Forthcoming in American Criminal Law Review! @georgetownlaw.bsky.social

KY Supreme Court terminates impeachment of Fayette Judge Julie Goodman The state’s highest court on Monday ordered the impeachment proceedings be stopped, because they violate Kentucky’s separation of powers.

Kentucky’s Supreme Court blocked Republican lawmakers from removing a judge from office solely because they disagreed with her rulings.

The court said this didn’t meet the constitutional requirement of a “misdemeanor in office” and letting lawmakers remove judges on that basis would be “tyrannical”

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.

There are now 10 toilets in Space

International Space Station: 4
Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1
Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1
Tiangong Space Station: 2
Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1
Artemis II on way around Moon: 1

This will be the first time a toilet has left low earth orbit!

seconded! Come visit us!

Thank you @lsolum.bsky.social!

this is just delightful

🔥 A++ TROLLING: “If you end up with 3 arms that’s a 50% increase in productivity.”

JOHNSON CITY Commission candidate Dave Adams brilliantly trolls the commission by testifying “FOR” 🙃a planned BWXT DEPLETED URANIUM PLANT locals do NOT want.

Post: www.facebook.com/share/v/1CMK...

The debates about DHS and Iran appropriations assume the long term slush funds the OBBA gave the president for ICE and military ops are constitutional.

That premise is mistaken, as @marknevitt.bsky.social and I explain in our draft, now forthcoming in GW Law Review! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

NEW: The Trump administration has asked the US Supreme Court to block demands for records and testimony about the DOGE project led last year by billionaire Elon Musk
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Petition: assets.bwbx.io/documents/us...

"Certiorari Transparency," which I coauthored with @alexklein.bsky.social, is now out in its final form!

We propose that the Court release its votes and memos on determinations over whether to take up cases.

illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-20...

This should be national news.

(First page of a book). First line: "The hardest thing in the world is to live only once."

this hit hard... has to be one of the better first lines of a book I've ever read .... (from Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong)

The Trump Administration’s Theory of Constitutional War Powers The OLC memorandum justifying operations in Venezuela provides insight into the administration’s decision-making process on the use of force.

@becingber.bsky.social thoroughly dissects the OLC memo justifying the Trump admin’s #Venezuela operations for insight into how the administration lawyers use of force decisions and the factual evidence undergirding them.

www.justsecurity.org/131538/trump...

New symposium on my book is out in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities!

It features essays by an extraordinary group of scholars from across Law and History followed by my response.

yaleconnect.yale.edu/yjlh/yjlh-is...

This draft is now up on SSRN... papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

comments welcome!

Interpretive Facades 77 Case Western Reserve Law Review (Forthcoming 2027) 64 Pages Posted: Last revised: 12 Mar 2026 Michael L. Smith University of Oklahoma - College of Law Date Written: March 12, 2026 Abstract When interpreting constitutional provisions, courts frequently proclaim rules of interpretation at the outset of their analysis that purportedly govern and guide the subsequent inquiry into constitutional meaning. Yet they often depart from these rules—sometimes applying entirely different methods, sometimes applying additional interpretive theories, and sometimes using the same rule to describe entirely different approaches to constitutional interpretation. I describe these initial statements of interpretive theory as “interpretive facades.” This article identifies and classifies interpretive facades. Facades may be misleading, where courts claim they are using one method, yet apply an entirely distinct approach. They may also be oversimplified, in which a court claims to apply a particular method (or set of methods), yet go on to apply the claimed methods along with other approaches. Once I’ve identified variations on interpretive facades, I address their potential causes as well as their implications for ongoing discussions of judicial candor, the official story of the law, and methodological stare decisis. Interpretive facades risk misleading those who hope to classify and apply cases’ law of interpretation. Courts must therefore exercise caution to avoid engaging in such behavior, and those reading opinions must do so thoroughly to avoid misstating the law and perpetuating interpretive facades. Keywords: constitutional interpretation, constitutional law, originalism, textualism, living constitutionalism, candor, transparency, legal writing, sincerity, stare decisis

My article, "Interpretive Facades," is forthcoming in the Case Western Reserve Law Review!

