“I’m finding a lot of hope in figures like Nezza right now,” Constantini said. “That’s what you do during dark times: You look to the people that are fighting.”

The pardon power seems to be a vestigial remnant of the royal prerogative tout simple. But could Congress employ the Necessary and Proper Clause to regulate its use? And bribery is an impeachable offense, creating a bona fide legislative purpose. Comments welcome.

The overall summary in this article is pretty good, though with this administration one is always playing catch-up, when, to use a terrible pun, we'd rather be playing ketchup. But the analysis is flawed and inadequate to the situation.

My qualms about Ken Burns' American Revolution series, which strangely fails to explain what made the Revolution revolutionary. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/12/18/w...

Another powerful argument on why the Unified Executive Theory and America's mad king problem are now wholly synonymous, interchangeable, and two sides of the same coin. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/o...

She could title her memoir, The Bull Goose Looney Presidency: The Head Nurse Reports. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...

Several propositions can be true at once: *There are now three dozen volumes of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution in print and they do indeed reveal what a rich and historically unprecedented episode this was.

1/ A few thoughts about @williambaude.bsky.social’s comment in yesterday’s NYT chat that, “It’s amazing how many of our problems today could be solved by a Congress that was willing and able to legislate in response to national problems.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/o...

When you want to deflate or kill a considered legislative decision, just invent some judicial doctrine ex nihilo. In a curious way @williambaude.bsky.social also neglects the asymmetrical character of the parties--their species being (to quote Marx, which I rarely do, except for Groucho).

Great and troubling analysis from my fellow Cubs fan and ETHS grad. Also a reminder that the philosophy of the Roberts Court is not calling ball and strikes but running out the clock (as in Trump v. U.S. and its impact on the 2024 election). news.bloomberglaw.com/legal-exchan...

Trump has done more to establish a unitary executive than all the judges or legal scholars in the world could ever do. And Trump has done more to discredit and expose the unitary executive theory as lawless authoritarianism than any judge or legal scholar could ever do.

Great assessment of the inanity (or one could just as easily say insanity) of Trump v. U.S. I would add two further points (a) whether Trump will be paid off in cryptocurrency & (b) why the prior failure of the Emoluments cases set a terrible precedent. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/o...

The article is better than its goofy title. I would say "Culminates in Trump's Push," which is more faithful to the analysis. What bugs me most are the concluding paragraphs relating to the problems the conservative Justices will ostensibly face as originalists with the historical record.

We neither slumber nor sleep (Psalm 121, verse 4) (though it's 4:45 a.m. here, so I am heading back to sleep, I hope)

Really (but unsurprisingly) an excellent analysis of the criminal abuse of the presidential pardon power by @jamellebouie.net My sole quibble is that the proper spelling of the opponents of the ratification of the Constitution is Anti-Federalist. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/o...

I read this analysis, agree with virtually everything it says, and yet again find myself trying to imagine how future historians could ever explain what has happened over the past decade. It will make explanations of the fall of Rome seem like small potatoes (which Romans never ate).

Given that we're pondering the existence of an international crime ring of heads of states, why might cryptocurrency not also be a part of a payoff pardon scheme?

First author was one of my students! And this is a reminder that I know he is on the Farm (as we call it) this year, so I have to get back in touch with him. A nice Thanksgiving surprise. Plus this looks like real social science!

With his ultimatum that Ukraine surrender to Russia, Trump finally wins a prize: The Neville Chamberlain award for betraying peace, freedom, and justice.

Well worth a read for its ironclad reasoning, no matter how much its conclusions will depress you. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Having just watched the final episode of Ken Burns' series on the American Revolution reach its platitudinous conclusions, it did seem to me that there was one curious omission. It never asks the question, what was it that made the Revolution revolutionary? Who knows?

Whatever one thinks of Mamdani--and I do not think that local chapters of Hamas are about to start drilling in Central Park--he has already proven that he is quite a political strategist, so I would not second-guess him (at least yet). And at this point, nothing could ever legitimize Trump.

After watching an episode of Slow Horses tonight, I said, let's see what's up with Ken Burns' Revolution. All I can say is, whatever possessed him to think that the best way to get Americans to think seriously about the legacy of the Revolution is to review the history of the Revolutionary War?

If anything positive develops, let us know. It all seems quite boring and slow moving to me. Might do an episode of Slow Horses instead. Or maybe Fauda.

And then there's the great summary judgment about any tidy separation of powers in Madison's Federalist 37: "Questions daily occur in the course of practice, which prove the obscurity which reins in these subjects, and which puzzle the greatest adepts in political science."

