embarrassed by it. It's like "fear of werewolves" being your top issue.

Lots of talk today about the demise of BlueSky. For whatever it's worth, it's been a boon to indie publishers like us. Twitter and Facebook have pretty much silenced us, so the engagement here has, and continues to be, wonderful.

Now that I’m all the way through it: (1) This is one of the best articles on con law/theory (or anti-theory) I have ever read, (2) could this be where Justice Douglas got the “penumbra” idea?, and (3) damn you, Karl Llewellyn, for anticipating every single thought I have ever had.

Imagine Google’s surprise when I finished the query with “a Delta Sky Club member.”

I share a great many of Warner’s criticisms of elite educational institutions in general and Harvard in particular, even as I’m about to attend my [inconceivably large number]th reunion at the place that transformed my life in a way that few others could. But yup—None of that justifies any of this.

“A man’s ethics are modeled on the conditions of his grandfather’s time.” Llewellyn attributes this to Veblen, and it must be a paraphrase because I can find no other reference to it. But I’m intrigued…

Reposting because see my pinned post about being annoying as hell.

A colleague once shared with me that the author of one of the letters supporting my promotion to full prof invoked Karl Llewellyn in describing my work. I’m a dollar-store version at best, for sure, but one page into this piece (which I’d somehow missed) the shoe still seems to fit:

Finally, some unqualifiedly good news: “those who consumed the most caffeine (equivalent to nearly seven eight-ounce cups of coffee per day) had odds of healthy aging that were 13 percent higher than those who consumed the least caffeine (equivalent to less than one cup per day)”

As a hiring chair, I will be very happy if this works. There may be some schools that start earlier, but this seems early enough in the semester for that not to matter much. And with luck it will force candidates who aren’t serious about living in a highly underrated city to decline our invitation.

Update: I am apparently the sort of person who gets a little choked up at the end of a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Amen to this.

Area professor stumbles on new metaphor for teaching law.

I aspire to this level of relaxation.

All I’m saying is: (1) Yesterday at a conference two esteemed academics referred unprompted to the concept of “Chad Oldfather judges.” (2) The preferred nomenclature is actually “Oldfatherian jurists.” (3) You can still get your copy of my book for 20 percent off by using JJJ2024 here:

One question that has never been answered to my satisfaction is how the defendant agents in Bivens could be both unknown and named.

Reminds me of when my broomball team—a bunch of 20-something lawyers who wore college sweatshirts as our jerseys—played a team from an auto parts store. “You guys must be smarter than us,” one of them said. “That would be ‘smarter than we,’” a teammate replied. (They then kicked our asses.)

It’s an *outstanding* book.

I still think the best idea for progressive donors is to just revive every alt-weekly in the country and staff them with 10 reporters each.

🧵 When authoritarian leaders attack judges as "enemies," history shows us exactly where this leads. Trump's assault on "USA HATING JUDGES" isn't just inflammatory rhetoric—it's following a script written by strongmen worldwide. But other countries show us how to fight back.

I spent about 34 hours behind the wheel this week* and it’s given me a renewed appreciation for those who drive for a living. It ain’t easy. * Charlottesville to Milwaukee, Milwaukee to Blue Earth, MN, BE to New York Mills, MN, and NYM back to Milwaukee, plus various interspersed side trips.

Some unvarnished self-promotion, courtesy of emails I received from two judges today: “Thank you for thinking so hard and thoroughly about the issues I face every day.” “I can’t wait to read and cite this book! … Though it will probably cause much self reflection.” You might like it, too!

It’s always a tricky thing to be a strident advocate of intellectual humility, and even more so these days. Also a tricky thing to get people to pay attention to one’s new book, timely though it may be. But here’s an interview. With me! About my new book! Find out what all the fuss is about!

It’s always a tricky thing to be a strident advocate of intellectual humility, and even more so these days. Also a tricky thing to get people to pay attention to one’s new book, timely though it may be. But here’s an interview. With me! About my new book! Find out what all the fuss is about!

Just gonna periodically repost this, because see my pinned post.

Just gonna periodically repost this, because see my pinned post.

I don’t imagine any of you are out there wishing I’d start talking about my book again. But, just in case, here’s a Q&A I did on it, complete with an (almost) perfectly timed reference to the movie Conclave. And I’ll gladly accept the label “countercultural” given the world we live in.

Occasionally I’m good for quotes about something other than the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Self-reposting because this is too good to remain obscure.

Justice Souter's Harvard speech gets more press, but for my money his remarks at Gerald Gunther's memorial get more to the heart of his approach. (From David H. Souter, Gerald Gunther, 55 Stan. L. Rev. 635 (2002)

RIP to the Inconspicuous DHS.

Fines and handcuffs. An injunction is enough only when there are norms of compliance. Once an administration rejects those norms, the only way an injunction works is by empowering the fines and handcuffs.

This is absolutely right. Judges should be praised for acting as judges, and criticized for acting as hacks, no matter their perceived ideological leanings (and no matter the ideological valence of their decisions, hard as that may be). The rule of law means sometimes my team loses.

Regs *Taps mic* Hello! I’m a former long-time civil servant turned academic. I wanna tell you some stuff. First, my service was mostly at a place called OIRA, which is an office that oversees federal regulation. I’d therefore rate myself as an above-average tea-leaf-reader for federal regs.

Definitely an element of "youth is wasted on the young" going on here. It's hard for me to imagine ever again giving any sort of assessment for which students have internet access.

Not in the same league as the “renowned author Dan Brown” review. And as for—“Exactly what every introvert wants, a single armchair in the middle of an art gallery.”—I can imagine worse fates. But still, this sort of thing does occasionally need saying.

Train Song Time (Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night Jockey Full of Bourbon Downtown Train

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie: The Second-to-Last Picture Show