I address courts' practice of claiming to interpret constitutions one way, but then applying a different approach when they get down to the interpretive work itself.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Constitutional Duels in the Court’s Rejection of Trump’s Tariffs The justices agree that Congress should play the leading role in some realms, but they disagree on when—and how to get there.

Michael R. Dreeben explains some of the disagreements between the justices on exactly when and where Congress should play a primary role in setting national policy that arose in the Supreme Court's opinion rejecting President Trump's tariffs.

Oversight article alert!!!

I'm changing "company" to "organization" and making this my Con Law I exam

Jim Pfander has a lot of great work contesting some aspects of the idea that Art. III imposes rigid justiciability limits, most notably his 2021 book "Cases Without Controversies: Uncontested Adjudication in Article III Courts"

At the 2026 National Conference of Constitutional Law Scholars. The Rehnquist Center at Arizona Law puts together a great program. Neat to see tomorrow’s debates forming…and the sunsets aren’t bad.

CONGRESS’S POWER OF INQUIRY IN IMPEACHMENT Jonathan David Shaub The nature and scope of Congress’s constitutional power of inquiry in impeachment has rarely been discussed and never been satisfactorily analyzed. Impeachment is both increasingly salient and singularly important, particularly after Trump v. United States. Indeed, impeachment may now be the sole remaining mechanism for investigating presidential misconduct, but recent executive branch doctrines—established during the first Trump administration and largely affirmed during the Biden administration—severely limit congressional authority to investigative for purposes of impeachment. This paper proposes a constitutional framework that balances the exceptional power the two Houses of Congress wield in the exercise of their respective impeachment authorities with the need to retain the solemnity of impeachment investigation and protect its role in holding presidents and other executive branch officials accountable. This framework recognizes that the invocation of impeachment authority is a distinct, nondelegable authority that functions as a judicial power separate from legislative. Once this power has been invoked, generalized executive privilege doctrines used in oversight, and related prophylactic protections for that privilege, are inapplicable. Instead, distinct, specific objections to disclosure should be adjudicated by the two Houses respectively pursuant to established procedures, with the presumption that the congressional bodies need access to all pertinent information, even if the information needs to be protected from public disclosure. Moreover, each House should establish procedural protections unique to impeachment, including due process protections for accused officials and witnesses. Finally, a comprehensive framework that empowers the House and Senate to exercise fully their respective authorities to investigate for purposes of impeachment inquiries and trials necessitates a mechanis…

v/excited to share that my article, Congress's Power of Inquiry in Impeachment, is forthcoming in the Virgina Law Review. Abstract below. Full draft up soon (SSRN... throws hands in the air)... happy to share the draft, though, and would love comments ...

if you are interested in congressional oversight in general or oversight of the intelligence community specifically, this is a must read. Great paper, Noah, and congrats to UCI for snapping it up!

Republicans say Clintons risk contempt of Congress for not testifying on Epstein House Republicans are seeking testimony as part of their investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Clintons say they've already provided in writing what little they know.

UK Law Prof @jshaub.bsky.social was quoted on NPR this morning! Check it out: www.npr.org/2026/01/13/n... #UKLawProfResearch

Feels like not enough people are talking about this 👀 🏀 @VanderbiltU @VandyWBB @VandyMBB

but with the added benefit of hand drawn illustrations... some that are actually intelligible!

Vanderbilt crushes Tennessee in football and Tennessee is crying

A Dishonorable Strike Indulging all assumptions in favor of the administration’s boat strikes, killing helpless men is murder

A Dishonorable Strike
Indulging all assumptions in favor of the administration’s boat strikes, killing helpless men is murder

www.execfunctions.org/p/a-dishonor...

Will SCOTUS Decide What Its “Essential Functions” Are? Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the U.S. Supreme Court case Bowe v. United States, which raises the question of whether limits on successive habeas petitions for state prisoners also a...

Oral argument today in Bowe v US presents one of the most profound constitutional questions: Just how much power does Article III's Exceptions Clause give Congress to strip SCOTUS of appellate jurisdiction? I offer some history and context in my latest column for @justiaverdict.bsky.social 👇