Michael C. Dorf

Besides its merits arguments, Colorado defends its conversion therapy ban before SCOTUS by contesting the plaintiff's standing. On the blog, @espinsegall.bsky.social worries the argument will fall on deaf ears, given this Court's tendency to manipulate jurisdiction in cases involving religion.👇

Happy First Monday in October! On the blog, I preview tomorrow's SCOTUS oral argument on whether Colorado's conversion therapy ban infringes free speech. I explain why the ideological stakes are mixed by pointing to implications for hypothetical red-state bans on gender-affirming talk therapy.

In Part 3 of Prof Neil Buchanan's series on Trump's incredible ability to destroy wealth, he suggests that it's not all unintentional. He likens the moves of Trump and other power-crazed plutocrats to tech firms engaging in enshittification of their products: a symptom of late-stage capitalism.👇

Why Do People Talk to Isaac Chotiner? Some speculations after the latest intellectual self-immolation.

BTW, I'm hardly the first person to notice that Chotiner's usual style is to ask challenging questions that trap his interviewees with their own words. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/why-do-peo...

A fair point, but Chotiner was very uncharacteristically non-confrontational in that interview.

Cass Sunstein sat for an interview with Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker. Unsurprisingly, given Chotiner's track record, it did not go well for Sunstein--and not only because the best he could do to defend his friendship with Henry Kissinger was to say Kissinger wasn't as bad as Stalin. Details👇

Who could have prevented Trump's political prosecution of Comey? Trump; his advisors; & the grand jury. Who can prevent conviction and imprisonment? Judges & jurors. Who's ultimately responsible? Trump, Congressional Republicans & the 40% of Americans who support the authoritarian regime. Details👇

On the blog, Prof Neil Buchanan calls out otherwise liberal/progressive pundits and politicians for reflexively accepting what was once just the conservative view that government deficit spending and debt is inherently bad.

Lest there be any doubt, I disapprove of the underlying executive orders. My bottom line in the column: "the law firms are not the ones breaking the law, and the law that has been broken is not the Antideficiency Act. The law breaker is the president, and the law he violated is the Constitution."

Are the Law Firm Settlements with the Trump Administration Illegal? Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf explores whether law firms that settled with the Trump administration by agreeing to provide free services to the government violated the Antideficiency Act, whic...

Democrats wrote law firms providing free legal services to the govt after capitulating to Trump's executive orders that they may be breaking the law. In my column for @justiaverdict.bsky.social, I explain that the Antideficiency Act applies only to "voluntary" services, but the firms were coerced. 👇

Directing his attention at Ezra Klein's analysis and JD Vance's rhetoric, Prof Neil Buchanan observes that while of course "words are better than violence, that does not mean that everyone's words are offered in good faith or even add up to a coherent argument." Details on the blog.👇

Prof Jacob Hamburger suggests that state labor law could provide some protection against ICE raids: "As federal immigration enforcement ramps up while federal labor enforcement winds down, states have an opportunity to devise new labor law tools to protect and empower immigrants at work." Details 👇

That's pretty much every news story and the topic of the first few paragraphs of my blog post today.

The conclusion is the perhaps most (would-be) hilarious part. Having announced military support for Ukraine's full territorial integrity, Trump signs off the same way he might end a welcome message at a tournament at one of his golf courses, wishing good luck to all the players in the tourney/war.

There was some easy-to-miss amusing news last week. A federal judge struck what he called Trump's "tedious and burdensome" complaint against the NY Times. As I explain on the blog, the lawyers packed the pleading with hyperbole for no tactical legal purpose but to please the narcissistic client. 👇

On the blog, @espinsegall.bsky.social, who is a faculty member of a public university in a blue city in a purple state run by a Republican statewide government, wonders what is and is no longer permissible for him to say. 👇

Trump said the quiet part out loud: his critics must be silenced. But FCC Chair Brendan Carr has suggested he would restore the so-called "fairness doctrine" that conservatives despised and Reagan ended. Carr would apply it unfairly, but even if applied fairly, is it still constitutional? Details👇

YouTube video by Tompkins County Public Library TCPL Presents The Constitution: Rights to Know. Program 1: The Bill of Rights

I was asked to speak about the Bill of Rights by my friends at
@tcplny.bsky.social, Ithaca's great public library. I agreed-- because apparently now I'm a legal historian. 🙄 The audience kept me on my toes and up at the front of the room for nearly 2 hours, so watch/listen at your own risk.

