Dan Farbman

In a world run by Biff Tannen, expect lots of people to follow the Biff Tannen model of self-enrichment.

Update: people found!

Hi folks. We found a lab mix named Grayson wandering free at the corner of Harvey and Clifton Streets in North Cambridge this morning. He has a "Lab4Rescue" collar and a CT number on his tags.We've tried to connect with his people, but have not yet had any luck. If you know him, let us know!

Every year in Con Law when I get to Cruikshank and the Civil Rights Cases I get bummed again. I should (and do!) know better...but it's such a bummer.

I agree that this is deeply troubling (and depressingly unsurprising). On the flip side, this 37% number is probably lower than the support in THE SOUTH for Reconstruction during Redemption and in the lead up to Jim Crow. So much depends on the strength of politcal forces and how they are arrayed.

www.law.georgetown.edu This is an archive of https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2022/11/Francois-Speak-to-Your-Dead.pdf from Friday 21, February 2025

Aderson Francois: Speak to Your Dead, Write for Your Dead: David Galloway, Malinda Brandon, and a Story of American Reconstruction, 111 Geo. L.J. 31-93 (2022) perma.cc/Z5U6-L2SV

Credit where credit is due. There’s nothing Roberts likes more than to pretend he’s just quibbling over box checking while, for example, gutting the VRA.

post a banger that isn't in English
youtu.be/GO-JCDaZKNI

In the monstrous facts of Prigg v Pennsylvania (1842), Margaret Morgan’s husband was told that his wife and their children were safe for the night and sent home. When he returned to court the next day, they’d been kidnapped by Prigg and enslaved.

(SCOTUS ruled the kidnapping was legal…)

I regret to inform you that things are better in Madrid.

In the 1850s, hardline supporters of slavery started developing affirmative theological defenses of enslaving other human beings. This was seen as outrageous and, in turn, supercharged theological opposition to slavery.

Someone sent this link around a while back:

Resistance Lawyering by Daniel Farbman :: SSRN papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Thanks for sharing. I’ll say that one (among many) lessons to be learned from the abolitionist resisters is to use legal tools in solidarity with movements that are using all the tools at hand. We won’t sue our way to multiracial democracy. But we sure can use the legal levers in the struggle.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 established a new office of Federal Commissioner to assist in the process of reenslaving people across the north. In some places opinion was so against the law that it was impossible to recruit commissioners to fill the positions.

Same vibes.

MAKE FITZHUGH GREAT AGAIN!!

I'm learning a lot more about Robin Leach than I ever wanted to know.

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If you have kids between 8-18 and are looking for an excuse to get rid - er...give them the gift of an amazing experience in the mountains of Western Massachusetts for some part of this summer, consider sending them to Rowe. It's a place that changed my life.

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My luke-warmest take is that radicalization is a slow process and that it is good in whatever form it takes and whenever it takes.

We can't do the work of building a democracy worthy of ourselves by ourselves.

For years, @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social & I have been frustrated with what we call the Part IV Problem in legal scholarship, the expectation of neat & feasible prescriptions to end pieces. Our frustrations are heightened in this moment of authoritarianism, as we wrote today at @lpeblog.bsky.social:

Today, like nearly every day for the past year, is a good day to read Thoreau’s “Slavery in Massachusetts.”

“It is not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.”

MAKE FEDERALISM GREAT AGAIN!!!

Since the death of Renee Good, I've been thinking a lot about the way that the pro-slavery press covered the murder of abolitionist printer Elijah Lovejoy in 1838. In short, he was blamed for "disturbing the peace" and "provoking violence" by agitating for abolition. History/tragedy/farce, etc.

Local government law at the heart of everything.

This Vast Southern Empire — Harvard University Press Winner of the John H. Dunning Prize, American Historical AssociationWinner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign RelationsWinner of the James H. Broussard Bes...

If you want to read more about this:

www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Periodic reminder that the confederacy hoped to conquer South America and create a hemispheric slave empire.

Alexander Stephens’ ghost’s hands at the wheel of our politics.

White House flags DEI-themed college essays as potentially unlawful - The Boston Globe Navigating the college admissions landscape has never been easy, but for the class of 2030 it’s particularly fraught.

The One Little Thing SCOTUS Explicitly Said Was Still Lawful is Not Lawful Say the "Very Best" Lawyers Who Definitely Care About Legality Above All.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/12/m...

Tell me the best stuff you've read recently about legal realism and its application to all the stuff we're living with. Asking for a person updating a syllabus...

If we’re just gonna make the constitution mean whatever we want, can we start making up “legitimate questions” about the Senate and the electoral college?

Get in folks! We’re gonna make this old parchment live a little.

Look, I know this weaponization of male academic interest is the oldest story in the book, but it’s just so, so pernicious. It’s awful to the women directly involved, but it’s also awful to *all* women in the academy, who have to live in its shadow all the time.

Please stop making the worst parts of American history “great” again.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....