"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Big news from the Comparative Constitutions Project! We just released an open-source #NLP tool for researchers: the "Segments-as-Topics" (SAT) method. Perfect for analyzing #constitutions #courtrulings and other text corpora. Video tutorial below! 🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm_0...

The context here, of course, is that the “local broadcasters” Carr is egging on are actually huge conglomerates with a pending merger before his office that would give them (and him) vast control over all broadcast television stations

Today I learned that John Brown wrote a provisional constitution in May 1859, less than six months before leading the raid on Harpers Ferry digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcont...

This crusade against free speech is a disgrace. You cannot stop ideas by firing the people who speak them. You can, however, temporarily hide them from yourself.

Utah was the first state to allow open carry on campus. A would-be assailant could walk right onto campus armed as they please and nobody could’ve done a thing about it.

A top 50 US university yesterday fired an instructor, a department chair, and a dean because a course made some reference to transgender people without the brief official course description in the catalog saying “trigger warning: gender.” In conclusion, those intolerant lefty kids, cancel culture.

Protestors in Nepal are now demanding "Amendment or complete rewriting of the Constitution with active participation from citizens, experts, and youth." www.indiatoday.in/world/story/...

A social media ban has triggered a crisis in Nepal and led to the resignation of the prime minister. #AJStartHere with @sandragathmann.bsky.social explains what’s going on ⤵️

Nepal rolls back social media ban after deadly protests rock capital

Final #polisky eJobs count (including 8/30-8/31): May-August 2024: 319 total positions (219 open to assistant TT) May-August 2025: 228 total positions (140 open to assistant TT)

Wrote a (very) short blog post about writing with OCD. Needed to get this off my chest. mattjmartin.com/blog/2025/in...

Looks like I'm getting my COVID booster in Vancouver at APSA this year lol

oh shit, a state prosecutor may actually do the thing

The nightmare that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is experiencing is only possible because both Democrat and Republican politicians have built up the machinery of deportation across the course of decades. Donald Trump is now using that machinery to consolidate autocratic power. crimethinc.com/borders

I'm on the 2025-26 academic job market in political science! I recently completed my PhD and am now a postdoctoral researcher at the Comparative Constitutions Project. My research examines constitutional design, public participation, and Latin American politics using mixed methods. mattjmartin.com

Really pleased to announce that my paper "The Path of Law: Legal Uncertainty and Cases of First Impression in the U.S. Courts of Appeals" has been accepted at the APSR. The paper can be found here: anthonytaboni.com/wp-content/u...

ICE's 287(g) Program Explodes to 900 Agreements Under Trump Local law enforcement agencies across the country are signing up to participate in ICE's mass deportation efforts. Florida and Texas lead the way. Most aggressive "task force model" now dominates. austinkocher.substack.com/p/ices-287g-...

Some of the most gratifying and constructive exchanges I've had in academia have come from simply cold-emailing people to tell them how much I enjoyed their work.

NEW: McCarthyism returns to immigration law, as @USCIS announces that it will begin screening applicants for immigration benefits for "Anti-America ideologies or activities." The term has no prior precedent in immigration law and its definition is entirely up to the Trump admin.

Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution. To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2

"’We're taking America back, baby,’ one of the masked men says in the video posted to ICE's official X account.” www.wusa9.com/article/news...

Nothing like being on the academic job market again to remind you how much it sucks to be on the academic job market

#OtD 12 Aug 1933 a general strike from Cuba's militant workers' movement brought down the authoritarian regime of President Gerardo Machado stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8372...

Now reading: "Municipal Dreams" by John Clark (1998), a social ecological critique of Murray Bookchin's theory of libertarian municipalism. theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john...

One more effort to politicize federal grantmaking. *Grants must by approved by a political appointee, working with OMB. *"Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities." *Cannot "promote anti-American values" www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

First dissertation spinoff idea

Kicking off the 2025-26 academic job market with a new domain and revamped website 📚 mattjmartin.com

"The bulk of the blame can be placed on Instagram’s “Link in bio,” which, to my mind, has done more damage to literacy and the media ecosystem than any other innovation of the past 15 years." open.substack.com/pub/heavies/...

That citizens engage most actively in issues of personal interest is seen as the central problem of direct democracy. Rather than harnessing this evidently natural tendency as a source of collective power, state institutions remain founded on a deep mistrust in peoples' capacity for self-government.

End of the month APSA eJobs update #polisky (there may be a few others listed today, will add later) July 2024: 93 positions (62 assistant TT positions) July 2025: 58 positions (40 assistant TT positions) I exclude non-academic positions / PhD studentships from the total count.

This is huge. apnews.com/article/musc...

Lawyers for ICE are increasingly hiding their identities in court. This is completely unprecedented. “We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. theintercept.com/2025/07/15/i...

If this is substantiated every single justice department attorney who touched the filings denying jurisdiction should be disbarred unless they're individually willing to put in a sworn statement declaring that they were told something different and identifying who lied to them about it

I love that former NYT public editor @sulliview.bsky.social is public-editing from the outside. "With this made-up scandal, combined with the pre-election editorial, the Times looks like it’s on a crusade against Mamdani. "And no lofty explanation about the mission can disguise it."

With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.

NEW: Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers seek permission to file an amended complaint in his civil case in Maryland. Among other things, the amended complaint “includes Abrego Garcia's first-hand account of torture and mistreatment at CECOT…”

law professors have been unable to understand why people are actually concerned about this case. it’s not about nationwide injunctions per se, it’s about a court that waited until the issue hurt the GOP, and then intervened on behalf of one of the most egregious constitutional violations we’ve seen

“IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present.” www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

Good to know that constitutional amendments can now be effectively nullified by presidential decree. Political scientists who have emphasized the apparent resilience of the federal judiciary may want to reassess their predictions about the future of U.S. democracy now.

The left better start figuring out how to weaponize today's decision rather than just (rightfully) criticizing it. - Go back into Judge Kaczmaryk's court to dissolve all of his nationwide orders. - Pass gun bans and insist any order applies only to plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court is about to go on an extended summer vacation, after having blown up the docket of every single lower court judge who has been working like a dog to deal with the firehose of illegal orders coming out of this administration.

Black voters are incredibly polarized by age within the Democratic Party. This happens in every Dem primary since 2016. You might not know this because the punditry does such a bad job on Black politics, either ignorant or treating Black people as a monolith in service of some other narrative

there's a whole cottage industry of fear cultivation around AI risk - but more of it centered around "what AI could do if it becomes advanced enough" rather than "what specific oligarchs could do if their AI is even marginally cheaper than their current imperialist tactics"