Colin Heath

Filled with so much pride today because Mari wrote this wonderful story for The Atlantic! It's (almost) enough to make me put my running shoes back on.

No one’s reading for fun, apparently. Here’s a reading list to fix that. Researchers recently found that “reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%,” which sucks. The study shows “a sustained, steady decline” over about twenty years, which I agree with the scientists …

this is fun from LitHub and mentions "The Bright Ages!" #booksky

lithub.com/no-ones-read...

Going to break the "favorite" requirement and give two.

1. Science, Literature, and Ethics. Just enough ethics to get me thinking (and reading) throughout undergrad and law school. Plus, I was able to re-read some great novels.

2. International Ballroom Dance.

Everyone Is Using A.I. for Everything. Is That Bad?

i just find this so bizarre. searching through texts and doing the reading for myself is how i actually think through ideas! trying to put together a sentence is how i figure out what i actually want to say!

Many offices and professionals see a rise in spam paper faxes These days, faxed documents mostly show up on your computer. But doctors and other professionals still rely on paper faxes. And they're getting lots of spam along with important documents.

Super excited this morning because my friend Vito (@vitoemanuel.bsky.social) has a story out on NPR's Morning Edition!! He dug into the "junk fax" phenomenon frustrating pharmacies and medical offices nationwide.

Link: www.npr.org/2025/06/17/n...

All Steven Soderbergh does is crank out excellent movies, and it honestly seems unfair and underappreciated

Enjoy!! Happy to provide recs (based on my 10 months of living here) if desired.

Sotheby’s Landmark Old Masters Sale Disappoints, Yielding Just $64.7 M. A landmark Sotheby's sale of Old Masters works from the Saunders collection failed to even reach its low estimate.

I reported on a notable single-owner sale of Old Masters paintings that fell sort of high expectations, the multiple factors behind the low sell-through rate, and why certain works still set artist records: www.artnews.com/art-news/mar...

Absolutely surreal to get a “highly recommended” from @lsolum.bsky.social! For a devoted follower of the Legal Theory Blog like me, this falls somewhere between winning an Oscar and getting blessed by the Pope.

I think Judge Millett might have asked something like this during a D.C. Circuit hearing about the Alien Enemies Act a few weeks ago. The response was something like "those are not the facts before us."

i’ll just say this: anyone who doubts jimmy should watch avatar 2, which is a masterpiece

Yes, in Dupont! Can't tell what they are.

How would a detainee's claim of citizenship fit here? That is, if the detainee and government purported to disagree about whether the detainee is a citizen, and if there were no pre-removal process to make a finding, do you think the noncitizen aspect would fade somewhat?

INTERPRETIVE FACTS: TEXTUALISM, EMPIRICISM, AND THE LAW-FACT DIVIDE Hannah Walser ABSTRACT What a word means may seem to be a paradigmatic question of law. We reach conclusions about the meaning of a word or a sentence through interpretation; interpretation is one of judges’ core tasks in the United States court system; meaning is therefore a matter of law to be determined by judges. Yet thanks to technological advances in corpus linguistics permitting the quantitative analysis of large numbers of texts, as well as methodological shifts that frame ordinary meaning as an empirical question, courts and legal scholars are increasingly apt to frame interpretive inquiries as factual ones. This Article offers the first systematic examination of where linguistic evidence used in statutory and constitutional interpretation should fit in the federal court system’s division of labor based on law and fact. First, I identify and label “interpretive facts”: generalized empirical evidence about how a particular word or phrase has been used by a population of speakers, understood by a population of listeners, or both. Then, I explain the complications that interpretive facts create for two specific aspects of the law-fact division of labor: the default expectation that questions of fact be submitted to a jury, and the more deferential standard of appellate review that applies to a trial court’s findings of fact. Applying either presumption to interpretive facts would seem to threaten the judiciary’s authority over questions of law and to undermine interpretive consistency. Yet failing to apply these presumptions risks flooding the courts with inaccurate empirical claims about language use—no small problem when the “ordinary meaning” of a legal term, as established through quantitative evidence, may be outcome-determinative. [Alt text continued in next image]

[continued from previous image] Although interpretive facts are relatively new to constitutional and statutory interpretation, courts have long used them to make sense of other types of legal texts. In particular, contract and patent law have developed techniques of interpretive fact-finding to evaluate claims of idiosyncratic or technical meaning. If courts continue to rely on corpus linguistics, I suggest they should avoid procedural and conceptual incoherence by drawing upon these existing techniques. Linguists offering evidence that bears upon questions of statutory or constitutional interpretation should present their arguments to a jury or to the judge as fact-finder. District courts should be required to make explicit findings of interpretive fact, and those findings should be reviewed for clear error by appellate courts. In closing, I situate interpretive facts in the context of scholarly conversations about the increasingly dispositive role of historical facts in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, offering a legal realist account of the turn to corpus linguistics.

It feels absurd to post about this, but—since the good people of #lawsky patiently encouraged me when I was freaking out about placing my paper, I wanted to share that it has found a home in the Indiana Law Journal. “Interpretive Facts,” coming 2026! (Two images below to fit the full alt text) 1/3

Congratulations, Hannah! A great read, looking forward to seeing the final draft.

Cela semble absurde, et j’ai été choqué la première fois que je l’ai compris, mais la France – il n'y a pas d'autre mot – est bien un paradis fiscal pour milliardaire

Explications détaillées 🧵

Clear and cogent analysis on the Birthright Citizenship EO (and, collectively, the "dictatorial theory" of executive power behind all of the recent EOs) from my colleagues Trevor Morrison & @adambcox.bsky.social on @justsecurity.org

www.justsecurity.org/106969/trump...

NEW PAPER! (w/ Ed Fox) We study 1) how much the wealthy borrow, quantifying “buy-borrow-die” for the first time, and 2) how much unrealized gains impact their taxes. The results changed (some of) our thinking on how to tax those at the top.

🧵 w/ findings ⬇️

Paper is here: ssrn.com/abstract=510...

Opinion | Biden Needs to Work on His Clemency Legacy It is more important than ever in an era of grossly excessive punishments and mass incarceration.

If you want to learn about the Biden clemency record so far (aside from the pardon of Hunter) and what he should be doing in the time remaining, please read this piece Mark Osler and I wrote in September begging him to use this power in the time he has left. www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/o...