Right? It’s such a strange way to frame the doctrine. Couldn’t people have come up with new forms of establishment that didn’t exist at the founding, forms that would be barred by the text?

New question (and then I think I’m ready to move on): if a state required its public schools to put this up as a poster, would that violate the Establishment Clause?

Donald Trump shared an AI image of himself as Jesus Christ and now claims he was meant to be a doctor. Trump, who claims to be a Christian, doesn’t recognize Jesus. Trump doesn’t recognize Him in art, but he also doesn’t recognize Him in the “least of these.” Matthew 25:44-45.

Ok, Donald Trump says he thought he was a Red Cross doctor, not Jesus. I asked Chat GPT to generate two images, one of Trump as a doctor and one of Trump as Jesus. Can you spot the difference?

I sent this pic to ChatGPT and asked it what prompt could have made an AI produce this image. It said: “Donald Trump depicted as a Christ-like healer performing a miracle, laying hands on a sick man in a hospital bed, surrounded by praying civilians, soldiers, and a nurse …”

As someone who went to both law school and divinity school, I have loads of words for this post by the President and none of them are flattering.

From today:

Easter is about Jesus’s victory over sin and death, not cursing, war crimes, and mocking other religions.

Most liberals and progressives today have made their peace with the fact that lawmakers of past generations were more conservative than they are. Do conservatives recognize that some generations of past lawmakers might have been more radical than they are?

Drawing from Roger Williams, I argue that the Establishment Clause helps protect the integrity of religion and I suggest we work the Ten Commandments into age-appropriate study rather than "posterize" Scripture. [3/3]

I describe the recent push to get the 10C back on public schoolhouse walls, point out that the proposed text is redacted in deeply uncomfortable ways, and dive deep into American history to explain how the Decalogue fits into the biblical narratives of slavery, Exodus, and Jubilee. [2/3]

Happy April 2nd! My Essay on the Ten Commandments went live on the Washington and Lee Law Review Online yesterday, but I didn't think you'd believe me yesterday! scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr-online... [1/3]

‘Two-Step’ Spat Returns as Claimants, Senators Appeal to Justices People suing bankrupt companies over asbestos-tainted products have long tried to convince the Fourth Circuit to decide whether those Chapter 11 cases are legally valid. Now, for the first time, one g...

Always a pleasure to chat with @randilove.bsky.social of @bloomberglaw.com about the next big bankruptcy case possibly to reach the Supremes.

news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-l...

Shout out to all the clever No Kings signs here in North Florida except the one that says: “St. Augustine: Rejecting Kings Since 1565.” Felipe II of Spain would be very confused.

Roger Williams Law hosted a virtual panel with Steven Green, Lynette Labinger & Kayla Toney on the Establishment Clause and whether a case from my hometown in RI, Ahlquist v. Cranston (1st Cir. 2012), would be decided differently post-Lemon. Here is the prayer from the banner at issue.

Try to imagine any legal conclusion destined to be more unpopular, or generate more fury against Bob Mueller from both sides of the aisle. He said it because that’s where his analysis led, not because he thought people would like it. And that says a lot about the man. RIP.

The conclusion of the Mueller Report (which I read in full) was that Bob Mueller couldn’t declare Trump innocent, given all the acts of obstruction they uncovered, but that he also couldn’t formalize any accusations against Trump, because he was the President….

Curious about how courts today might rule on the Cranston West prayer banner case? Join me and a great group of panelists at @RWULaw to discuss 1A jurisprudence.

us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Thank you!

Thank you!🙏

I am grateful to everyone who provided thoughtful and incisive comments, and we are excited to be working with great editorial teams at BU and UC Davis. These papers dig into important and timely topics, and I deeply appreciate anyone who reads our analyses.

Courts have been finding ways to avoid hearing bankruptcy cases for a long time. This practice distinguishes bankruptcy from other types of federal cases. The federal district courts operate under the twin principles that they are courts of limited jurisdiction and have a “virtually unflagging” obligation to exercise it. But those twin principles are inverted in bankruptcy. That is because bankruptcy courts do more than just resolve disputes; they solve problems. Bankruptcy jurisdiction is expansive and dramatic. When a debtor commences a bankruptcy case, the bankruptcy court has jurisdiction not only over the case itself and proceedings “arising in” the case, but also a broad swath of cases “related to” the bankruptcy proceedings. Yet, unlike their district court relatives, bankruptcy courts have much broader authority to dismiss or abstain from hearing cases before them, as well as to reshape the contours of a

