Kate Redburn

are you reading about the Law Speaker??

Law and History Review is pleased to announce publication of this year's first issue of The Docket, our digital imprint dedicated to bringing cutting-edge legal history to our readers--no paywall, no access restrictions.

Here's our table of contents for Volume 8, Issue 1-2 (2025)

This is forced conformity to the government's preference for the meaning of your body.

The agreement forces Brown to adopt definitions of sex which exclude trans people across the university: "all practices, policies, and procedures adopted and implemented by the University for any athletic opportunity, event, competition, category, program, or activity designated for women."

Just read the Brown University agreement and this really jumped out.

"The University will not perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child's appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex."

Dozens of Maine faith leaders testified against anti-transgender bills Roughly 50 religious leaders and advocates testified on bills restricting bathroom use and participation in women’s sports this spring.

“Roughly 50 religious leaders and advocates testified individually on bills restricting bathroom use and participation in women’s sports this spring. All but four opposed the legislation.”

A Columbia genocide scholar says she may leave over university's new definition of antisemitism Academics around the country are raising alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration.

Marianne Hirsch is a brilliant critical theorist and inspiring colleague. A pillar of our critical community here at Columbia.

apnews.com/article/colu...

The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America by John Fabian Witt Pulitzer finalist Witt (American Contagions) unearths the nearly forgotten history of the American Fund for Public Service, an e...

Starred review from @publisherswkly.bsky.social says The Radical Fund is “an immense and essential achievement” with an “exhilarating range of figures” and “stark parallels with the present.” www.publishersweekly.com/9781476765877

I spoke with the LA Times about the Trump administration's latest attacks on transgender kids. I appreciated how thoughtful Sonja Sharp was in our conversation and the article.

Here is @dorfonlaw.bsky.social on Columbia's settlement. Read through to the end for the big important point.

www.dorfonlaw.org/2025/07/how-...

Bracing analysis from Columbia Law School’s David Pozen about the significance and implications of Columbia’s settlement with Trump. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

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CfP for the Inaugural Association for Law and Political Economy (ALPE) Conference is out!!!

LPE is moving the central locus of coordination away from a foundation-funded model to a dues-paying membership organization.

lawandpoliticaleconomy.org

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Do You Want to Get Paid to Write About the World’s Worst People? I Have Terrific News There is so much news to cover. Please let me pay you to help me do it!

Periodic reminder that if you are the kind of sicko who wants to think and write about the Supreme Court in your spare time, you should pitch me, because I will at least pay you for it ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/do-you-wan...

Incredible news for trans people - the Medicaid provision is out of the Trump horror bill. It did not require a point of order vote, and instead, Republicans pulled it out on their own, likely knowing they would lose the vote.

Good job to everyone for calling their Senators.

Fwiw I think it is more than etiquette, sometimes understatement is a way to signal to lower courts and state courts that they still have room to maneuver. Something I've been thinking about - how strategies to reduce harm in law and politics can look so different rhetorically.

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.

They addressed this in oral argument. Trans teacher would raise 1A compelled speech concerns. And DOJ claimed that it would burden religious orients for their kid to *share a classroom* with a trans student.

A thread on Alito's opinion in Mahmoud v. Taylor. The Court holds that religious parents get to opt out their kids of exposure to/reading of books with LGBTQ+ characters (or messages) in public schools. It's bad in its reasoning, baffling in the test it sets up, and potentially broad in its impact

At oral argument in this case DOJ said it would burden parents for their child to share a classroom with a trans student.

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.

What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About SCOTUS’s Transgender Ruling The Skrmetti decision to uphold a state ban on gender-affirming care for minors was not as sweeping as it seems—nor is the trans rights movement to blame for it.

It’s telling how the Christian right’s role in getting Skrmetti to SCOTUS is being erased—and by those seemingly desperate to blame trans people for asking for “too much.” So I spoke with legal historian @kredburn.bsky.social and ACLU attorney @chasestrangio.bsky.social, who argued the case:

Another disastrous and cruel SCOTUS decision about women's healthcare.

LPE friends - CONFERENCE UPDATE!! ⏰☎️ Planning is still underway for the first annual LPE conference, launching a new LPE Association, but we're pushing the dates to FEBRUARY 5-7, 2026. We'll be putting out a CFP by August with information about how and what to submit. Until then, save the new date!

This is my read too fwiw. That paragraph is a way to smush the state’s normative purposes into the diagnosis so that it all looks medical, and now exempt from normal business. Important to note that the law does not classify by diagnosis.

What, fn 3 didn't clear things up :) ?

Yes

A Title VI Demand Letter That Still Violates Title VI (and the Constitution)

A response from me and several Columbia Law colleagues to Judge Vyskocil’s opinion last week denying standing to AAUP and AFT in their challenge to government funding suspensions to Columbia. Consider us dubious, to say the least. knightcolumbia.org/blog/a-title...

Nice! I take your point about the future. I think the opinion i
leaves much doctrine in place as you say, and a lot will depend on what is cast as medical. The framing in the piece I critiqued lacked any of the nuance.

Teles - Rise of Conservative Legal Movement, Decker - The Other Rights Revolution, anything by Ann Southworth, Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Mary Ziegler. Some of those are more institutional than purely intellectual histories.

Three of these are matters of interpretation where the "takeaway" ignores very strong evidence to the contrary, making it hopelessly biased. The other three are just wrong.