My photo shows a Paleo-Babylonian clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform text, still partially enclosed in its original clay envelope. The clay is pale orangey-brown in colour displayed against a grey display case background. The outer envelope has been broken open, revealing the inner tablet beneath. Both surfaces are covered with densely packed wedge-shaped characters, which record a contract for the sale of a house purchased by Mannum-balu-Samas at the price of 1/3 shekel and 15 grains of silver. This is followed by the names of the numerous witnesses including the mayor Sin-magir and the courier Apil-ilisu. The same text is repeated on the envelope in the event of a dispute, which was broken to inspect the internal document. It is dated 32nd year of Hammurabl's reign, 10th month, c. 1750 BC. The clay envelope measures 87 mm (height) × 55 mm (width), while the inner tablet measures 64 mm (height) × 43 mm (width). On display at the Museum of Antiquity in Turin. Collection number MAT 740.

A 3,750 year-old contract for the sale of a house recorded on a clay tablet, still in its original clay envelope!

Museo di Antichità, Turin
📷 by me

#Archaeology

The Ten Club is closed Friday, January 30 as we stand with the people of Minnesota to protest the actions of ICE and murders of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Sliverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr.

For more information on how to participate in the National Shutdown, visit: nationalshutdown.org

But I guess if the longer term agenda is disregard for agency authority (regardless of who is in power) and perhaps eventually overturning ICP at the Supreme Court, this makes sense… or pure lawlessness and a planned outright disregard for SCOTUS at some point

Thanks for the shrewd analysis @tsilverstein.bsky.social. Not entirely clear to me that their agenda is better served by doing this given ICP rather than just issuing a new rule that functionally kills disparate impact. They’d prefer the random court’s interpretation of ICP than their own rule?

Thanks, New Yorker

Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws Interviews and internal documents show that signature civil rights protections in housing are being dismissed as ideologically driven and D.E.I. in disguise.

The Trump administration is limiting enforcement of fair housing laws, dismissing them as ideologically driven and DEI in disguise, according to interviews and internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Tenants Seek to Unionize One Private Equity Firm's Entire Housing Portfolio By organizing renters across Capital Realty Group’s affordable housing complexes, the Tenant Union Federation hopes to bring sectoral bargaining to negotiations with large landlords.

In the last six weeks, the Tenant Union Federation launched seven (7) majority tenant unions, across five (5) states, representing 1000 units of housing owned by Capital Realty Group, a New York-based corporate landlord. The first portfolio organizing of its kind...
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Pritzker: "Everybody should be saying that ABC should reverse their decision."

It’s happening. The takedown of Jimmy Kimmel is likely the start of a campaign to use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents.

But we aren’t powerless. We can mobilize and organize. Now.

See how this works?

Just just did this. The kids will miss Bluey but it had to be done.

Governor JB Pritzker joined elected officials, business, faith, and education leaders, community advocates, and law enforcement leaders to condemn the Trump administration’s plan to deploy the National Guard or active duty military in Chicago despite objections from state and local leadership.

I am sounding the alarm on the real crisis we face today.

Donald Trump’s overreach is what our founders warned against – it is unprecedented, unwarranted, and un-American.

There’s no emergency here that calls for military intervention.

DC residents question troops’ focus on low-crime areas amid Trump takeover Many federal agents have been seen standing around in tourist areas, with few spotted addressing violent crime

Reminder that Trump unleashing federal troops across D.C. isn't meant to address any actual concerns about crime.

It's a show of force.

It’s important to see this and L.A. as trial runs for a possible military occupation elsewhere in the United States.

Harvard faculty won’t cave to Trump demands - The Boston Globe Unlike our distant governing boards, we will not give up easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name.

“We have committed our professional lives to learning and free inquiry, working together with students to advance truth for the collective benefit of society. Unlike our distant governing boards, we will not give up so easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name.”

I have resigned as Executive Director of the Skadden Foundation. This moment in history calls on us to provide more and better support for public interest lawyers. I look forward to finding other ways to contribute to their vital work.

