The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

WOW: Jodi Kantor & Adam Liptak have the memos that describe the origins of SCOTUS shadow docket - the 2016 order halting Obama’s Clean Power Plan @jodikantor.bsky.social @adamliptak.bsky.social @nytimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Also, if you're interested, the draft paper is here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Thanks so much for having me! I loved being there. And, if you're interested, the draft paper is here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

It was an honor to be invited! I loved spending the time with you, fellow faculty, and students!

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson slams Supreme Court’s emergency docket actions Jackson faulted her fellow justices for often forcing the public and lower-court judges to rely on “scratch-paper musings."

"Scratch-paper musings” is SUCH a good burn of the shadow docket, nobody is doing it like KBJ www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

Dear god. Very, very serious allegations of mass civil rights violations at the State of Florida's Everglades immigration detention center (officially known as "Alligator Alcatraz").

Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination. Discrimination based on sex is expressly prohibited under Montana’s unique Nondiscrimination Clause––“[n]either the state nor any person, firm, corporation, or institution shall discriminate on account of . . . sex . . . .” Thus, Article II, Section 4 is unequivocal in its intolerance for discrimination based on sex. Because sex discrimination involves a fundamental right under Article II, the appropriate level of judicial review is strict scrutiny. Snetsinger, ¶ 17. ¶28 Being transgender is also a suspect class under the Equal Protection Clause of Article II, Section 4,––“[n]o person shall be denied equal protection of the law.”

MONTANA SUPREME COURT: “Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination,” and is subject to strict scrutiny under the Montana Constitution.

IMPORTANT: Under federal law, it's very hard, at times near-impossible, to sue federal law enforcement officers for civil rights violations. But legal theorists have said for decades that there is a possible way to sue under state law instead.

This is a VERY big test case.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/m...

"THIS IS AN URGENT BOOK-DEEPLY RESEARCHED AND BOLDLY ARGUED." -Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America

BLUE POWER is out on Tuesday! Still time to preorder from @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social with discount code BLUE20: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stuar...

Staff At Minnesota Deportation Hub Received ‘Obscene’ Trump-Themed Challenge Coins Adorned With Skulls Federal employees involved in the massive operation that led to a surge...

At the mass deportation hub in Minneapolis, where Good and Pretti were murdered, they're handing out these "challenge coins" to commemorate their work. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/staff-a...

Magical

Scoop: City of L.A. Facing Over 120 Claims For Damages Related To Anti-ICE Protests Amid Financial Crisis ~ L.A. TACO Since 2019, the city of L.A. has paid out more than $430 million in liability claims related to policing, according to Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office. More than 40 percent of those payouts are listed as “civil rights/excessive force” claims.

Scoop: City of L.A. Facing Over 120 Claims For Damages Related To Anti-ICE Protests Amid Financial Crisis

@lataco.bsky.social
lataco.com/claims-for-d...

‘Smog and Sunshine’: Achieving Clean Air in California - Legal Planet UCLA's Ann Carlson discusses her new book and how the state can address federal efforts to undo its emissions standards.

Our Prof. Ann Carlson's "Smog & Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up its Air" comes out TODAY and is the subject of a book talk at UCLA on Friday, April 10. legal-planet.org/2026/04/07/s...

Constitutional lawyer here. I don't think it would violate the Constitution for the VP/Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, but the intended constitutional remedy for this behavior is impeachment & removal. The fact that that remedy is politically impossible is a scandal and a crisis.

74% of Americans need to give “Your Data Will Be Used Against You” to the other 26% of Americans.

FACTUAL IMMUNITY Bailey D. Barnes 111 MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW — (forthcoming 2026) ABSTRACT Qualified immunity protects government agents from suit and liability unless they deprive another of a clearly established right. This Article argues that constitutional tort litigation is also affected by a supplemental barrier for plaintiffs seeking relief: factual immunity. By making inherent credibility determinations and subtly weighing evidence in favor of government defendants on summary judgment, courts are protecting officials from trial despite the presence of genuine disputes of material fact in the record. Relying on close analysis of recent appellate decisions, this Article shows how some judges credit officers' testimony, discount plaintiffs' evidence, and regard evidentiary ambiguities as reasons to grant, rather than deny, qualified immunity on summary judgment. Unlike qualified immunity, factual immunity is not grounded in the common law. It is a distortion of the summary judgment standard that reallocates fact-finding responsibility from juries to judges, depriving plaintiffs of accountability and weakening the constitutional tort system. This Article makes three core contributions. First, it names and theorizes factual immunity, identifying how courts convert factual doubt into deference to defendants. Second, it acknowledges the institutional pressures that incentivize its use, including the Supreme Court's one-sided qualified immunity signaling and misapplications of Scott u. Harris's blatant contradiction exception. Lastly, it describes how factual immunity magnifies the harms of qualified immunity by stunting constitutional development, undermining deterrence, and denying injured plaintiffs their constitutional right to a jury. This Article concludes with proposals to restore the boundary between law and fact in constitutional tort litigation. Qualified immunity may be here to stay; factual immunity should not.

