I am glad that the student who sent this to me recognized it as an example of what not to do as a lawyer.

that wsj story now feels like a culmination of anti-trans panic that should prompt a reckoning in the mainstream media. was totally bunk, false, peddled. it’s the kind of thing that has led to reconciliation before, and it should now. news editors should be looking at themselves in the mirror

Laugh, then cry, then organize.

Wait! The Solicitor General signed a letter saying “one year ago the United States was a dead country”? What lawyer would do that? How are those words defined? What is his argument? What is his evidence? What are his sources? How does any of this connect to a legal argument? To plausible expertise?

One of the overlooked problems with otherwise sensible deference doctrines like rational basis review and presumptions of regularity is that they require courts to declare that important people are liars or bigots or filled with animus. Hard thing for them to do even when the evidence is this stark.

Some nutty things about this excerpt: (1) It says facts are “undisputed” and then cites only press releases for those facts; (2) It defines giving people’s names as “doxxing”; (3) It conflates bureaucrats with street cops when making arguments about physical danger.

1. We lawyers have done a lousy job so far of explaining to the public how the current Supreme Court is seizing power from the lower federal courts. Professor Vladeck & others have done invaluable work by bringing attention to the shadow docket, which is a critical aspect of that story.

@dorfonlaw.bsky.social speaking with moral and tactical clarity about the meaning and stakes of the Brown settlement.

If I had polled con law students or professors in 2010 and asked them to rank potential impeachable offenses, “threatened to unilaterally strip American citizen of citizenship for voicing criticism of him” would surely have made the top ten, likely the top five.

This is the part I don’t get. The reason the traditional rules of presidential behavior don’t apply to him is because we refuse to apply the traditional rules of presidential behavior to him. And the press have been thr worst offenders since day one.

I really don’t know what to say. In addition to the incoherence, illegality, and substantive stupidity of the policy, this violates every norm of communication, professionalism and punctuation. If this is his idea of a government letter, no wonder he thinks government can be run by seven interns

REMINDER! Join us at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT TOMORROW, June 30, for our Third Annual Supreme Court Rapid Response Webinar, to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. Nationally recognized experts in law and history will discuss the significance of the decision... 1/2

Looking forward to hosting Seattle University’s third annual Supreme Court Rapid Response Webinar w/ @evanbernick.bsky.social, @earlymodjustice.bsky.social, @jerchin.bsky.social, @anthonymkreis.bsky.social, @leahlitman.bsky.social, @portiapedro.bsky.social, @robertltsai.bsky.social, and other stars!

There is a big distance between “universal injunctions should be granted sparingly” and “no universal injunctions even if government acts in ugly & unlawful ways in areas where uniformity is essential, individual litigation is impossible, the stakes are high, and the issue is a pure legal question.”

This paragraph is going to be my joker origin story. That "two people can get married...so long as they love each other" is just objectively true. It is not a view that can be accepted or rejected.

This is an insightful thread cataloging all of the legal arguments and strategies that remain open after Skrmetti. Lots of ways to win narrow victories, win in state courts, get good language from lower courts, etc., while waiting for politics and culture and the Court’s membership to change.

118 pages of writing but what this means in plain English is that a majority of the Court does not view protecting the equality, liberty, and dignity of transgender Americans as an interest of constitutional stature. The Court and country will look back on this decision in embarrassment one day.

It’s like the White House and ABC watched “Good Night and Good Luck” and decided McCarthy and the media cowards were the heroes.

These cynical shenanigans shouldn’t be lost in the noise of general lawlessness.

In addition to the Emoluments issue, how can the government make a $400 million (plus or minus) contribution to the Trump Library Foundation without Congressional appropriation?

That is a picture of a principled and authentic person beginning to come to terms with the fact that his kind is often the exception and certainly not the rule. In his later years, he managed to assimilate those lessons without losing his integrity. RIP.

Law can be hard and unpredictable and counter-intuitive but if the press doesn’t at least try to understand it and get it right, resistance to tyranny becomes, like this purported tariff, twice as expensive.

