BREAKING: DC Circuit, on a 2-1 vote, keeps in place a lower court order blocking DHS Sec. Noem’s effort to end Haiti temporary protected status designation. Judges Pan and Garcia deny DOJ’s request to stay the district court order. Judge Walker would have granted it. Haiti TPS is safe for now.

Reverend Jesse Jackson called on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope; to step forward and say “Send me” wherever we have a chance to make an impact. How fortunate we were that Jesse Jackson answered that call. What a great debt we owe to him.

This matches my read of historical legal arguments: In the 18th century, courts and commentators were very attuned to the consequences of legal rules, and considered them as justifications for/against rules. review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/u...

From the end of the Mahmoud section:

Thread. You can’t trust the Trump/RFK/Bhattacharya regime, even when they make representations to courts.

Some Supreme Court Justices think that viewing the Fourth Amendment as a right to "privacy" is an illegitimate 1960s Warren Court policy invention. But it's not: That language goes back to the beginning, as I showed in this 2022 article. scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcont...

This.

"An Originalist Critique of Fetal Personhood" w Chip Carter is officially online (& forthcoming in U. Penn. L. Rev.)! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... We scour 19th cen. dictionaries & the context in which the 14A was ratified to discover the original public & legal meaning of "person" in 1868.

New Draft Essay: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Gas prices ⬆️ Unemployment ⬆️ Unnecessary warfare ⬆️ Are we winning yet?

On this day in 1923, Delaware belatedly ratified the 19th Amendment, which prohibits sex-based disenfranchisement. The Delaware Legislature had previously rejected the 19th Amendment on June 2, 1920. Mississippi became the last state to ratify the 19th Amendment on March 22, 1984. #WeTheMen

My God.

FWIW: This essay was not drafted with any assistance from AI, so blame me for any and all errors.

Powerful comments from my dear colleague @rcolker.bsky.social www.thelantern.com/2026/03/form...

Honored to find out that I am on this list of top-cited legal scholars again this year: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... Lots of others on this list whose work I deeply admire, including @jessicaclarke.bsky.social @miriamseifter.bsky.social @jdmortenson.bsky.social and many others! Congrats, all!

New Draft Essay: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

(I think he was wrong and so does Kagan. But that’s not the point. The point is Scalia basically made up the Glucksberg approach before Glucksberg and thought that this right didn’t pass muster. And the Court has never affirmed it under Glucksberg.)

'UNIMAGINABLE CRUELTY': Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointeee from NY, thrashes DHS' treatment of a man who came to the US at 9 as an abuse/neglect victim, has no criminal record and became a college grad. "The laws of decency condemn such villainy." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Every argument for Trump claim that children of illegal migrants can be denied birthright citizenship would also have denied it to numerous freed slaves and their children, thus going against main purpose of 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause. See my post for reasons why: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

Kagan correctly notes the contrast with how the Court treated the substantive due process rights of parents supporting their trans kids in Skrmetti

Here’s the #SCOTUS ruling in the California parents case: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

#SCOTUS just granted emergency relief in *both* the California teachers case (putting back on hold, at least in this case, California’s law barring teachers from outing transgender students to their parents) *and* the Malliotakis redistricting cases. The Democratic appointees dissented in both.

The war against Iran is unconstitutional, as I explain on the blog. Trump has already missed the 48-hour deadline for a written report required by the War Powers Resolution. These illegalities compound the war's violation of international law.

Absolutely. And the administration lawyers who worked on these blatantly viewpoint-based EOs against law firms, or on similarly lawless retaliation measures against universities, should feel a permanent sense of shame. They won't. But they should.

As predicted Trump's Medicaid cuts are already starting to have a terrible effect on disabled people and their families.

Proud of this brief drafted in the Citizenship Case before the Supreme Court, highlighting the connection between the Government's supposedly-originalist arguments and Reconstruction-era racists trying to relitigate the Citizenship Clause through Chinese hate. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

Sadly, this is about the next election. He’s laying the groundwork to declare his election “emergency” to change rules and argue to courts they can’t question his national security judgment in war time. And if the Court does, he’s preparing to say that’s beyond their constitutional powers.

Two amicus briefs I enjoyed reading in support of birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court: @kewhittington.bsky.social’s: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25... @evanbernick.bsky.social and @jedshug.bsky.social’s: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25... I highly recommend them if y’all have time.

JUST IN: A federal judge says the Trump administration has been “terrorizing” refugees — violating the promise America made to them when they fled persecution at home — by locking them up illegally. He blocked the policy for those in MN storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This is amazing. www.getyourfuckingmoneyback.com

I've expanded on this thought in the below post. Platner isn't doing well in spite of things like the Totenkopf, but because of it. They're part of his appeal. In a climate where people see and present Jews as the ultimate string-pullers, antisemitism is viewed as proof one will not bow to power.

A new Kansas law bans "Driving While Trans" (and also peeing while trans and even existing while trans). On the blog, I explain why it should be deemed unconstitutional as a whole because it reflects anti-trans animus (even while acknowledging that our courts are not likely up to the task). 👇

With the outstanding teamwork with Brendan Benedict and Michael Altebrando, @evanbernick.bsky.social & I proudly filed this originalist amicus brief defending birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

The Catholic Bishops are entirely right. The crusade to end birthright citizenship is immoral, inconsistent with our law, and an affront to the dignity of children born in the United States. And the people working in earnest to undermine it should be ashamed of themselves.

The Conference of Catholic Bishops is... not playing around in this brief. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

You do not have to give the guy with a Nazi tattoo the benefit of the doubt that retweeting the Nazi on the Nazi site was an accident.

Springsteen and Morello, The Ghost of Tom Joad (live)

So they’re going to cripple healthcare for the poor in Minnesota to make an example of the state. The warning is “don’t resist.”

This is illegal. Like, straight-up, no nuance illegal.

wtaf?

C’mon Jim that’s just loose social media talk. It’s not like he took a considered position that amity was very important. reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Thanks to Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social for having me on The Daily Blast to talk about the latest bombshell related to the Epstein files -- that DOJ excised material/interviews of a witness who alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her as a minor. newrepublic.com/article/2070...

Does he really think nobody will notice this

An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump. n.pr/4qTItsU

Interesting framing choice by Akhil Amar in his amicus brief in the birthright citizenship case. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

Today's "One First" goes deep into the snippy Gorsuch-Kagan exchange in the tariffs ruling, and why claims that the Democratic appointees vote in lockstep and are being inconsistent/hypocritical in statutory delegation cases are based upon a refusal to put the relevant cases/statutes side-by-side:

This honestly is annoying. I don’t do archival work on a litigation schedule. And I don’t undertake research as a response to critics alone. I remain here in the search for truth. And it takes a lot of time to this right. I don’t work on the Notre Dame Law Review’s editorial calendar.

Download of the Week: “Birthright Citizenship Re-examined” by Ramsey Michael D. Ramsey (University of San Diego School of Law) has posted Birthright Citizenship Re-Examined on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In 2020, I argued in Originalism and Birthright Citizenship that the original meaning of the…

Springsteen is the soundtrack of my life. Amid my exhilaration over just getting tix to my 47th-50th shows, I put my metaphorical pen to paper to reflect on the social justice embedded in his catalogue and why his message is especially critical now. Give it a read! open.substack.com/pub/miranday...