Beau Baumann 🍏

Pushing “market logic” into higher education has made the wealthy schools richer and the poorly resourced schools poorer.

@lookheron.bsky.social builds on his arguments and findings in his recent report for @lpeblog.bsky.social.

lpeproject.org/blog/the-neo...

I’m such a crappy salesman. Too honest about this. Tough to sell “unsubmerging” that state when you tell people they may never see the mountaintop. One of the problems with long term thinking in a moment of chaos.

Or alternatively you need to unsubmerge the state! But that’s an intergenerational undertaking and super hard. Thank you for interacting with my work!

As @beaubaumann.bsky.social notes, "Good policy does not necessarily bring about favorable public opinion or political support for progressive initiatives. We can’t rely on effective governance to legitimize itself." I completely agree.

"Opponents of MAGA have faltered, chanting 'expertise' like a spell that’s lost its magic. Knowledge-based authority was a historically contingent mode of governing authority that no longer resonates. This is evident in figures like RFK Jr., whose anti-vaccine stance rejects science outright."

An interesting historical question for people to ponder! My guess is they’re probably endogenous + influenced my materialistic lived realities. But 🤷🏻‍♂️

Right. In a crisis of authority people gravitate towards mysticisms, faith, and magical thinking precisely because the universe seems more unruly. These interlocked phenomena.

Good read!

As a historical matter, this decline started before I was born. But we’re reaching a breaking point that evidence a crisis in authority. Paying homage to the old gods no longer seems viable.

Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy

I think this is part-and-parcel to a decline in expertise-based authority that’s more central to discussions in admin law. This is a huge problem across the board.

Thanks, Wendy! Agree with that reminder!

Sitaraman on the Secular Decline of the American State Ganesh Sitaraman (Vanderbilt Law School) has posted The Secular Decline of the American State (N.Y.U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The Trump administration’s ass…

Probably would have cited this in my post today if it had come out a little earlier.

The ‘Grim Reaper’ of the Government Shutdown

If you want to know more about Vought this NYT The Daily episode from yesterday is great. He’s highly competent and a fanatic

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Worth noting I think . . .

Wow, how positively feudal

Understandable. But the task for our generation is to model an approach to law and legal thinking that’s compatible with democratic self-rule. At least, that’s what I think 🤷🏻‍♂️

Links to work from @nicholasbednar.bsky.social @profdanwalters.bsky.social @blakeprof.bsky.social

Of potential interest to others, maybe @joshchafetz.bsky.social @asumrall.bsky.social

Rebuilding State Authority In A Post-Trump America In the ruins of the administrative state after Trump, many on the left see an opportunity to design a New Deal-type reconstruction agenda. But building state capacity requires a government that is…

ICYMI, I did a blog post today at @lpeproject.bsky.social that’s really about the death of a 20 c mode of liberal/progressive politics. It’s about the need, as a first-order objective, to relegitimize the state around a representational legitimacy.

Legal liberalism is a difficult thing to kill. Its attendant constitutional politics make the necessary changes quite difficult.

Does it matter? Some portions of some courts are less hostile, but they’re supervised by an increasingly aggressive SCOTUS that’s willing to police dissent on the shadow docket.

The judiciary is deeply hostile to the admin state and is beholden to the UTE, which is the triumph of political will.

Liberals need to abandon juristocracy. In our lifetimes, juristocracy will be incompatible with the basic premises of liberal politics.

My post on LPE blog today is really for LPE. But it works for liberals as well. Liberal politics depends on a stable set of rules embodied by a modern state that subordinates raw political will in the service of other values. So the liberals need to get on board against cts. It’s existential.

Rebuilding State Authority In A Post-Trump America In the ruins of the administrative state after Trump, many on the left see an opportunity to design a New Deal-type reconstruction agenda. But building state capacity requires a government that is…

I’m back up in @lpeblog.bsky.social today

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as an antagonist to @beaubaumann.bsky.social in this generative post about thinking bigger in our rebuilding ambitions

lpeproject.org/blog/rebuild...

Antagonist is such a rough word. Constructive interlocutor!

The one nice note from a 1L who finds your work helpful or inspiring is worth a full pound of hate mail.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This is why you don’t hire the business as usual septuagenarian in a reconstruction moment!

Yes, Obama politics boiled down to a vision of cosmopolitan meritocracy that was alienating to many!

Totally, you could restate my piece as starting from the premise of “Vaught and the Project 2025 guys have succeeded in X ways, we must move forward after accepting this premise.”

Rebuilding State Authority In A Post-Trump America In the ruins of the administrative state after Trump, many on the left see an opportunity to design a New Deal-type reconstruction agenda. But building state capacity requires a government that is…

Self-recommending from @beaubaumann.bsky.social. "To wrest the hearts and minds of Americans away from the unitary executive and towards a truly democratic foundation for the administrative state, reconstruction must be centered on representation." lpeproject.org/blog/rebuild...