I wonder whether Homan declared the $50k as 2024 income last April. (Still has time to amend the return, I suppose.)

Only time will tell whether John Roberts is a modern Roger Taney (endorsed an evil regime & contributed to causing a literal civil war) or a modern Melville Fuller (Who? precisely; let the Gilded Era's domination by wealth go unchecked but followed by Progressive Era).

Now let's see what's on the menu for TACO Tuesday.

I feel vindicated, having told folks that I'd bet (with narrow odds) on Kimmel's reinstatement relatively quickly. (Waited to post this until I saw it on the NYT website.)

Listening to excerpts from Leavitt's briefing today I had this flash: These people don't believe that they have immortal souls that can be endangered by lying. The crosses many of them wear must stand for some other beliefs.

To quote DJT, I am designating ICE & leaders Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem a major terrorist organization. His & my designations have exactly the same legal effect though his is likely to have a larger practical effect than mine (though given that Antifa doesn't exist, maybe not that much larger)..

Wordle 1,551 2/6 ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Three days in a row! This can't last.

Wordle 1,550 2/6 ⬜🟨⬜🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Two days in a row!

I hope political scientists are taking notes for a study of the relative power of The State and Civil Society (first Harvard, now the Ford Foundation) in the United States. I'd take narrow odds favoring Civil Society.

Andthe RSS feed for our episode onTrump's Tariffs: supreme-betrayal-how-the-supreme-court-and-constitutional.simplecast.com/episodes/rec...

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I missed when this went up--Judicial Time: A Research Note: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... No law review to which it was submitted was interested in it, but (no surprise) I think it offers a new and helpful perspective on some current matters of interest to both law folks and political scientists.

The Apple Podcast link for our episode on the tariff case: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

Returning after our summer break, a new episode of Supreme Betrayal, on the pending tariff decision, going into the weeds and guessing somewhat tentatively that the Court will OK the tariffs (link to Apple Podcasts to come when I figure it out): open.spotify.com/episode/4m2L...

I gave a presentation to a seminar at Miami Law School on constitutional hardball. It's available, along with other presentations to the seminar, here: www.discourse.net/2025/09/miam... FWIW there's a brief discussion of whether the term "constitutional crisis" is helpful (I'm on the "no" side).

Wordle 1,545 2/6 ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I can't be the first to say this but it hasn't appeared in my feed. We really do appear to have a Marxist administration (in this case, Chico not Groucho): "Who you gonna believe, me or your eyes?" (from Duck Soup)

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Looks like the Anthropic settlement may get me more than the royalties on a number of the books I've written. Fingers crossed!

Frustration at progressive commentariat on legal issues: I can generate b/t 10 & 20 nonfrivolous legal qs. that have to be answered before u can answer w/ some modest confidence the q., Will Lisa Cook exercise authority as a Fed member in the short or long run? Almost none raised by the commentariat

If someone always says "The murder [carjacking, etc.] rate is too high" the implication is that the policy goal is zero murders/carjackings, etc. No serious person thinks that's attainable. Ask, "What's the optimal murder rate," though, and people other than Gary Becker will laugh in your face.

Today's royalty statement from Princeton U Press shows that 4 copies of The American Law of Slavery (1981) were sold this year--some hapless graduate students, I suppose. (Over 27,000 "units" of my books with PUP have been sold since each one's publication, a surprisingly [to me] large number.)

Dinner in the streets of the rat infested hell hole that is DC

A comment on legal strategy for progressives these days. Bottom line: the legal eco-system is too complicated for any single strategy to emerge so the issue is how to deal with a world in which others are bound to be pursuing strategies you disagree with: urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=htt...

Curious about the legal basis for the ICE removal of the anti-ICE sign in Mt Pleasant DC neighborhood. Substance clearly protected 1st amendment. Failure to obtain a permit?

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. From Tank Man to Sandwich Man. cropper.watch.aetnd.com/cdn.watch.ae... www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Nu...

Bryan Garner, guru of precise legal writing, has written an interesting book, out this fall, about Oskar Stoessel, who did a lot of etchings of Supreme Court justices and other DC figures in the late 1930-40s. Along with a bunch of other people I blurbed it. Here's a link: godine.com/products/the...

A short piece on getting judicial review right: urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=htt...

