it's over for you once I sign into westlaw advantage, sign in again, refresh, delete part of the URL, sign in again, and then click start session

today's 30 rock rewatch gem

what people on this website seem incapable of understanding is that "relatively collegial scholarly pushback" is a necessary component of responding to this project.

Judge Kacsmaryk is welcome to think whatever he wants about the history but he's bound by dozens of precedents expressly holding otherwise

Even though I absolutely hate reading AI writing, I am getting negatively polarized by the stunning incuriosity of so much of the professoriate about the objectively strangest technology in the last hundred years

9/ In exchange for a norm for severely limiting what it does do with its military, the US gets to live on a planet where most countries operate on the assumption that the US military isn't a direct threat to them. That has a myraid of benefits far outweighing potential plunder or territorial gain.

6/ Fourth, every country that knows it lacks the population or resources to defend itself against a power like the US starts looking for assymetric forms of leverage. "Try us and our hackers crash your power grid" isn't as good as having an army, but it's better than nothing.

4/ Second, every country capable of building up its military is forced to do so. Vast amounts of global resources that could be put to more productive use are spent stockpiling guns and ammo.

3/ First, every single country capable of rubbing two atoms together acquires nuclear weapons. We go from about ~8 nuclear powers to like 50, as everyone rushes to acquire the one thing that reliably deters invasion. Odds of a lost or stolen nuke, accident or use rise exponentially.

1/ Something which I don't think gets articulated clearly often enough is that a system where countries generally respect international sovereignty and territorial integrity is not pure charity or morality by the United States, but in its direct interests. Despite it being the strongest bear.

this coffee shop's internet terms of service prohibit me from receiving bad emails

A free, independent, and adversarial press matters!

The University of Arkansas's law school just withdrew the appointment of its new dean six days after hiring her because conservative politicians complained that she filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of transgender students

Just discovered that one of my articles was published! In it, I argue that judicial power has multiple components or dimensions, one of which is ideational. In other words, ideas and norms about courts’ proper role empower them over and above the traditional formal sources of power. Check it out!

Behold, my syllabi for Spring 2026: a revised version of my Game Studies course (still centered on Disco Elysium) and a grad literature course called “Genre, Utopia, Theory.” gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2026/01/14/s...

I'm choosing to believe LLMs' overuse of the em dash signifies it as the mathematically perfect punctuation and resolving to use it even more

Call for Papers for the annual Duke/Wyoming Firearms Law Works-in-Progress Conference! This fun conference has grown mightily over the years. If your work intersects with guns (or nongun weapons!) at all, you should submit! firearmslaw.duke.edu/2026/01/of-i...

lol

8th Cir.: because officer was trying to shoot a 9-pound Pomeranian mix when he missed and shot the dog's owner instead, he did not intend to restrain owner, he intended to restrain the dog, which means there was no seizure so no 4A violation. QI for officer. ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/26/01...

Clicked on the link by accident and found that the Elon Law Review accepts submissions by current law students, which I think is worth flagging!

I don't think the antitrust laws make it illegal to believe in climate change

it's the stove touchingest time of the year

not me getting emotional about this

I know you don’t want to pay interest on your loans forever, but what about the people who securitized those loans to rentseek. They’re literally depending on you to do that?

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Y'all mind if I Hoosier out right quick

I have thought a lot about secret ballots for impeachment over the past five years and come to the reluctant conclusion that the democratic costs are just way too high

there's no other word to describe the contemporary american media class other than decadent, i think

“.. critics have warned that widespread prediction-market contracts tied to war could create harmful incentives, especially if insiders charged with carrying out military actions are tempted to enrich themselves through side bets ..” 🤡 @wsj.com www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

the rub on immigration is that: (1) the OP here is 100% true; (2) the law maximizes grey areas for a reason ($$$); (3) grey areas are better for individuals than deportation/prison; (4) this contributes to a perception of lawlessness in the immigration system that fuels xenophobia

massively increase the number of immigration judges, make them real courts, and give as many people as possible clean in-out decisions within in 90 days is the 'install linux, problem solved' of immigration issues in that the solution is not really complicated, it's just really hard

Pennoyer? More like annoyer. Folks,

If I taught Con Law, this would be the first week of class:

If the DEA had killed 80 innocent Americans in the course of apprehending one drug dealer, there would be riots. But we are so ghoulishly indifferent to the lives and humanity of people abroad that it's barely even part of the conversation.

"The study found that the Supreme Court has become deeply polarized in cases pitting the rich against the poor, with Republican appointees far more likely than Democratic ones to side with the wealthy."

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

oh my god

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just read truly the most unhinged and remarkable introduction to a published law review article I have ever seen

am literally writing about this right now, but the first thing to know is: we've done this before. When the insurance industry first developed in the late 1700s, it was used for exactly this kind of gambling. People would buy policies "insuring against" the outcome of particular battles.

We do know actually. You order a violent act by betting someone that it won't happen. They cash in by making it happen. Take a contract out.

To be sure, individual journalists at these firms sometimes act courageously. And it isn't inevitable that media behave so meekly. But historically (e.g. Iraq War), it's most often the case (see also: recent WaPo/NYT editorials). Under capitalism, our media too often serve as stenographers to power.

Jack writes--correctly--that the military abduction and extraction of Maduro "pretty clearly isn’t" legal. It plainly violates Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which is the supreme law of the United States (per Art. VI of the Constitution) and, as I've explained elsewhere, ... [1]

one neat trick constitutionalism

obsess

Little known fact: article II actually also includes an inherent power to execute the laws of Venezuela.