My article, Factual Immunity, is forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review. I argue that, alongside qualified immunity, some courts in constitutional tort suits employ what I call factual immunity by crediting officer testimony & discounting plaintiffs’ stories at summary judgment when QI is raised.

Supremacy From two acclaimed legal scholars, a new history of the Supreme Court that overturns our most basic assumptions about its role in our democracy, showing how it seized the power it now wields., Suprema...

After years of research, Daphna Renan & I are thrilled to announce preorders of SUPREMACY. Why is US democracy so broken? One reason is we've wrongly accepted that 9 justices have the final say over the Constitution. This book traces how that happened—& how we can reclaim power to govern ourselves.

screenshotted excerpt from my article (!) in the Villanova Law Review (!), linked in the post excerpt reads: "The chasm between America's words and deeds is often vast. But failure to achieve a goal does not mean the goal itself has no value. And King recognized that it would be a mistake to conclude that the words are meaningless. The better takeaway is that we the people confer meaning onto the Constitution through interpretation and application."

aaay the keynote I gave last year for a Martin Luther King Day event at Villanova has now been published in the Villanova Law Review 🥹

www.villanovalawreview.com/article/1595...

How Far Does the Kansas Constitution Go in Protecting Bodily Autonomy and Dignity? Two recent transgender rights cases may help answer this question.

NEW: the brilliant @sharonbrett.bsky.social looks at two Kansas cases that will determine whether the state constitution’s protections of bodily autonomy and dignity extend to transgender people.
Read her analysis in @statecourtreport.org.
statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...

Such a powerful set of observations by @jcschwartzprof.bsky.social, including that court opinions and public commentary re: suing government officials when they violate the Constitution often focus on the reasons not to sue, and not the benefits that civil rights litigation can bring.

The Tenacious Power of Constitutional Torts Despite hurdles, civil rights litigation is a critical tool for people who have been harmed by the government and for those seeking long-lasting change.

We are in the midst of an existential crisis of constitutionality and accountability, writes @law.ucla.edu's @jcschwartzprof.bsky.social. The ability to sue the government — and spotlighting all that such litigation can accomplish — is critically important.

The PA Supreme Court has decided, in large part based on a law student note authored in 2023, that our state constitution's protection against cruel punishments is based on a more robust understanding of cruelty than the US Constitution.

That note from Kevin Bendesky (HLS '23) is here:

The Supreme Court Is Making the Constitution Optional For Cops The conservative justices continue to expand qualified immunity in order to erode your right to be free from police abuse.

you prolly haven't heard about Zorn v. Linton--an unsigned order the Supreme Court dropped the same morning they were indulging in mail ballot conspiracy theories

but the Court just quietly eroded the Fourth Amendment even more, and further empowered violent cops
ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/zorn-...

Great quote from @marinklevy.bsky.social

"If you’re repeatedly engaging in alarm-sounding, the force of that alarm is going to be diminished over time,” she said. “But just because there have been several fires doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t sound the alarm for the next one.”

Congrats!

Incredibly excited and proud to share that last night, the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic’s groundbreaking litigation to end ATF’s discriminatory stash house stings—spanning four years and dozens of clients—was featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver!
Watch the segment here at 9:05 (1 of 4)

Beginning in 2020, the Supreme Court sent two signals it was easing off its qualified immunity crusade: 1) its decision in Taylor v. Riojas, holding qi should be denied for obvious violations, even if no case on point; 2) slowing its shadow docket qi reversals.

Does Zorn mark the end of #2?

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting. Sergeant Jacob Zorn used a “‘pain compliance technique’” called a rear wristlock on Shela Linton, a nonviolent protestor who was peacefully demonstrating at a sit-in in the Vermont capitol. 135 F. 4th 19, 24–25 CA2 (2025). The Second Circuit held that Zorn was not entitled to qualified immunity on Linton’s Fourth Amendment excessive force claim, at least at the summary judgment stage, because prior Circuit precedent had clearly established that using a rear wristlock against a nonviolent protestor would violate the protestor’s constitutional rights. That decision was not erroneous, and certainly not so clearly erroneous as to warrant the “extraordinary remedy of a summary reversal.” Major League Baseball Players Assn. v. Garvey, 532 U. S. 504, 512–513 (2001) (Stevens, J., dissenting). I respectfully dissent.

By an apparent 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court grants qualified immunity to an officer who performed a painful "rear wristlock" on a nonviolent protester during a sit-in, summarily reversing the 2nd Circuit. All three liberals dissent—here's the gist of it: www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...