Two woman walking and embracing each other in front of an ICE detention center. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress and heels. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. Members of the press are in the background.

Two women standing, smiling, and embracing each other with grass, water, and the sky in the background. The woman on the left is wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. The woman on the right is wearing a black dress.

Two woman stand next to each other and hold onto one another. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. In the background is the fence of an ICE detention center.

Today, our client Rümeysa Öztürk was released on bail from ICE detention in Louisiana, and she will return to New England to continue her studies.

📸 Giancarlo D’Agostaro

Lifetime honor to receive American University’s highest award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year, at the National Press Club this evening. So very grateful @auwcl.bsky.social

It was the original tool to prevent tyranny. No EO or politicized federal prosecution can get a conviction unless 12 ordinary citizens agree.

Maybe more people will read Why Jury Duty Matters as a reminder.

Abstract - Trading Acres - forthcoming Yale Law Journal - Jessica A Shoemaker and James Fallows Tierney - Farms are places where people live their lives, sustain their families, and produce food and fiber for the wider community. And now, farms are assets swept up into global financial channels—converting before our eyes from repositories of the best of our agrarian ideals into paper playthings for the very rich. This asset-class-ification of farmland echoes patterns of financialization occurring across other elements of our daily lives, including housing, and compounds wider crises of concentration and industrialization in agriculture. But as an active land grab unfolds across rural America, farmland’s recent capture by absentee investors is particularly concerning. Farmland’s conversion to asset class threatens rural livelihoods, agriculture and food system resilience, and economic and spatial justice. In this article, we argue that Wall Street’s arrival at rural America’s gate is not merely a market trend but rather the product of deep social choices governing the accumulation of investor wealth: property, corporate, and securities law. We explore the ways in which these deep structures of our legal system—from the primacy of market logics to a range of biases that skew our spatial, temporal, and social relations—constitute the conditions for this profound transformation in the way farmland, as a basic and essential rural resource, is being integrated into the modern capital economy. Together, business and property law create the conditions for land concentration, rural depopulation, environmental degradation, and labor exploitation. Today’s rural land grab is meeting little resistance. But historically, investor-owned farmland was seen as a deep and politically-motivating threat to rural life. We situate past reform attempts to rein in financialized farmland and conclude that many attempts failed because modest doctrinal interventions result in playing shell gam…

As markets churn and world orders reset, @jamesftierney.bsky.social and I have a new piece forthcoming in Yale Law Journal that couldn't be more timely. "Trading Acres" traces the risks of farmland financialization and analyzes the role of law in this ongoing rural land grab. 🧵

Harvard sued the Trump admin today 💪🏽🥳💯

www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

Opinion | Will This Conservative Legal Doctrine Undo Trump’s First Months in Office? What goes around, comes around. And it is not likely to be good for the White House.

Was the major questions doctrine meant to be a one-way ratchet, good for striking down Democratic presidential action but dormant during Republican presidencies? Let’s hope Roberts avoids that further black mark on the legitimacy of an already embattled court.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/o...

Feels like momentum is building toward coming together and speaking up… here’s a letter members of our faculty put out this week

Steve Kerr wore a Harvard basketball shirt after the Warriors’ win tonight: “Yes, this is me supporting Harvard. Way to go. Way to stand up to the bully.”

I guess I'm gonna have to do a big explainer on the Bob Jones case (which will control how the Harvard tax exemption revocation will go in the lower courts) at some point on here, but for now you can't go wrong with this nice introduction to the issues by Joe.

If the U.S. government is going to take the position that, once removed from the United States, folks can’t be brought back, then it sure seems to me that federal courts should be reflexively and categorically barring *all* removals until they’re 100 percent certain that the removals are lawful.

Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.

I hope other university alliances start pooling resources and engaging in the kinds of collective action Rutgers is proposing here for the Big Ten.

senate.rutgers.edu/report/resol...

Wishing everyone here a happy Transgender Day of Visibility! Trans rights remain at the frontier of American civil rights law and we can’t give up the fight for freedom, equality, and inclusion.