Andrew Siegel

The idea that the federal government through its military brought its coercive weight down upon a famously independent private association because the President and the Secretary of Defense didn’t like its values is one of the most totalitarian things I have heard in awhile.

Notice also that they are living in a fictional factual universe. No one was locked inside their homes, immigration policy oscillated back to merely harsh, and the government constantly compromised with vaccine skeptics despite a century of precedents giving them even broader public health powers.

Still remember my then-fiance and I walking out of The English Patient both incredibly nervous that the other one might have liked the movie. Not saying it would have been a deal breaker. But not saying it wouldn’t have either.

3 (Feldman, O’Connell, Wheaton)

We are doing the Stand By Me version of this event and prices are comparable.

This must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.

@atg.wa.gov, if the facts check out this looks like the easiest prosecution of ICE agents you will ever find. Can’t imagine a remotely plausible argument for any immunity doctrine.

This has been one of my biggest worries for awhile. Given their propensity to lie about basic facts and the courts’ invention of absurd deference, immunity, and remedial doctrines, it is not clear we could stop a cynical illegal push to indiscriminately deport citizens.

Brilliant? Sure. Kind? More than you will ever know. But what made him special was the quiet confidence that motivated him to stand up against cheats, bullies, and bigots who threatened fairness, justice, and the rule of law. I hope his spirit lives on among his many Article III admirers.

Birthright citizenship is a policy choice so central to our values and identity as a nation that we chose to amend the Constitution to protect it against the passions and prejudices of temporary majorities.

The core arguments around many of the right’s pet theories are not serious but instead of dismissing them as such we relied on logical argument and voting to defeat them. The latter didn’t work, as consistent popular vote victories didn’t flip the court, and the former only legitimized them.

And (2) we end up with a constitutional system selected because it favors the political right AND a right-wing judiciary convinced of its own neutrality and innocence.

We mostly agree, but (1) around the margins you favor right-wing presidents and disfavor left-wing presidents because results are under-determined and things like loan forgiveness just seem so unfair to you

But for 95% of its adherents the explanation for that is purely psychological: once you figure out the cheat card for your side to win, your need to think of yourself as a good person makes you embrace allegedly neutral reasons to adopt the winning rule.

But the entire Republican embrace of the unitary executive stems from an era where Nixon/Reagan/Bush were winning landslides and the Dems had held the House for 50 years. They believe in their bones that unleashing the President is right-wing gold.

More shoes dropping. Exhausting watching this Court roll back modernity.

But it’s not just the vagueness. They just don’t think it is their job to worry about the consequences of the constitutional world they are creating. Dozens of examples but the best one remains the laughable treatment of reliance interests in Dobbs.

I just don’t think it is credible that the founder’s decision to create and name a President made the choice between all the different models of government administration they have been invented since.

That would raise hard constitutional questions that would have to be answered by on point text or structural arguments but wouldn’t be influenced by the use of a definite article in what was clearly meant to be a throwaway introductory sentence naming the office.

Why can’t the Vesting Clause just mean “we hereby create an office called President who shall be the head of the executive branch. [For discussion of the scope of their powers and any limitations thereon see below.]”

How do I explain the Trump-FIFA relationship to my soccer-obsessed children without ruining the hometown World Cup they have been looking forward to for years?

I literally cannot get non-lawyers to believe that we are stuck with a dangerous and illogical system of government because the framers used a definite article in introducing the office of the President.

Glad my brain was in line with the cool kids this morning.

Another amazing and important essay from fabulous scholars. I still lament a world where we are focused on these questions. If the text and structure of the constitution allow for this crucial category with this historical evidence, they should also allow for it without.

On a tangential point, I find it extremely weird and in serious tensions with other doctrines that we decided there is no First Amendment problem with allowing public records searches of academics’ emails.

Roasted by my former Con Law Student @bakarisellers.bsky.social

This is not an exaggeration. This is one of the five most consistent and important themes in American history, arguably number one. Every journalist or commentator who covers these comments but doesn’t call out this hypocritical bigotry is complicit.

Guess the thousand movies, miniseries, and documentaries about Nuremberg weren’t enough.

This newsletter pulls a few things together, including my Atlantic essay on working the referees, and @mantzarlis.com’s fantastic new analysis on what exactly is in Grokipedia.

As a legal educator, I am shocked by how badly the law school I attended handled clerkships: routing students to famously abusive judges, pressuring students to apply to judges that made them uncomfortable, berating students who turned down clerkships with judges who expressed bias during interviews