Prof Neil Buchanan--who had defended Sen Schumer's actions on the last budget bill--has reached the breaking point. On the blog, he explains that "Schumer, Jeffries, and everyone like them somehow manage to kill any outbreak of enthusiasm among the people who should be energized right now." 👇

I doubt that any serious historian would agree with that claim.

If Kennedy v Bremerton eliminates play in the joints, it means that in many contexts an accommodation of religion is required (given Tandon) unless it violates the Establishment Clause, which is determined by "reference to historical practices and understandings." He thinks that's clear. It isn't.

The Trump/RFK Jr. CDC has reverted to calling mpox "monkeypox." There's no scientific or other policy basis for the change. Expressing and encouraging racism and homophobia are, for the Trump administration, a feature, not a bug. Details on the blog. 👇

Your argument depends on rules being clear in all of their applications, which is nearly impossible, unless the rules are arbitrary w/r/t edge cases. A wide buffer zone will almost always provide greater reassurance of an action's legality than purportedly clear lines with little or no buffer zone.

Prof Neil Buchanan--who was virtually alone among progressives in thinking Chuck Schumer rightly chose the less awful of two awful paths by funding the govt in March--argues that now that Trump's lawlessness is inarguable, Democrats should not cooperate in trying to avoid a government shutdown. 👇

A magnificently snarky review by my colleague @gshans.bsky.social of Justice Barrett’s new book vindicates my decision to review her CBS interview without reading it by confirming that it is a platitudinous brief for naive formalism. See also my column below.

Below is the full essay, which applies the play-in-the joints concept to clashes between free expression and antidiscrimination laws, competing conceptions of equality in education, and the debt-ceiling dilemma I've addressed in other work.

Play in the Joints Earlier this year, I was honored to deliver the Dyson Distinguished Lecture at Pace University . My invitation arrived before the second Tru...

On the blog, I summarize and link to my new essay in the UC Davis Law Review online: "Play in the Joints Beyond the Religion Clauses." It critiques recent SCOTUS cases that shrink the zone between what Free Exercise requires and Establishment forbids. It also praises buffer zones more broadly. 👇

Justices Sotomayor and Barrett Are Must-See TV—But Not in a Good Way Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf examines recent interviews with Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor, focusing primarily on Barrett’s CBS interview and both Justices’ comments on the S...

Promoting their respective new books, Justices Sotomayor & Barrett sat for interviews. As I explain on @justiaverdict.bsky.social, each offered pablum about SCOTUS. Barrett also sowed confusion about fundamental rights & displayed obliviousness to the Trump administration's threat to democracy.👇

On the blog, @espinsegall.bsky.social continues his series on the 20th anniversary of the appointment of John Roberts as Chief Justice by noting how much the law has changed, thus questioning whether we have the rule of law or the rule of people--in particular, the people on the Supreme Court.

The Hen Report: “Who invited the vegan?” | The Squirrel Who Crossed the Political Divide In this week's episode of The Hen Report, we welcome back our favorite constitutional law scholar and wingman Michael Dorf to dish about the viral saga of Peanut the Squirrel. What started as a heartb...

I return as "wing man" in the latest episode of The Hen Report podcast with @marisul.bsky.social and @jasminsinger.com of @ourhenhouse.org. Listen at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts to our discussion of Peanut the Squirrel, Fred the Raccoon, intersectional activism, and more.