Paul Sherman

A lot of people find intermediate scrutiny mysterious, but it’s just three consubstantial First Amendment doctrines that are fully distinct yet indivisibly one.

The AI Will See You Now How 30 minutes with ChatGPT changed my life

This is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It’s about how I used ChatGPT to work through something I’d carried for 25 years, and it took about 30 minutes. open.substack.com/pub/paulmshe...

Essential listening for animal advocates and legal professionals: @marisul.bsky.social dissects Florida's cultivated meat ban with @paulmsherman.bsky.social . A detailed examination of how constitutional law can advance animal protection through food innovation. ourhenhouse.org/alp115

My kid asked me why they were called polka dots, and this is legitimately crazy.

It's a great podcast. Full of insight.

Make the knight corner-y, game’s getting ornery.

“Great” in the sense of “as a person.” I’m just okay at chess.

Finishing up a 50+ page legal brief and thinking about the time I dropped an undergraduate class because it had a 15-page term paper.

We offered! The Articles of Confederation gave Canada a free admission, but they evidently declined.

I think everyone goes through this as they develop. Is it a problem of patience? Something I struggle with is getting a superior position and then assuming that now it must be time to “do something,” when just maintaining the pressure would have eventually left my opponent with no good moves.

I haven’t reviewed the game yet, but what’s the view on Gukesh playing the exchange variation? Is he scared of Ding’s French prep? Seems risky to play a drawish line with White when Ding has an extra game with White.

YouTube video by John Stossel States Ban Lab-Grown Meat: How that limits our freedom and harms animals.

John Stossel did a segment on Florida's ban on cultivated meat. @ij.org is challenging the law in court. It's remarkable how candid the cattlemen's lobbyist is that the law is about protecting ranchers, not consumers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kse...

I'm guessing the odds are about 99% that this guy watched this morning's game. But I'm proud to say that I played just like Ding.

All I want is for my pieces to coordinate as well as Ding Liren’s Horsey Hook.

And, of course, one should read IJ’s amicus brief on the other side (written by yours truly), explaining why this is an extremely straightforward case and the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is obviously wrong.

Anyways, cases like this always attract a few wacky briefs as well. One of the amicus briefs is about how Alfred Kinsey destroyed America. I leave finding that one as an exercise for the reader.

If these amicus briefs have a target, it’s influencing concurrences/dissents. Alito may write separately about why the Fifth Circuit should hold that strict scrutiny is satisfied, citing these briefs. Thomas may write separately about why tiers of scrutiny should be abandoned, citing history briefs.

The correct outcome is for the court to declare the correct standard of review (strict scrutiny). Although the Court could also hold that the law is likely to fail strict scrutiny, it’s more likely to remand for the Fifth Circuit to apply the correct standard.

The Court granted review on a narrow question: Was the Fifth Circuit correct that Texas’s law gets the lowest level of judicial scrutiny, rather than the highest. Overwhelmingly, the briefs supporting Texas are about why the law is a good idea. That may be! But that’s not what the court is deciding.

Yesterday the Supreme Court received a whopping 27 amicus briefs supporting Texas’s age-verification law for online pornography. I think it speaks to the weakness of the government’s argument that so few address the actual legal issue in the case. www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?...

Excellent example of the Shankland Question: What happens if I do it anyway? From 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners, #777.

I’ve just learned that the games in the upcoming chess world championship start at 4:00 a.m. ET. Gonna be a long tournament for Americans who want to avoid spoilers

It’s such a beautiful, instructive game. And I’ve won a ton of blitz games against people who play the Philidor but have apparently never studied it.

from time to time, IJ hosts “master classes,” where we can teach our colleagues something we know a lot about unrelated to work. Next month I’m doing one on chess and will be going over the Opera Game move by move.

I strongly encourage everyone to go into settings, my saved feeds, and then unpin “discover.” Like Twitter’s “For You” feed, it thrives on polarization and collective outrage. That’s unhealthy even if you agree with the sentiments. Use this platform in healthier ways than the last one.

Thought better of this and will still restrict myself to mild oaths.

Since nobody actually follows me here, maybe I'll start using swears.

I agree, but have still stopped using the phrase. Using it correctly confuses some readers, while using it incorrectly annoys others.