No true bill

Congress can make “proper” laws limiting removal. you could read this as importing a reasonableness analysis

I mean, if you want a textual hook, it’s “necessary and proper”, no?

I think what you’re saying is that the Constitution would be compatible with something like the semi-presidential system in France, where there is a president with substantial powers but also other independent executives

i think we likely agree that immigration “court” is an obscenity

It’s interesting that Trump didn’t ask Congress to remove for-cause protections. he probably could have gotten it into the “big beautiful bill“

i don’t love our admin court system either; I think we should just have more specialized article iii courts

But one of the enumerated powers is that “he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed”

This is sort of similar to the argument that legislative rights can be adjudicated in article i courts, I guess?

this is a statement against interest because I’m a qui tam attorney facing a vesting clause constitutional challenge/my name is on an amicus in the slaugnter case:

Eventually the vesting clause does have to mean something

Alito’s dissent in Bostock was extremely funny: “we’re looking at the text of the law instead of the original expectations of Congress? I’m hearing this for the first time!”

I think the strongest argument for unitary executive in the abstract is that you could, in theory, create a permanent under-presidency more powerful than the actual president (e.g., an attorney general with a 20 year term and for-cause protection). but the actual case law clearly prevents this

Eh. I think there’s some distinction to be had between meaning/intent/understanding/expectations. But yeah I agree the originalist methodology does not make sense when you have to actually apply it with any specificity

Right, but my understanding of Scalia is that he is rejecting “original intent of framers” but not ”original understanding of ratifiers.” So we could look to historical understanding of what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meant to the ratifiers

I think you could make an argument that that is relevant to understanding the raw semantic meaning of the word. But also this is why Scalian originalism is incoherent—how can you understand “raw semantic meaning” of an individual word without turning to a larger context?

I sort of think you can squeeze out a textualist reading by saying you’re just trying to understand what the public understood “jurisdiction“ to mean. but yeah, it’s pretty bullshit

#soyright

Somewhat more obscure but this is why Bivens was correctly decided. The people delegated their sovereignty to the federal government only to the extent outlined in the Constitution. If the Fed govt violates the Constitution, it acts outside its sovereignty and shouldno be able to claim immunity.

My feeling is that you can engage directly with Wurman but only if you show sufficient contempt of him as a despicable liar.

I really doubt it’s worth the expenditure of political capital, but chiropractic is fraud and there’s an excellent case to ban it on the merits

I think it’s attempting to convey the percentage of members of each ethnicity who are on food stamps, not their total share of the food stamp population

Honestly, I kind of like The Dark Enlightenment because it sounds all dramatic but when you think about it for literally half a second it's like no, that's just a contradiction in terms. If it's dark, it's not enlightenment. If it's endarkenment, you've just landed an inch away from endorkenment.

Barnett and Wurman are both liars trying to give the imprimatur of “scholarship” to an argument with *no* scholarly support in the record.

“No evidence the intent went beyond freeing slaves” — the framers of the amendment openly stated that it would grant citizenship to the children of Chinese immigrants. It’s in the Congressional record. Cited extensively in Wong Kim Ark. These aren’t obscure sources, especially for law professors.

This isn’t a difference of opinion. Ilan Wurman and Randy Barnett are straightforward liars.

“It feels a lot like a storm where people have to stay inside and not go out… But it’s heartbreaking because it’s a storm that’s only affecting a third of the population and other people may not even be aware of it.”

I suppose every generation needs its bush

A neat thing about birthright citizenship is how it tests whether a person cares at all about the Constitution. There's no argument against it, birthright citizenship is the unambitious text, the obvious intent of the drafters, and the undisputed way it was followed for the past 150+ years.

I think this would be a very abused feature

This is no accident, which is why guys like Miller make a point of referring to “descendants” of illegal immigrants, not just children. The idea is that everyone’s citizenship is provisional until the minute your local ICE agent decides otherwise.