Kavanaugh stop

NEWS: The Institute of Museum & Library Services has restored ALL previously canceled federal grants to libraries, following a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island last month. This is a massive win for libraries & communities in every state & territory! Learn more: www.ala.org/news/2025/12...

Eleventh Circuit vacates panel opinion on Florida's anti-drag law, will rehear the case en banc.

To state the obvious: If you unilaterally decide a court order has no grounds and on that basis that you don't have to follow it, that is the definition of defying a court order.

Good front-paging.

The president has illegally declared war to stop fentanyl trafficking from a country that does not traffic that drug, claiming its leader is trafficking drugs himself, the day after pardoning a former leader of a country who is a convicted drug trafficker. Just to level set

I've started a very nerdy series on the intellectual history of press freedom as told through very old books. Check it out! tiktok.com/@the.catchword

The clarity needed in these times . . .

Learn about the man who made the First Amendment... www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrLhutvS/

"Kavanaugh stop"

Ben Franklin's Last Speech... www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrdMx1dv/

Christiane Amanpour opens CPJ annual dinner... Condemns Trump's treatment of the press, commemorates journalists killed in Gaza. "This is not a political statement. This is about our job."

No, Mr. President, We Cannot ‘Leave It at That’ www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/o...

"their words"

Truly mind-blowing levels of hypocrisy from this admin on using government strong arming to threaten social media companies into censoring www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/3...

Watching this press conference between Trump and MBS. Trump’s answers on Khashoggi’s murder are absolutely vile.

An outrageous offense to human rights around the world.

11th Cir., in an unpublished order, holds that Trump's defamation lawsuit against CNN for its coverage of his election lies is meritless. media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/unp...

Let me tell you about a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence that George Washington saved from the British. www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMoQF8RB/

I'm bringing discussions about press freedom and the role of the printing press to TikTok! Take a look! www.tiktok.com/@the.catchwo...

MAGA’s ongoing war on academic freedom, reflected in headlines from the last 24 hours.

Great First Amendment win in 9th Circuit for @davidloy.bsky.social and @facoalition.bsky.social. Holding: “self-censorship” is an “injury-in-fact” for injunctive relief, and observation of events is “inextricably intertwined” with recording and reporting. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/op...

Bonus book! A beautiful 1797 copy of John Almon’s Biographical, Literary, & Political Anecdotes. The liberty minded printer included an early sketch of Benjamin Franklin — “founder of American Greatness”. Almon’s press was of singular importance in introducing the British to revolutionary thought.

I've read the just-issued 11th Circuit opinion in Dershowitz v CNN, I appreciate Judge Wilson bringing to bear a thoughtful defense of Sullivan and highlighting my scholarship as well as that of others in defense of a cornerstone of press freedom... It's very gratifying seeing scholarship at work.

Rare Book Friday! Don't judge a book by its cover! A remarkably scarce 1803 set of Tucker's Blackstone, which redefined law and press freedom in America. This set is especially rare because of its owner: John Breckinridge, Jefferson's Attorney General who was key to passing the Kentucky Resolutions

Somehow class is back in session...

When was the First Amendment ratified? Dec. 15, 1791, of course, when Virginia became the 11th of 14 states to do so (3/4ths of states)! Well, things weren't so clear at the Founding. In this Sept. 1791 copy of the Bill of Rights, the editor said ratification occurred by August (it did not!).

There is a lovely patriotic tradition in the colonial era of very angry grand jurors using their position to assert independence from the crown by returning "ignoramus" (essentially no true bill). History, as they say, repeats itself...

It's already the deadliest war for journalists on record and keeps getting worse. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Madison's report opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts. It was, 1826 edition said, a "landmark of the Constitution." Though liberty of the press had been invaded, "the Republicans did not abandon the cause of their Country" nor did they "despair."

Rare book Friday! The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. From his stone chateau one summer day in 1826, Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolution, sat down and scribbled off a note to Madison: "Our Beloved Jefferson is No More, My dear friend." Jefferson died a month earlier on July 4

Bonus book off the shelf! Thomas Paine's 1792 Letter to the Addressers. Called the Third Part of Rights of Man, Paine wrote the letter while fleeing sedition charges. "A man," he wrote, "derives no more excellence from calling him King than I should do by changing my name from Thomas to George."

As Cotton Mather taught in colonial Massachusetts, "War with None But Hell and Rome."

This quote is from one of the greatest speeches in American history. Everything in it applies today. Worth 5 minutes of your time. MLK had just given his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech the night before, his own oratory more important than ever and still breathtaking 57 years later.

Rare book Friday! A 1799 Journal of the Senate of the Sixth Congress. This particular Journal memorializes the Senate's prosecution of printer William Duane who steadfastly refused to identify his source after Duane printed an article critical of the Senate.

I missed rare book Friday last week so here's a catch up post: A 1795 first edition of William Winterbotham's monumental History of America. Written while Winterbotham was serving a 2-year sentence in Newgate prison for political sermons on the Gunpowder Plot and on the Revolution.

Four Al Jazeera staff, including reporter Anas Al Sharif, were killed in an Israeli attack on a tent for journalists outside the main gate of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital aje.io/onll19

Interesting to see the analogs as between defamation and IP and the use of history and tradition...

Chat.gpt has rendered by law review article into this picture. Not bad.

Traveling tomorrow, so rare book Friday a day early! A 1793 first edition of Robert Hall's Apology for Freedom of the Press. Along with Collins' Discourse and Hayter's Essay, Hall's later Apology rounds out the foundation of the intellectual theory of press freedom from the Founding.

A bonus book! (A1794 copy I've shared before, but I love it so darn much.) On Franklin's death, there was a rush to publish his autobiography. The first book version that was only a part of his autobiography appeared in French in 1791 as Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin.

Rare book Friday! A 1792 copy of Stanhope's The Rights of Juries Defended. Stanhope defends Fox's Libel Act which aimed to restore the rights of defendants in libel cases... Rights which had over time been brushed aside for the sake of political expediency

Bonus book! An original 1792 copy of Fox's Libel Act, or—An Act to Remove Doubts Respecting the Functions of Juries in Cases of Libel. The Act reshaped freedom of the press in England and its liberalizing influence reverberated across the Atlantic.

My favorite part of law review submission season is deciding to rewrite the paper in July.

Rare Book Friday! The Bill of Rights on the edge of adoption. This 1791 copy of the Laws of the United States has an ownership inscription, showing it was bought in Oct. 1791. Two months later, on Dec. 15, Virginia ratified the Amendments, including the First, which was then the Third.

Bonus book! Henry Care's 1703 English Liberties. Care does not address press freedom. The important bit here is who printed it: "B. Harris" Benjamin Harris started the first newspaper in America. The government immediately shut it down. He then returned to England, where licensing laws had expired

Rare Book Friday! A 1791 copy of The Constitutions of the United States, printed as the States considered the Bill of Rights. This scarce work is the first to assemble the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of the original 13 states. It includes Vermont too, which became a state in March 1791

It sure seems like the increased importance of the Supreme Court's shadow docket has something to do with an increased gap between the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal bench— and an increased disregard on the Supreme Court's part for the work the rest of the federal bench puts into cases.

This week's Bonus Book: a 1649 copy of John Lilburne's 1649 treason trial report with a woodcut. You've probably never heard of him, but he's one of the most important proponents of civil rights in the modern western world. Known as "Freeborn John," he was a martyr in service of civil liberties.