New Supreme Betrayal episode, on constitutional criminal procedure, stop-and-frisk, Miranda, and more. We're taking a break for a couple of seeks for vacation and to work out how to explain our disagreements about what legal reasoning is and how it matters for constitutional theory. Links:

The stories on Harris's decision re California gov & presidential race trigger one of my pet peeves: None of the current discussions of who Dems might nominate say anything at all about who might occupy the "progressive" lane (except for the occasional reference to the fantasy of an AOC candidacy).

My meta take on NYTimes on Harvard: The best way to show that Columbia did the right thing is for Harvard to do it too.

I think it fair to say that anything Ghislaine Maxwell says (other than something implicating DJT in wrongdoing) is pre-debunked.

Grrr! to the NYTimes Crossword statistics folks. Signing on today I was urged to continue my 2 day streak. In fact I've been completing the puzzle every day for at least a year. The site itself shows that I'd completed every puzzle in the last 7 days. This has happened before & it's quite annoying.

Latest episode of Supreme Betrayal now available--current events with a long discussion of jury nullification: supreme-betrayal-how-the-supreme-court-and-constitutional.simplecast.com/episodes/cur... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c... open.spotify.com/episode/1poW...

Re Jeffrey Toobin on Emil Bove: just a note that on the day Bove's nomination to the 3d Circuit was announced I said he immediately became the front-runner for a Supreme Court nomination: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/o...

From Tushnet, Taking Back the Constitution (2020). To all the late arrivals welcome aboard. Or Felix Frankfurter: “Wisdom too often never comes so one ought not reject it merely because it comes late.”

Little known fact about Dick Fallon: he fulfilled the fantasy of many law professors and published a mystery novel (available on Amazon for $1900--even more expensive than Hart & Wechsler!): www.amazon.com/Stubborn-Mul...

How bad a person am I for thinking "would that it were the case" in response to Noem's statement, "They aren't just liberals anymore. If you look at the Democrat Party, they're a party of communists and marxists and socialists."?

Modern civility: note on missing person with dementia posted to neighborhood listserv. Within minutes received a phone call from someone who had just seen her. Brought her home safely. In a DC neighborhood of separate houses usually described as racially integrated.

New Supreme Betrayal episode, conversation w/ Joseph Fishkin & William Forbath about The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution--is up: supreme-betrayal-how-the-supreme-court-and-constitutional.simplecast.com/episodes/the... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... creators.spotify.com/pod/dashboar...

Conservative substantive due process on the march: Alito strongly suggesting that parents have a federal condo rt wrt minor’s choice re abortion. Pierce, Meyer, & history & tradition!!!

A friend directed my attention to fn5 in Justice Jackson's CASA dissent, citing Ernst Fraenkel's The Dual State. The one Fraenkel referred to was Nazi Germany. Mere coincidence? I think not.

On Supreme Betrayal Mike gets a chance to lay out his theory, and we talk a lot about the Emancipation Proclamation: supreme-betrayal-how-the-supreme-court-and-constitutional.simplecast.com/episodes/mik... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m... open.spotify.com/episode/6pC4...

Tushnet,The Next Generation of Free Expression Scholarship: A Very Short Manifesto (in Memory of Fred Schauer), 33 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 999 (2025) (on the accomplishments of the giants of the past generation of 1st Am scholarship & the tasks for the next generation), is now available.

1/ Noting that the ACLU has now filed a birthright citizenship class action, I wonder why they didn't do so in the first place. Defining "commonality" for b(2) class actions against Trump's EOs generally doesn't seem any more difficult or burdensome than establishing standing....

1/ Well out of my wheelhouse except insofar as people are talking about Congress doing something: Could USG do ANYTHING that would induce Iran to refrain from retaliating against US assets? Best case scenario is probably that Iran's retaliation isn't all that successful so US public reaction is...

Deliberately offensive suggestion: What do those who say that people who think seriously about law shouldn't engage with the Nazi's paper say about engaging with Supreme Court decisions like Hawaii v. Trump and Skrmetti? (I think of the "globe" scene in The Great Dictator in this connection,)

Style alert: Kagan in the Hobbs Act case dissent: "straight-up (not pre-jiggered) interpretive approach"

Usage in transition alert: from Jackson's dissent in today's EPA standing case: "Petitioners' obvious disinterest in developing or relying on the evidentiary record...."

Used bookstore shelf where?