i love this piece

I'm reminded of Dan Farber's 1986 article, "The Case Against Brilliance," which is pretty much about that problem in the legal academy. scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcont...

this @jadler1969.bsky.social post is a great summary of the Frost-Eason paper’s findings reason.com/volokh/2025/...

fascinating new birthright citizenship research from Amanda Frost and Emily Eason — in a reconstruction period rife with eligibility challenges, nobody challenged 12 members of Congress who would fail Trump’s citizenship clause test Paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

New York Times story on important article re birthright citizenship by my UVA colleagues, Amanda Frost & Emily Eason:

My favorite: Anati'ferous. adj. [from anas and fero, Lat.] Producing ducks. johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search...

happy Supreme Court Still Hasn’t Endorsed the Royal Residuum Day to all who celebrate!

fwiw, confirmation that Johnson's definitions are not listed in order of usage frequency bsky.app/profile/sjdi...

GUYS JOHNSONS DICTIONARY ONLINE IS, WELL, ONLINE

I thought the example ‘harmony’ from your website was also useful: 1. The just adaptation of one part to another. 2. Just proportion of sound; musical concord. 3. Concord; correspondent sentiment. I’d guess (don’t know) that 3 is the most common usage.

The higher-numbered meanings do not seem particularly uncommon or obscure.

Johnson did not order his definitions according to how common/obscure they were. He attempted to organize them from "primitive" to "remote" meaning, which is similar to "literal" to "figurative" meaning. See pp. 5-6 of his Preface to 1755 dictionary. johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/front_...

Me, reading the Ginsburg opinion:

“No doubt having a rule of law isn’t enough for a society to qualify as a good one. But those inclined to denigrate it should contemplate societies without it.” — Don Herzog, 1989

just, BOOM .... BOOOM ..... BOOOM ..... KABOOOM ...... BOOOM ... KABLAMMMM ... KABOOOOOM

it remains cringe-inducing to read Ginsburg's fisking of Roberts's NFIB opinion in case you were wondering

goodness i love engerlund

I keep wanting to say something, and I keep not knowing what to say. The trans community does not harm cis people by existing. They are just trying to live their lives, same as anyone else. That life doesn't look exactly like mine; my life doesn't match anyone else's. That's okay.

one of my absolute favorite one shot one kill sniper pieces in the law review canon 9 pages. click through now.

back-to-back howlers in an opinion that came thisclose to ruling federalized Romneycare unconstitutional

somebody tell me to stop

Early modern historians and humanities types: Justice Roberts claims that the order of Johnson's dictionary definitions shows how common the usages were. This always seemed unlikely to me, and I got a bee in my bonnet about it today. Does the draft "For Discussion" note here seem fair?

It's the Gregory v Ashcroft background rule that gets me. If the feds don't go out of their way to specify what applies to the states and what doesn't, none of it does. So Congress is specifying it. Why would that press the "singling out states" problem—which I agree could be tricky in some hypos!

Con law peeps: I used to think Reno v Condon was a hard case. But now I'm not sure. Isn't it a trivial application of Garcia v SAMTA? The government is regulating a defined market. The specific mention of the states is literally required by the plain statement reqt of Gregory v Ashcroft. Right?

Sincerely one of the funniest things the WSJ has ever written or done. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

This is a great pod on these questions. Chafetz makes compelling arguments. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Julian you might possibly could maybe be overthinking this a bit. I think law firms have limited levers to pull in hiring so they pull every lever they see and then every other law firm sees the guy pulling a different lever and gets worried about being left out from the lever-pulling tourney.

It could be that, at least at top law schools, biglaw firms are not looking for "top" students in terms of grades but for students who are highly committed to working in biglaw. Applying for these jobs in 1L fall and committing to them for both summers is a costly signal of that commitment.

funny. in entry level law hiring, the reverse used to be true--maybe it still is. top schools would wait out the market and move at their own pace because they could. for them it is always a buyer's market. firms are in a more seller-friendly market?

This is the part of the collective action problem I don’t fully understand. I guess the bet has to be: if enough other firms go early, then even if individual firms do a TERRIBLE job of identifying “top“ students, the net effect dries up the pool in a way that *skews* toward “top” students?

Is the talent pipeline really this limited? My memory from OCI was that most firms had more than enough interest in them from high-performing students, even in 2L year. I can't imagine the differences in 1Ls are big enough to merit this kind of attention.

That's really all there is to say. Except maybe that it's also very damaging and making it even harder for law schools to actually teach students to be lawyers.

yeah i was just having a convo about this with some professors. it's awful pedagogically, it's awful for hiring - terrible all around and will require some top schools to refuse to participate in recruiting for firms that do this to make it stop. no one likes it but they can't coordinate

Also everyone knows this is incredibly dumb. That's the funny part. I would like to meet the biglaw partner who thinks this is a great way to do things.

Duuuuuuuuumb Sorry for not offering better analysis

But! If you’re looking for a *constitutionally* principled way to draw some line, it could focus on specific constl text committed to President—commander in chief, role in treatymaking. there’d def be line drawing problems—what to do w coast guard? w DHS? but it’d be a plausible principle IMO

for prudential reasons—to do with (a) legislative dynamics on separation of powers questions + (b) risk of judges using any doctrinal concession to drive a wedge to second guess the legislative— I basically think moats questions of agency structure should be effectively nonjusticiable

nomination for most profound misunderstanding of the role played by the availability of litigation in a longstanding pragmatic practice of avoiding that outcome

nomination for sneakiest semicolon in the U.S. Reports

For those of you who enjoy law-related podcasts (especially those focusing primarily on appellate courts & SCOTUS), the latest episode of Advisory Opinions is absolutely fantastic. I could listen to @jdmortenson.bsky.social and @williambaude.bsky.social debate on every one of my commutes to Atlanta.

astronaut meme "it's seila law" "always has been"

can't think of a time when i've watched an AOC clip and thought something other than "yes. yes ma'am. thank you"

They used to "laugh and call him names." Now they're all dead

reigning Post Of The Month what challengers u nerds got?

BLUESKY I WOULD LIKE TO REPORT AN INCIDENT OF HATE SPEECH

scare quotes, italics, parentheses, and an em-dash couplet in the same sentence is a war crime

I REJECT THEE AND ALL THY WORKS

Let me explain it to you with a babysitter analogy and the classical teaching of the common good

🚨 JOB JOB JOB!!! 🚨 Late-breaking job! Indigenous history at University of Colorado Boulder. Assistant or eatly associate. Been trying to get this line for forever. It’s finally happening 🙏 Great place to live and work. Fabulous colleagues (ask me how I know!) networks.h-net.org/jobs/69637/u...

Morrison dissent - shot & chaser