The Eric Schickler essay in Larry Bartel's symposium on "What Trump Has Taught Us About Political Science" is one of the most insightful pieces I've read in 2025. US institutions turned out to be weak, and we have to rethink conventional wisdom. open access: academic.oup.com/psq/advance-...

Watching episode 2 of the Burns saga reminded me of Benjamin Rush's remark from 1786-87: "Nothing is more common than to confound the terms of the American revolution with those of the late American war. The American war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution."

Make that two!

Really? I watched the first two hours last night and am not sure I can take any more. Nice to see colleagues on air (even my mentor, no longer with us, got a few seconds), but the content is so thin it just did not seem very energetic or informative.

Could be another case of the malady known as SHEAR Madness. I am often cast as a legal historian when I really think of myself as a politics guy. But the better way to think of it is, it's not what kind of history you think you're practicing, but rather what kind of problems are you trying to solve.

As a stray comment, and something I chose not to write about in the essay, it seems strange to discuss liquidation in the era of Dobbs v. Marsh and when SCOTUS is willfully intent on liquidating (in the Stalinist sense) the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. But what do I know? Shabbat shalom.

My thoughts on the ostensible problem of constitutional liquidation, in conversation with a companion piece by Will Baude, who happily teaches at my literal birthplace, the University of Chicago. repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/medi... For Will's essay, see jach.law.wisc.edu/liquidation-...

In fact this is an obscure evocation of Numbers 11:5 We remember the fish, which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; זָכַרְנוּ, אֶת-הַדָּגָה, אֲשֶׁר-נֹאכַל בְּמִצְרַיִם, חִנָּם; אֵת הַקִּשֻּׁאִים, וְאֵת הָאֲבַטִּחִים, וְאֶת-הֶחָצִיר וְאֶת-הַבְּצָלִים, וְאֶת-הַשּׁוּמִים

Of course 2016 is the only one that really matters.

consider this part one of what will be an ongoing series making the case for an imperial congress (gift link)

Charles II, the restored king, retained the power to fund the military on his own, without parliamentary assent. And indeed the suspension of Parliament was one of the main grievances underlying the Glorious Revolution (1688-89) and its ensuing "settlement."

But I have often wondered whether he also kept notes of debates (as opposed to motions, votes, &c as in the JCC) that he later destroyed. Why? Because (if memory serves) there was a good set from 1782 relating to debates on the Vermont question that were published (I think) in the NYHS Collections.

I've long thought the filibuster unconstitutional on two grounds: (1) a rule of deliberation within one house has become an effective rule of decision, and (2) under the expressio unius exclusio alterius principle, one cannot add new supermajoritarian requirements for lawmaking to the Constitution.

Basic thesis: when crisis becomes endemic, as it now is, that means it is actually amounting to systemic failure, which is now the subject needing explanation.

With a little better planning, it could have gone from Democracy to De**c***a*y" to complete meltdown.

This is a model not only for academics but for anyone who wants to ask how universities and colleges should be acting as their fundamental autonomy is endangered. tomginsburg.substack.com/p/on-the-com...

Instead of memorandum, it would be better to say fiat, ukase, or diktat. And instead of saying "expanding his administration's authority," it would be better to say "usurping the venerable authority of Congress" to control the budget.

A simpler way to put it is that while the executive branch conducts relations with foreign governments, the foreign policy of the US in respect to commerce tariffs, and foreign aid is determined by Congress acting legislatively. It's not done by presidential diktat, fiat, or ukase.

The main point UE advocates neglect is that the Framers emphasized responsibility as the key duty and perpetual obligation of a unitary executive while the ostensible virtues of energy, vigor, dispatch, and secrecy were only advantages of decision-making that would be exercised only occasionally..

Some counterfactual musings for our 238th Constitution Day (hopefully not our last, but who knows?). A few typos have to be corrected, hopefully before you awaken, but it should give you something serious to think about (exactly what we don't need). washingtonmonthly.com/2025/09/17/c...

As I have argued previously, when one is living as we are in an ongoing constitutional crisis, that term loses its analytical meaning. The better term is constitutional failure, meaning that our institutions are no longer capable of fulfilling their responsibilities.

Proud to contribute an essay on "A Brief Biography of the Second Amendment" to this amazing collection. www.vitalcitynyc.org/issues/issue...

This is a really smart piece which draws some strong inferences about the deteriorating condition of the federal Union. As a historian of the Articles of Confederation (my first book), I have wondered if its model of governance might be a better option for us now. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

There is a curious but common misstatement here. PREROGATIVE was something that always belonged to the Crown. Americans are still arguing how much of the royal prerogative was incorporated in the presidency. This is a big component of the spurious United Executive Theory.

Norm's account of his essay is, if anything, too modest.