you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like

It doesn't matter here what the Founders intended when it comes to citizenship by birth in Guam, nor is this a matter for the Supreme Court: Congress intended birthright citizenship in Guam in 1950, when it passed the statute granting U.S. citizenship to all babies born there.

This OLC opinion declaring the Presidential Records Act invalid makes a number of astonishing claims, including that retention of presidential records serves no valid legislative purpose. . . . www.justice.gov/olc/media/14...

This essay, published amidst the birthright citizenship flurry yesterday, by Hajyahia & Zhao is so important-a deep dive into the colonial tariffs of the Jones Act (governing Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, and Alaska) and recent constitutional challenges to the statute. lpeproject.org/blog/a-centu...

Not sure whether this is apt or terrible timing but here’s the official cover of my book due out with @uncpress.bsky.social W. Hodding Carter III imprint this fall. 🎉

This is true. But it's important to add that people born here are also citizens because of federal law! The same Congress that wrote the Fourteenth Amendment also wrote birthright citizenship into law. Congress has extended birthright citizenship since then. Trump's EO violates these laws too.

Thank you Maggie Blackhawk! Cherokee Nation sent delegates to DC throughout the post-Civil War period to object to efforts to include them through territorial and statehood efforts BECAUSE they were citizens of the Cherokee Nation.

Read this. I'm getting stressed by the number of people interpreting Gorsuch's question as "ah-ha, so you'd can't instantly explain how Native folks are citizens!" as opposed to what it actually is, "ah-ha, so you're doing the opposite of originalism by inflicting citizenship on Native folks!"

American Samoa has opposed U.S. birthright citizenship since 1900, and remains the only U.S. territory without citizenship by statute. Its non-voting delegate, Rep. Radewagen, supports “U.S. national” status. Citizenship could fortify equal protection challenges to A. Samoa’s traditional government.

Friends, Native people are, indeed, Native to this land. But they were not Native to the United States. We all need to, somehow, collectively unpack the presumption that the U.S. is (and has ever been) the only instantiation of "this land." There were, and are, many other governments here.

And I reiterate: teach tribal sovereignty

The issue is complex to start and even more complex at the level of each Indigenous nation with overlays of treaties, statutes, and court orders conveying citizenship depending on each Indian and each Tribal Nation.

Friends, again with respect because this is a complex issue: children born to citizens of tribal governments do not have constitutional birthright citizenship under many, if not most forms of constitutional argument and authority (incl. Supreme Court precedent relied upon in this case)./1

After years of research, Daphna Renan & I are thrilled to announce preorders of SUPREMACY. Why is US democracy so broken? One reason is we've wrongly accepted that 9 justices have the final say over the Constitution. This book traces how that happened—& how we can reclaim power to govern ourselves.

A timely and vital Q&A on Historian's briefs before the Supreme Court in Modern American History. Explores the difference between "law office history" and the requirement of "relevance" in amicus briefs, and how relevance often limits the ability of briefs to lay bare societal myths and falsehoods.

Feel free to make fun of Markwayne Mullin all you want, but don’t do it like this. www.instagram.com/reel/DWe2Z_E...

American Samoa has opposed U.S. birthright citizenship since 1900, and remains the only U.S. territory without citizenship by statute. Its non-voting delegate, Rep. Radewagen, supports “U.S. national” status. Citizenship could fortify equal protection challenges to A. Samoa’s traditional government.

I’ll also remind folks: Indians are modern people. In fact, we’re in the legal academy. We’re colleagues. Our Nations are not relics of the past. Our legal status is not an archaic legal fiction, it is a contemporary reality.

Brilliant example of the difference between power and rights as a tool against subordination. Subordinated peoples might govern differently at times--although not always--and might see the liberation of all as important as the liberation of themselves. www.choctawnation.com/news/news-re...

I'm grateful for @beaubaumann.bsky.social 's essay & @samuelmoyn.bsky.social 's response. I don't think I'm well-read enough to contribute in the same register (a scholarly blog), but I've been addressing this q from w/in the popular response to our crisis & have 2 ideas I'd love to kick around: 🧵

📣 🎉Today is the official release day of my book, even tho many of you have it in hand already. 🙏 to all who purchased. Availability: Amazon has the paper w/ discount, Bookshop/OUP on back order. Should be an e-version that is missing. I will check w/ my press. More: www.annaolaw.com/book-migrati...

Check out this great new essay about New Mexico's Constitution by @aclunm.bsky.social's María Martínez Sánchez. This is part of one of my favorite @statecourtreport.org series - we will eventually have essays for all 50 states! statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana... .

