“[Roberts’s] project is not to withdraw the Court from politics, but to entrench its authority within it. He is committed to sustaining and expanding the Court’s capacity to decide foundational questions of governance.” Excellent post from @beaubaumann.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/bbaumann...
And we have a verdict in Live Nation!
1/ It's not just that unilaterally paying TSA agents is illegal.
It's that Trump has now repeatedly undermined the core of the congressional power of the purse. He's not spending money that has been appropriated by law (impoundments) and he's spending money that has not been appropriated.
I had forgotten that he is a historian until you mentioned it… It is totally fair to criticize the marketplace of ideas framework for legal academia. Many have in interesting ways. But it is odd for a historian to do so. Even odder for a historian to ask all law profs to become organizers
Astonishing to find a “legalistic posture” taken by a law professor. The authors are trying to place themselves on a higher moral plane than mere legal arguments. Which seems to assume that the search for truth or at least better arguments is not a important political act
Somehow it seems to both over and underestimate the power of scholarly argument at the same time. They overestimate its political opinion impact and underestimate its impact on judges and long-term legal culture
I’m perplexed by their claim that legal scholarship critiquing Wurman and Lash is responsible for making this a legitimate subject of debate and not, I don’t know, the president. The cat was out of the bag by the time @evanbernick.bsky.social, et al “legitimized” the scholarly issue.
Birthright citizenship is not my lane, but I sometimes get this critique re legitimation when I write about the Second Amendment. It seems to me—among other things—to ignore the reality that legal arguments & historical analysis can often *themselves* significantly affect the “political dynamics”.
But that does not mean ableism is easy for me to talk about. Thank you @ericmgarcia.bsky.social for writing about it for all of us 7/7
I have been very successful academically as an adult. And I’ve been privileged beyond measure. But I will also always be that kid who is called stupid. I am lucky that because of the ADA and IDEA that I struggled more today with ableism than I do with my disability. 6/7
If you know me, you know that I talk about my dyslexia openly. I talk about my assistive tech, how my brain works, and what is difficult for me. But I don’t talk about my fear of ableism that much. Talking about that brings up every single powerless moment a child with a disability faces. 5/7
In my day-to-day life, I don’t experience as much ableism anymore. But comments like Donald Trump’s make sure I never forget that it exists all around me. I know from experience that ableism around learning disabilities is right under the surface for some people. 4/7
Actually, I don’t remember how my classmates bullied me for it. It’s something I think I’ve blocked out. But my family has told me about how I used to come home from elementary school crying many weeks 3/7
Like @ericmgarcia.bsky.social, I still remember what it feels like to be pulled out of class a few times a week to go work with a special ed (a term I wish we could put into the ground) instructor and the way my classmates bullied me for it 2/7
This piece captures the feelings I had as a person with dyslexia watching this story play out in the media this week. I am grateful that @ericmgarcia.bsky.social wrote this piece for people like me 1/7
I've been getting quite a few questions from press, etc. and so wrote up something a little bit longer here:
cooperativeoverlapping.substack.com/p/a-fuller-s...
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...
massive media mergers —> censorship
Utterly foreseeable and deeply chilling. FTC hiring an attorney whose full time job will be to, as Chairman Ferguson put it in his leaked memo to Trump when he was trying to get the job, fight the “trans agenda.”
from the NYT: 'Katie Mettler, a former chair of the Washington Post guild, said: “I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired. I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends.”'
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/t...
Yet another politically motivated FTC investigation and yet another threat to the First Amendment. Notably, this investigation started after @bedoyausa.bsky.social and Commissioner Slaughter were illegally fired. Minority-party Cmr.s provide a critical whistleblower function at agencies like the FTC
Here's who the Washington Post just laid off.
The idea that the Court should operate entirely in secret is a modern phenomenon. The idea that the Court should be separated from the public is a modern phenomenon. Earlier generations did not accept a powerful, isolated & secretive Court and we shouldn't either 1/6
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...
@liccardo.house.gov, @padilla.senate.gov, @adamschiff.com
Congress must enact Section 1983 for Federal officers. Law students and law professors, sign here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Every new thing I learn about Francis Perkins convinces me more she is the best model for how to make just, effective government happen. Thanks, @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social, for raising this example
While Democrats in Congress have had to be dragged into the most minor forms of resistance by their constituents, local officials are taking accountability seriously
I get the impulse to push for more, harder, faster, but it's worth noting here: the lawyers for both the state and various other plaintiffs have been working their asses off at absolute breakneck speed today.
Excellent piece on the problems with federal immunity doctrines from @ij.org’s Anya Bidwell and @pjaicomo.bsky.social—folks who have been litigating these issues before SCOTUS and other courts for years news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...
Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG...
www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...