bankruptcy case by lifting the stay or by allowing custodians to maintain control of property of the estate. Bankruptcy courts wield that authority in a host of pragmatic, equitable, and surprising ways: pulling back when the case lacks a bankruptcy purpose, policing against a range of forum-shopping practices, abstaining when other insolvency proceedings are underway, and (most strikingly) stepping back when debtors and creditors are engaged in informal, out-of-court workouts. This Article refers to all these abstention or abstention-adjacent decisions as “bankruptcy abstention,” a mix of permissive and mandatory rules that provide contours to the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy courts by limning out bankruptcy’s “negative spaces.” This Article maps out three situations when the bankruptcy courts pull back, explores what this unusual practice tells us about bankruptcy as an area of law, suggests how bankruptcy abstention might be refined, and proposes some lessons about the nature of courts along the way. While federalism principles can explain much of bankruptcy abstention, bankruptcy courts also pull back from re-adjudicating out-of-court workouts that they deem fair and efficient — even when the matters have not yet seen the inside of a courtroom. Bankruptcy courts also pull back when they perceive that the tools at their disposal are a poor fit for the problem they are being asked to solve. Bankruptcy abstention thus goes beyond federalism principles and demonstrates the character of the bankruptcy courts as courts of equity — courts that nurture what Alexander Bickel called the “passive virtues.” The Article suggests that we can rethink some of bankruptcy’s most contentious doctrines through that lens, coins the phrase “bankruptcy ripeness,” and provides new insight into the debate over bankruptcy exceptionalism. This reframing can, in turn, suggest guidance to attorneys, judges, and policymakers for how best to fine-tune the bankruptcy system — as well as pr…

The contempt power is an ancient one, but it is making the news today in a dizzying variety of ways. Contempt proceedings are colorful. They involve stubborn clients and stubborn lawyers, and sometimes even more stubborn judges. They usually occur at high speed, especially compared to the glacial pace of most legal proceedings. Direct criminal contempt is particularly fast: a person who disrupts or disrespects the court can find him- or herself spending a night in jail after summary process. Even in civil contempt cases, when the judge threatens a contemnor with steep

fines or indefinite imprisonment, the contemnor usually complies quickly. This Article is not about the fast cases. We focus instead on the longest-lasting contempt cases in contemporary American law, the ones where the contemnor buckles in for the long haul. The five cases that we cover here may not be timely, but they are timeless. They involve a deep-sea engineer, an ex-husband, a financial adviser, a secretive mother, and two brothers deprived of their ancestral land. The contemnors say that they were defending priceless things or people from the judicial system: their money, their land, their newborn child — even gold coins from a historic shipwreck. Their adversaries view them as liars, cheats, abusers, maybe even murderers. In each of these cases, the contemnor served more than five years for civil contempt of court — and in each of these cases, the legal rationale for letting them out has been obscured from public view, whether because the decision was unpublished, sealed, or simply made orally with no written opinion. In all five cases, our research and advocacy are responsible for making the court’s reasoning public. This Article thus presents, for the first time, what we call the “hidden law” of the adamant contemnor. After exploring the new insight we have into these five adamant contemnor cases, the Article goes on to outline how this classic “battle of wills” should be conducted within a rule-of-law system. We advocate for better modeling of rational actors, expert assessments of mental health, objective standards, benchmarks and outer bounds, and written, published decisions. The Article concludes with specific proposals for reform, including guidance for courts, executives, and legislatures.

🪶I have two new papers coming out: "Bankruptcy Abstention" is forthcoming in @bulawreview.bsky.social (2026) and "The Hidden Law of the Adamant Contemnor" (with Ryan Lee Scott) is forthcoming in @ucdavislaw.bsky.social (2026).

papers.ssrn.com/abstract=619...
papers.ssrn.com/abstract=619...

What Start-Up Lawyers Should Know About Bankruptcy Bankruptcy has long been regarded as a gloomy area of law, one that fits uneasily with the heady optimism usually associated with start-ups.  At the same time, start-up lawyers need to understand h…

New blog post covering my forthcoming book chapter, entitled Distress-Proofing Social Enterprises.

clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2026/03/12/w...

Tommy Thompson’s 10-year imprisonment exposed a flawed legal system | Column The deep-sea treasure hunter spent years in prison on a contempt of court charge.

Nice op-ed by my co-author Ryan Scott

www.tampabay.com/viewpoints/2...

I agree! I throw this article at my Contracts class when I teach the Statute of Frauds. It really makes them think.

I remember hearing that. Has it gotten worse in Winter/Spring 2026, do you know?

Can anyone corroborate this?

Hello friends. I’m hearing from some wonderful junior folks that this a horrible submission cycle. Is anyone noticing something strange or aware of a shift? Thanks for anything you can share here or via DM.

We analyze this and other cases in a new paper available on SSRN, "The Hidden Law of the Adamant Contemnor." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Professor Scott and I understand that Tommy Thompson was released from federal prison yesterday. Thompson, the finder of the historic wreck of the S.S. Central America, was imprisoned for over 9 years for civil contempt and served 2 years for criminal contempt.