Sam Williams

NGL, a little cheesed nobody mentioned Fried Green Tomatoes while I was writing Legal Wendigos. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

OK, SSRN might not have done it, but the fact that they're trying to get in on it means I'm clearly behind the times. Not sure if I'm doing it right, but here's my effort:

@msmith750.bsky.social is the visionary here, but if NYU wants to tie weird or odd work into their stated preferences, climate doomerism (working on it, maybe your symposium can help!) is a driving force for a lot of my more offbeat projects...

Sam Williams, The Jokerfication of Law The Jokerfication of Law Sam Williams   It is tempting to adopt a certain fatalistic, nihilistic hedonism in the face of a dying world. Law professors can do little as the legal system that th…

What do we think, did Justice Roberts read it? Was the Ipse Dixit boost enough to get it on his radar? (He didn't, but a colleague who has read this asked if my opinion on Roberts had changed based on today's decision and I'll take the opportunity.)

hedgehogsandfoxes.org/index.php/20...

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the nadir of cinema. It is barely a movie and the worst part is that it's all people want. This realization broke my heart more than any other combination of movie and response has. RoS came close but NOBODY liked it so I didn't feel nuts and I have started to move on.

Wow AND my first rejection of the cycle, what a day!

It has come to my attention that I may need to start "demanding respect" and introducing myself by "my title" in order to avoid name confusion. Sad! Let me live in my fantasy of not being a law professor just a little bit longer!

I don't think this one quite works and it is based on rumor more than anything, but for low-art fans: Sam Raimi?

Yet another banger from @msmith750.bsky.social! He and his illustrious co-authors make several compelling arguments here, and really do cut to the core of what seems to draw people (even less terrible ones!) into AI's clutches.

3) AI is one of the "hooks" that has inspired a growing interest in Legal Research as a standalone course and law librarianship and it sucks that such a material benefit (and my career) is tied to such a useless fad.

Good post, but to add:

1) this is how a lot of law profs sound when they talk about using AI for legal scholarship (and other things but that's especially annoying).
2) bad art is extremely valuable and deeply underrated, and I think this is a big part of why ai discourse is the way it is.

Will they take away my Internet Law badge and gun if I admit that I just really like teaching internet law? The material's fun, the discourse is exciting, and I even found theoretical support for one of my earliest crackpot legal theories.

I posted it separately, but big thank you to @msmith750.bsky.social for getting this together! I had a great time and it really is quite an honor to make it onto the show. :)

If you want to listen to a man who sounds like the bird from Rio pontificate about legal scholarship for an hour, check outthe latest episode of the Ipse Dixit podcast! The weave got a little wide on this one, but that's expected by now. One of my great honors to appear- I hope you enjoy!

Maybe an earlier tip for those into weird scholarship: Do a HeinOnline search for your topic (or a keyword or two). Sometimes you see a glaring gap in the pop culture frame of reference, and sometimes you see that there is a shared one but it hasn't really been unified. Both are worth pursuing.

But also, triage is real. I'm a believer in smaller projects adding up to an agenda, but those smaller projects do actually need to bring something to the table. Believe it or not I have scrapped projects after getting a couple hundred words in and deciding its connection to my job was too tenuous.

This is a very good question, and I'm very worried I've over-learned my lesson on it, but I've shared this meme frequently and I think it conveys a simplified version of my take well. If you're a smart person who thinks about your subject a lot, there's probably something there.

Same! My defense of Perplexity is modest at best and way more of a neg on Google than anything. Especially since I suspect a major contributing factor is people needing to sift through a half page of AI-generated slop to get to an actual answer! But it's SOMETHING where I at least see the vision.

Credit where credit's due, I think there is a nontrivial chance that "just Google it" will become "just ask AI" in the foreseeable future (assuming the whole thing doesn't explode) thanks to things like Perplexity. That's not nothing! This is mostly a skill issue on Google's part, but still!

Do any of them list a specific use case that shouldn't be considered malpractice? I hope it goes without saying that the one cited here doesn't count.

Best I've picked up so far is doc review? And that's not even new!

I was going to back off of this one as I'm already very tired of thinking about AI and the LotR connection was getting so tenuous that I was thinking of cutting it, but uh, stay tuned I guess because JFC...

Christmas came early with reprints of the article that I would most like to hand out as a business card. My friend saw how excited I was by this, asked for a signed copy, and snapped this pic. It's certainly something!

Celebrate your holidays by reading www.capitallawreview.org/article/1363...!

One day I will find an excuse to show this masterpiece for classroom purposes and on that day I will throw a parade. If anyone has good ideas or a lesson plan please call me.

I'm working on/brainstorming a project that heavily features both of these movies if anyone has takes! (They're both fantastic but Anatomy of a Murder is my quintessential "Machine for Empathy" lawyer film).

(BCS is also involved but 1) it's not a movie and 2) I need to actually finish it)

Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point

clickhole.com/heartbreakin...

You know what, your coauthors got me. AI is the future and definitely not a waste of my time. OTHER people's time, though...

Tim makes this argument seem so obvious that I eagerly anticipate the court finding 6-3 the wrong way somehow.

New Article: Timothy Harris, "The Contracts Clause Can be Enforced via Section 1983, Period: The Nonexistent Circuit Court 'Split'," 78 SMU L. Rev. Forum 106 (2025) Check out a newly-published law review article by lawprof Timothy Harris, "The Contracts Clause Can be Enforced via Section 1983, Period: The Nonexistent

My colleague @timothymharris.bsky.social' latest, The Contracts Clause Can be Enforced via Section 1983, Period: The Nonexistent Circuit Court 'Split,' 78 SMU L. Rev. Forum 106 (2025) got picked up by the inversecondemnation blog! Congratulations! www.inversecondemnation.com/2025/12/new-...

Now that we know Pritzker's (surprisingly solid) Star Wars rankings, any other guesses on top contenders' hot takes? I feel like Newsom and Vance are too terminally online to be interesting, but I feel like AOC or something could cement the youth vote (and Trump's respect) by being a RotS-head.

I think this is an interesting take that also explains why the third act of Rogue One has never really worked for me. A common refrain about Andor is that it's great until you remember that this "Palpatine" guy is a weird cackling demon shooting lightning, and Rogue One just... put it in the movie?

Honestly I think my argument is more for lowering RotS than it is raising any of the others, but it's not a hill I want to die on. That movie has enough stuff that really works that I see someone just clicking with it, but every good part of it is inextricably linked with something baffling and bad.