None of this is going to work until SCOTUS makes clear it will backstop lower court contempt sanctions. Until then, the admin will try to drive a truck through every crack in every order, ruining lives and mocking the judiciary in the process.

After federal troops forced a fugitive slave named Anthony Burns back into slavery in the 1850s, one Bostonian wrote, “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.” The abuse of power radicalizes people. We are seeing that now.

Presidents are elected to four-year terms to administer a government whose functions and structures have been built through generations of democratic lawmaking. A system of government in which any individual President has the unilateral authority to delete departments or functions is incoherent.

There is something deeply psychologically revealing about these kinds of rhetorical moves. Not sure whether it is guilt, denial, or projection, but the more they harm others, the more they feel the need to style themselves as the victims.

Dayenu. Nineteen times Dayenu.

Assuming all of this is true, they are literally committing very basic, very traditional crimes for which even Trump v. United States likely does not provide immunity right out in the open.

I don’t use the “fascist” term often or really ever, as to preserve its meaning, but what the United States Government is embarking on with the El Salvadoran prison camp is simply that. It’s an affront to the rule of law, the Constitution, and centuries of Anglo-American constitutional development.

This. Also under what authority are they being held. They are not serving criminal sentences. They are not in pre-trial detention for pending immigration charges. And they are not being held in order to facilitate deportation as they have already been removed.

An extraordinary amicus brief from colleagues and former colleague/s @seattleulaw.bsky.social including @korematsuctr.bsky.social, @charlottegarden.bsky.social, @jerchin.bsky.social, Jessica Levin, and Melissa Lee laying out the stakes for Justice when government comes for the lawyers.

stop calling things deportation just because they call it deportation. -You cannot legally deport people without due process. -You cannot legally deport citizens. -They are defining down deportation to break the law.

Wait! Now he is extorting Republican firms?

Read this, map it, let it sink in. It is all a (very cruel) game to them.

Every time Steve posts this, I add that this includes a period of time in which the Democrats became the first party ever to win the popular vote in 6 out of 7 elections. We have suffered decades of dominance by a disfavored constitutional vision.

The claim that the destruction of essential civilizational institutions is being done in the name of the Jews is itself a form of antisemitism—cultural vandalism carried out in our name. That, my friends, is rank bullshit.

The Director of National Intelligence told Congress under oath that he has no evidence that we are at war or under invasion. The courts should not only reject but also sanction the attempt to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. Otherwise, we are all the way through the looking glass.

Making a ruckus while a guest in someone else’s country? Dude is lucky Marco Rubio isn’t the Danish foreign minister.

And another one, just minutes later, this one filed by my old employer, with arguably the leading republican appellate lawyer in the country as counsel.

A clear, persuasive, and exhaustive complaint that, in any sane world, would not only lead to relief but would then be swiftly repackaged as an impeachment resolution.

A good start from Wilmer.

A reminder from our friend Alexander Hamilton (Federalist 84): “[T]he subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law . . . [has] been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.”

100% of the (two) private law firms I have worked for have now been targeted by the President. Let’s see if this one lives up to its firm ideals any better.

Some hard truths from one of my favorite straight talkers.

We do not have a free country in this moment. When they can nab someone off the street because they don't like what they say, they can nab anyone.

Summer Associate 1998. Certainly would have signed if asked. If I had ranked the 20+ firms I interviewed with back then based on likelihood of ever capitulating like this, Paul, Weiss would have almost certainly ranked dead last.

I think this point hasn’t been emphasized enough. Even if the admin is right on everything else (they aren’t), handing people over without any process to be imprisoned and abused by a random foreign leader violates the constitution, a dozen statutes, international law, and every system of morality.

The sitting president traveled to the Justice Department and accused the press of breaking the law by criticizing him.

Genuinely no idea how any Democrat can vote for any CR or budget until the administration commits to abide by its terms or the courts make them. Until then, giving the admin $ is endorsing its power grab.

My only conclusion is that Columbia's lawyers are as bad as its leaders. Reading this statement, one would have zero idea that the Trump administration's actions are illegal.