When we teach our students how to be lawyers, we are also teaching them how to be human beings. These gloating coins reflect a problem within the profession.

One year I'll learn to give myself more time to grade. Not this year, aparrently. But one year I will.

It's impossible to overstate how much of what ICE is doing on the ground reflects this completely preposterous conflation of hostile *speech* and hostile *conduct.* The First Amendment protects—or, at least, is supposed to protect—the former up and until it's a "true threat," which none of this is.

The Sandwich Trial is the only thing getting me through November grading right now.

Big day at U.S. District Court in D.C. where Sean Dunn, the D.C. Sandwich Guy, is on trial for misdemeanor assault of a federal officer. Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore is on the stand narrating surveillance video of the sammie toss. 'Now he’s struck me with the sandwich,' Lairmore says.

Yesterday in Shilling v. Trump (the 9th Circuit case about the military transgender ban), the government admitted that it has found no evidence to support any of the "traits" that the Secretary of Defense attributed to transgender servicemembers.

This evening I am having dinner with the 1L professor who inspired me most and who taught me to love teaching. Such a fun full circle moment. <3

You’ll just be minding your own business when suddenly Martha-Ann

Spoken to loud applause at a teacher convention...in 1932, Germany

I teach at a private school that values academic freedom, but this kind of thing absolutely chills my classroom speech. This crap harms us all.

My students will recognize this use of "the reader." Number one lesson of legal writing is to remember who you are writing to.

I can say with certainty that in this case, the law school is not the problem.

The brief order notes that this "is not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation," which of course, is something the court is free to say if it were to deny certain other emergency requests brought on the emergency docket.

So excited that my article, Gender Affirming Rhetoric, will be published in the Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice this Fall.

Google Chrome: Would you like to visit Scholastica? You uhh "visit it often."

I am so thankful to teach law students for a million reasons, but these days I am just overwhelmingly grateful for the hope and inspiration these young folks provide. Keeps me going during the never-ending onslaught of horrors. What a gift it is to help students find their voices and power.

I'm very happy to share that I will be hosting the *Second* Annual Democracy and Public Law Works-in-Progress Conference at the Michigan State University College of Law on April 3–4, 2026! Law scholars (current and aspiring), I'd love to host you! Application: msu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

make it stop

I just typed "facks" instead of "facts" on a student paper, so I'm absolutely qualified to teach first-year writing.

Seriously. No author likes those "[Journal] has made a decision concerning your manuscript" emails. But what we hate more is when you reject our pieces (or, what is the same thing, fill up your volume without making a formal decision on our pieces) without even telling us.

This semester I vowed to effectively use my TAs, and wow. They sure can update all the dates and details in my course docs and save me untold hours. They sure can. What a time!

If you work in higher ed, you need to get your folks together and end the use of course evals or at least bar their consideration in evaluation, promotion, and hiring. This needed to happen yesterday because they don't measure learning, they measure instructor gender, but now it's a snitch pool.

I don't know, Dave, I can count to four without including the CJ.

Law librarian appreciation post!!!!!

Raffi, I let my 1Ls use it for their final project for me, a discovery dispute letter. I got so much abortion case law cited in these letters. Because the robot does not understand that “undue burden” means different things in different contexts. Yang is full of it.

It gets more galling everyday that Justice Amy Cooney Barnett lectured Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on not replacing an Imperial Executive with an Imperial Court. An Imperial Court does not apparently feel the need to explain itself with an opinion at all.

I’m so old, I remember Justice Barrett responding to people complaining that SCOTUS was comprised of lawless right-wing hacks by urging people to “read the opinions” and judge the reasoning for ourselves.

100%

Wishing safe travels and inspiring fellowship to all our colleagues traveling to @umichlaw.bsky.social in Ann Arbor this week for the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference!!

BREAKING: Documents filed in court today assert that officials from El Salvador told the United Nations that it "facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure" by the U.S. but that "the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the" U.S.

As a Brown man who grew up with a family who all eat like this, I can't tell you how deeply this hurts and genuinely cuts. The racism is unbelievable. I eat like this and am proud to do so but it doesn't stop how painful the shock is that someone views you this way.

After reading Mahmoud, I am even more grossed out by Barrett's accusation that JACKSON of all people is embracing an imperial judiciary. These folks are micromanaging lesson plans!

Okay, well, SOME panic helped, but now I'm writing about Mahmoud. I know the court can't hear me, but it does feel good to scream.

I think the more likely scenario is bigoted parents opting out of that teacher, creating an administrative nightmare and similarly disincentivizing hiring us to teach.

I really do think this might be the worst Supreme Court of all time, which is saying something for an institution that coexisted with slavery These motherfuckers are even worse imo bc they are *also* out here using antebellum reasoning and pursuing antebellum goals but well post bellum!

If the Supreme Court thinks universal injunctions are unconstitutional, to wait until *now* to say that, in this of all cases, with this of all presidents, is a devastating indictment of both its impartiality and its prudence.

Exactly.

Wow, I am struggling today. I admire those of you that can read this stuff and just go write about it instead of dissolving into a depressed/panicked mess.

Friends who, like me, may have attention issues, may I recommend this livestream on your screen. It's juuuust enough motion and beauty to occupy the part of my brain that won't let me focus. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi0m...

Me, explaining faculty meeting dynamics to a new hire:

Whelp. Finally reading it. Haven't been able to bring myself to yet.

I really am not looking forward to having to fill the hole in my article that's waiting on Skrmetti. Gonna be bad.

I've had chronic pain. I've had seven surgeries. I've been dumped. But y'all? Nothing hurts as bad as trying to write words.

Use Signal. We promise, no AI clutter, and no surveillance ads, whatever the rest of the industry does. <3

I cannot and will not just show up in the fall and teach 1Ls that everything is normal

Not just talking. Filing articles. Now.

I'm not more outraged by this violence against a senator than the violence against the most vulnerable immigrant. But this moment right here means I have NO patience for shrugging or doomerism or "I can't watch the news." This is the turning point, y'all.

Apropos of the recent Bluebook discussion is this passage. Interesting to think that at least some of the same students writing those pedantic Bluebook rules will also be the clerks taking a first read through your brief.

Joseph Stalin has conducted a series of trials of high-ranking military officials in Moscow. He says espionage for Germany needs to be punished; critics say the evidence has been faked and the defendants have been deprived of fair trials.