A bracing and heartbreaking reminder that the erasure of women’s contributions threatens us all—our children, social progress, the institutions we build and reform, even the “great men” that benefit from this erasure. Gratitude to Dolores Huerta for sharing her story.

Madeline Halbach examines a 1824 murder at Lake Pepin to show how Ojibwe leaders and borderlands communities shaped justice on the Great Lakes frontier. Her #Winter2026 #EAS article is available now on Project MUSE: https://bit.ly/4bgPYp8 @mcneilcenter.bsky.social Penn Press

I see a hearing with @jbf1755.bsky.social in our near future: us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

If you listened to S2 of THIS LAND you might remember an adoption attorney named Mark Fiddler who was trying to overturn ICWA. Despite his loss at #SCOTUS he’s still at it in Minnesota. And he is losing there too.

Unboxing a book that took 16 years. What’s it about, who is it for? How to order? www.annaolaw.com/book-migrati... want 🎧 to Dahlia Lithwick interview me about it? Fresh podcast below 👇🏽/

New symposium on my book is out in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities! It features essays by an extraordinary group of scholars from across Law and History followed by my response. yaleconnect.yale.edu/yjlh/yjlh-is...

Maggie Blackhawk, NYU School of Law, is publishing Foreword: The History of the Constitution is Our Future in the Michigan Law Review (2026) / papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I am so excited to announce the First America Indigenous Futures Writing Workshop Series as part of a project I’ve been working on for the past year. Applications due by March 31, apply soon, and please share with any Indigenous youth that you know! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

WOW! Congrats to @bethlewwilliams.bsky.social and Emilie Connolly!!! Sharing the Bancroft Prize for their books on anti-Chinese immigration and Native American treaty histories. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/a...

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe’s approach to water management is helping to integrate sovereignty and conservation into water policy in Montana.

Wonderful opportunity for Indigenous youth who are writers! Apply today to work with First America; details below.

Gift link to Beinart's op-ed, which is very much worth reading. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/o...

The strikes on Iran are blatantly illegal. I explained in June why the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were unlawful under US and international law. Everything I wrote then is true today, but this is a far larger assault with far graver consequences. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/o...

Our release date is still seven months away, but my book is now up on the Yale website. Grateful to so many people who helped make this possible. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

University of Michigan: On Friday, come participate in a day-long conference discussing/criticizing my new book *The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumeration and Federal Power.* With Profs. Jack Balkin (Yale), Maggie Blackhawk (NYU), Sam Erman (Michigan), Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford)… (1/4)

New Foreword up on SSRN, previewing new projects on the history of constitutional history and what it can teach about legal frameworks at the heart of our "constitutional crisis"-federal Indian law, territorial law, expansion, immigration, and executive power. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Ned Blackhawk's magisterial epic reimagining of American history ftw. @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Worth noting you likely wouldn't have this pointed but helpful kind of interagency critique in a world without agency independence--at least not unless a president wants it. I don't think people realize how much we gain from structured conflict in the executive branch. www.npr.org/2026/01/27/n...

Standing with 65 of my UMN Law colleagues (and counting) to condemn ICE’s lawless conduct towards Minnesotans: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Sometimes we talk about the enduring presence of genocidal institutions in a metaphorical way. But sometimes it’s physical. ictnews.org/news/former-...

my Blackest opinion is that the presumption of conflict between "America has a long and deeply rooted history of violence" and "we can and should fight against today's version of that, as did those who came before us" is less a philosophical debate about how to treat the past and more a skill issue

With respect, I understand the need to foster a national identity that resists authoritarianism. But reminders of the Trail of Tears don't undermine this effort; they strengthen it. Excluding these histories makes U.S. authoritarianism harder to recognize because its patterns no longer feel familiar

The incomparable @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social with a short explainer worth your attention

#SCOTUS hears oral argument today in Wolford (2d Am (right to "bear arms")). An issue lurks behind the scenes: whether Bruen's history & tradition preempts property/customary law, supplanting local law with a "national tradition." Here, preempting Hawai'i's tradition banning guns for over 200 years.

Oglala Sioux Tribe demands the release of Lakota men detained by ICE www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Friendly reminder, apropos of nothing: Greenland is a nearly autonomous Indigenous-governed nation, not an empty landscape to be "discovered" and "protected" by the United States (or any other "civilized" European nation).

🗃️ Time to rewrite immigration history with Native history in mind. The US was founded on the conquest, dispossession, removal, exploitation, or genocide of Native people. Denial of that fact generated counter-myths: empty land, waste land, Manifest Destiny—and the slogan “nation of immigrants.” 🧵1/7