I always interpreted it as a "Cheer up, Mate, have an egg nog" response to Happy XMas (War Is Over), but this is funnier.

Greene on Supreme Court Expansion Jamal Greene (Columbia University - Law School) has posted The Nonpartisan Case for Supreme Court Expansion (Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: It should be a shared premise across the ideological spectrum that…

Anytime someone tries to stir up a panic over the alleged lack of disagreement at universities, take a moment to think about the denominator and not just what you are being made aware of before you reach a conclusion.

The lawless killing spree continues. Do not become inured. This is premeditated killing outside of armed conflict. We call that murder.

And if we don’t know the norms being violated, his behavior gets normalized. It’s important to reveal how abnormal this is—not to him or his administration, but to everyone else.

NB: When I, a professor of law, profess that an act is unlawful, I am not doing it to inform the lawbreaker, but rather to inform you, the reader. So the question “what, like you think he cares?” is inapposite. The question is whether *you* care. I think you should, which is why I bother.

The Kennedy Center name is established by federal statute, and therefore may be repealed only by federal statute. www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

Total victory on this issue; members of Congress will again have the right to conduct surprise inspections of ICE detention centers.

The US Administration has banned Americans from *adopting babies* from much of the African continent. Adopting. Babies. What trait do those babies have that, when they grow up as fully American adults, would make them a threat to our country in any form?

Does the NBA Cup banner go into the rafters? Kind of hope not. Great win, but not the goal.

"I judge people by their genes," per the Vanity Fair piece.

Uber and DoorDash say it violates the First Amendment to require their apps to provide a tip option before checkout. We are through the looking glass, people. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/n...

I agree that Trump is unusually transparent, generally lacking hidden intentions, but I don't regard him as a blank canvas with *no* commitments beyond his own aggrandizement. I don't think I'm projecting when I say he is a white supremacist who is devoted to white supremacy as a political project.

Need to put on some more Blue Jays-Dodgers games to juice Sports-sky.

With this and the stories pouring in about Rob Reiner and Michele Singer, we are seeing and hearing about the full human spectrum from kindness and generosity to cruelty and callous disregard for the humanity of others.

Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi killers, became an Australian citizen 3 years ago. His deed was "his way of conveying his gratitude for staying in Australia, for being granted citizenship." He took 5 bullets, and fears he'll lose his left arm. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

🧵Here's a research-backed answer: No. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Sounds more like a war on history. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/u...

"[T]he system of separated powers . . . has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive. The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled . . . to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. " -Trump v. US

Looks like we need to re-normalize Zooming into conferences.

Since whatever this docket is called can't be fully accurate except in relation to the "merits" docket (also an under- and over-inclusive term), I feel like the best one can do is a title that captures this relational status. Maybe "Sidecar Docket"? (Also captures what it makes you want to drink.)

The best thing about this isn't the merits so much as the fact that @raskin.house.gov is socializing serious structural reform. This is the register we need to be in in preparation for the aftermath.

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...

Republicans' proposal was.... the ACA. That's why it took the form it did, but since Obama could do no right, they had to define themselves in opposition to it.

They embrace the plebiscitary president and then when someone criticizes, say, gerrymandering or overaggressive judicial review of Congress, it's all "it's a republic, not a democracy."

(2) seems to be an even more dubious point than (1). first because agencies are shaped by congress as well as executive appointments, and second because the agency rule-making process is more transparent and democratic than top-down decrees from political appointees

Today seems as good a time as any to note my extended discussion of SCOTUS expansion here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Also, @epps.bsky.social and @ganeshsitaraman.bsky.social specifically propose a lottery along @mmasnick.bsky.social's lines here: yalelawjournal.org/pdf/EppsSita...

Constitutional structures are interconnected. To the degree the framers had a coherent vision, it adjusts over time as pieces settle into their constantly evolving surroundings. The pieces become Jenga blocks. Sometimes you can remove them one at a time, but you never take out a whole row at once.

This is the heart of the matter. Even after years of this behavior, part of me still finds it bewildering, and deeply distressing. It was this generation of conservatives who taught me to take judicial restraint seriously. Just, how could you?

Kavanaugh just said, "Once presidential power is taken away, it's very hard to get it back," but of course the precise opposite is true, in light of the presidential veto.

It's very hard to make an argument solely through precedents that make no sense on their own terms when your opponent is unburdened by having to care what precedents say.

Congress didn't do this unimaginable thing I just made up, but we need to rule in a way that makes that unimaginable thing I made up unlawful were Congress to do it is my single least favorite kind of argument to a court.

I don't find the single-member/multimember distinction Agarwal is being pressed on especially persuasive. The most principled answer IMO is that, yes, Congress could make the Commerce Secretary removable for cause, though it hasn't and wouldn't (and of course the president would veto that law).

Justice Blackmun was savagely criticized for decades for saying this about the 14th Amendment in Roe.

This is a very basic, 1L-type thing to get wrong about Marbury.

The "justice of the peace" in Marbury wasn't "a judicial officer"!

Sauer said this is what the Constitution requires.

Every political actor seeks to enhance its own power indeed, Justice Gorsuch.

Sauer saying something is unconstitutional because it "would be unconstitutional under Justice Scalia's dissent" is a remarkably cogent statement of the Roberts Court's approach to precedent.

Kav: Why is the Fed different? Sauer: Because you said so.

I can't say I'm confident that there aren't at least 4 votes to "take this nativist revisionism seriously," but I wouldn't discount the possibility that SCOTUS will use the case to try to launder everything else it is giving the administration with a self-congratulatory anti-Trump opinion.

The defense is now “We were trying to commit murder, not war crimes.”

While the 14th Amendment is on our minds, I've long thought there was a decent structural/intratextual argument that it repealed the natural born citizen clause.

The next defense will be that other drug boats could hear them sobbing.

"regain its civilizational self-confidence" is a hell of a euphemism

"The Donald Trump administration has changed which holidays qualify for free entrance to national parks, removing two holidays celebrating Black people and adding the president’s birthday."

Yes, an absurd sleight of hand. Of course they had partisan goals! Showing whether a partisan goal was achieved through racial means is the thing district court factfinding is for. Why bother otherwise?

It is simply impossible to believe on this record that this would have been the lineup (or a stay issued at all) if the district court had found a racial gerrymander in a large blue state.

There is, of course, no daylight between Cotton’s position and “no quarter,” a war crime.

Great opportunity at a fantastic organization.