The One Little Thing SCOTUS Explicitly Said Was Still Lawful is Not Lawful Say the "Very Best" Lawyers Who Definitely Care About Legality Above All. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/12/m...

Tell me the best stuff you've read recently about legal realism and its application to all the stuff we're living with. Asking for a person updating a syllabus...

If we’re just gonna make the constitution mean whatever we want, can we start making up “legitimate questions” about the Senate and the electoral college? Get in folks! We’re gonna make this old parchment live a little.

Look, I know this weaponization of male academic interest is the oldest story in the book, but it’s just so, so pernicious. It’s awful to the women directly involved, but it’s also awful to *all* women in the academy, who have to live in its shadow all the time.

Please stop making the worst parts of American history “great” again. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Real "compromise" of 1850 vibes today. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.....

In the stupidest timeline, all this is leading to FIFA staging a global coup and promulgating its worstness into every corner of our lives.

Despite a very vocal push against progressives here in Cambridge, we shored up a progressive majority on the city council and elected an amazing slate of progressive and teacher-backed candidates to the school committee. Good news around every local corner.

This account is undefeated.

It really looks like this guy is trying to turn the White House into mid-1990s McMansion in a “nice” Jersey suburb.

Unsolicited semi-random restaurant review #18: Rajdhani in Artesia. All-you-can-eat vegetarian Gujarathi thali. Eat whatever they are serving--and make sure you get bread. You will be delighted. www.rajdhaniofartesia.com

We are so far off the map of "how any of this works" that it seems like just about anything is possible. That's very bad when it's all about grift and nativism and trolling. But it's also as close as we're ever going to come to building a liberatory politics of possibility.

At some point the rank incompetence and self-regarding blindness has to have some consequences? Or are we really at the end of narrative?

Glass half full—lots of folks getting psyched to be part of this founding moment. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

This billboard is straight out of the 1840s. (Personal Liberty laws passed to prevent the kidnapping of black northerners). We are making the worst parts of our history great again.

MAKE THE DEPLORABLES GREAT AGAIN!!!

Every year in Con Law we talk about how hard it is these days to find hard evidence of intentional discrimination behind government actions that have disparate racial impact. But they are just...texting and lolz-ing it all out there? www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Among other things, this is so bizarrely formalist. All these orders “resolve” the issues before them in that they dissolve injunctions, allow for racial profiling, allow for impoundment, etc. You don’t have to be a legal realist to see this…though it doesn’t hurt.

Shards of light in a dark time.

During the 1850s there were cities in the north where the Fugitive Slave Law was unenforceable because nobody could be found who was willing to serve as a federal commissioner to hear and decide the cases.

New thing from me at Postcards of the Hanging. On the "judicial revolt" and the question of judicial solidarity. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

What's old is new again. In September of 1850, black abolitionist leaders in Chicago gathered at Quinn Chapel to make a plan for protecting their community and resisting the federally supported slave catchers empowered by the Fugitive Slave Law. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

So strange when judges applying clear and well-settled law seem to part of “the resistance.” It might be time to start calling resistance to the administration “conservative”…because that is what these kinds of opinions are in outlook and result.

The fact that Kristi Noem was riding in an armored vehicle as part of this federal kidnapping mission is mindblowingly bad. It's like if Daniel Webster had been holding the gun to Anthony Burns' back, marching him to enslavement. chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

This week I went to VMI to participate in a conversation about whether we're in a constitutional crisis. Being at VMI was really fascinating. I met a lot of great folks and learned some stuff. "Debatemebro" makes us all dumber. I hope this wasn't that. steamboatinstitute.org/recap/is-the...

MAKE EATING CAKE GREAT AGAIN!!! people.com/white-house-...

It was just a few years ago that I wrote about judicial resistance and judicial solidarity. I was skeptical for lots of reasons…but man life comes at you fast. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

MAKE THE THIRD AMENDMENT GREAT AGAIN!!

This is a really fascinating development. It remains the case that local police vastly outnumber federal police. Where true resistance and obstruction come into play, the inertia and complexity of local government are going to make things very interesting.

One of the greatest living Americans.

Two things about the Klein/Coates interview. 1) It's thoughtful and humane - which is good. 2) It reveals a real set of questions about role and strategy. Coates has a clear sense of what role he wants to play and what his strategy is within that role. Klein seems much more lost on both counts.

If you haven’t read Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” now might be a pretty good time to do that. While you’re at it, check out Vine Deloria’s “Custer Died For Your Sins.”

@evapayne.bsky.social is the best and so is her book! Read it now.

MAKE CHECKS AND BALANCES GREAT AGAIN!!!

Boy, Holmes' bad man is really getting a workout these days.

Periodically reminding myself that things falling apart is the precondition of putting them back together. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Highly recommend this brilliant piece by @danfarbman.bsky.social Drawing on his rich knowledge of history, he he lays it out: "We have used up our inherited freedom, and if we want to live in a better world, we must build it together." It's hefty, so put on comfy jams + curl up on the couch.

Today from me over at Postcards of the Hanging it's a callback to something I wrote a while ago that feels like it might have some utility amidst...everything we're experiencing right now. Radical pragmatism, etc. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

We lost Luna (the little spoon) today. 16 years was a good run. But it breaks your heart anyways.

MAKE NOT KNOWING ABOUT STUFF GREAT AGAIN!!!

As I warned you yesterday, @hashtagblevin.bsky.social and I will occasionally be writing about stuff in a shared space. Read Ben's first post on crime, DC, and who is being kept safe from whom here. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Do you ever find yourself wondering what @danfarbman.bsky.social & I are thinking? If so, you're in luck. We have a new site. Check out the first post from Dan on crisis, pessimism, & possibility.

MAKE COLORBLIND CONSTITUTIONALISM GREAT AGAIN!!!

Reposting this link (apologies) only because I can't believe I didn't associate this image with the essay in the first instance. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Ben Levin and I have set up a place where we can, at irregular intervals, inflict our thoughts on you. My first thing there is an essay on founding moments, the 1850s, Thoreau, and the mess we're in. open.substack.com/pub/postcard...

Doctor I trust more than RFK Jr.

Using a former plantation converted into a brutal site of mass incarceration as an internment camp is basically a Yahtzee of the worst bits of American history, culture, and politics.

During the early white supremacist pushback against reconstruction in North Carolina, former planters demanded “relief for the east” to “liberate” eastern (and majority black) counties from the “abomination” of being policed and governed by their former slaves. This is a bad vibe to be recapturing.

As a professor of both Local Government Law and Con Law, this letter is now on all my syllabi. Excellent stuff.

In addition to everything else, this stuff with DC has made it much more likely that when the reckoning comes, DC statehood will be on the front burner.