Recent posts by Legal Academics on Bluesky

Bernie literally held up the nomination of Biden's NIH Director Monica M. Bertagnolli and then refused to vote for her. So it's bizarre that this Alt CDC account is praising Bernie Sanders, of all people. They seem to be just as performative as their hero.

I was just invited to the Signal chat about about sending Seal Teams into each borough of NYC.

I was just invited to the Signal chat about about sending Seal Teams in each borough of NYC.

What Ohio State University President Ted Carter should have said. But Carter is a hard-core authoritarian to his very core as a human being.

2d Cir. notes that its own decisions have diverged from NY Appellate Division's decisions on when private colleges must refund students for tuition and fees due to pandemic campus closures and online learning. Certifies the question to NY's top court. ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/is...

Good to see from @joaquincastrotx.bsky.social—a resolution of inquiry for records relating to the US government's rendition/disappearance/arbitrary detention program with El Salvador.

Not like I’m screaming “please make an AI movie Natasha Lyonne” but if she’s going to do it, the way to do so is with Jaron Lanier is as a collaborator, which is what she’s doing. Anyway, here’s a good interview Lanier did with Vox: www.vox.com/the-gray-are...

Narrator: They are going to gut Medicaid.

Yay!

Look out! Today I taught, held student hours, attended a student/dept event, AND completed both the mandatory Workplace Violence Prevention training and the separate Sexual Violence Prevention trainings before more teaching. Academic batting practice.

Just got myself to lunch at one of DC’s prized restaurants only to get chicken that was visibly undercooked. I politely pointed this out to the server who returned moments later to inform me the chef said that’s how dark meat looks. Yeah sure check please. They comp’d it at that point but come on.

Library is the wrong word. I mean book store, because once you take the donated books, you can keep them.

🌲: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Exactly. There is too much focus on voters' "attitudes" about the Democratic Party and a wholly mistaken pundit theory that Ds must "unite" behind some affirmative set of policies or marketing themes The only thing Democrats have to agree on is their opposition to the Trumped GOP's dangerous schemes

“[CDT’s] @mbogen.bsky.social… expressed criticism of OpenAI earlier this month following reports that the company was cutting down the time it spends testing new models for safety and security.” cyberscoop.com/opena...

Trump's attack on NIH will mean fewer new drugs and likely more expensive ones cepr.net/publications...

The reality is that Trump-Musk have declared all out class war, the only question is whether the non-billionaires will fight back against these bozos.

my colleagues! It's a terrifying read Start by assuming any private entity the govt does biz with will then have wealth that will be used to lobby for more business. The one industry you never, ever want to privatize, under any circumstances: Prison.

"The president campaigned on this issue that he explicitly denied and lied about which is why we're going to do it" Yeah, imagine the election may have turned out if Trump said "I will fire veterans and make it harder for them to receive care".

The silent majority of reposters

meaning *any* law enforcement contact was flagged-things like speeding tickets—which you all know is highly discretionary. the height of arbitrariness

The mercantilism will continue until morale improves

I posted this last night before falling into the next pile of things. Lot of things. (Including that if you're on Fastmail, you're apparently not going to get the email version you signed up for. Idk why! I am asking Ghost for help bc I'm not even self-hosted.)

In today’s immigration atrocity news. Combining family separation, wanton cruelty to children, and the bogus Alien Enemies Act invocation/rendition to El Salvador.

I'm excited to participate in this initiative, though I wish it weren't so timely.

Great question! And I want to see the responses to this because I think this is important for the culture of departments. We have an interesting & slightly complex process. New hires get assigned offices. We often intentionally try to place hires with similar research interests/approaches...1/

This is a utility patent but it specifically notes that "other shapes are also contemplated for a respiratory detectors" and includes these pictures:

I love @prripoll.bsky.social's surveys. One of my favorite surveys and I always look forward to their latest. I'm actually working on a paper right now that's informed by their surveys and by @robertpjones.bsky.social's work.

I read a story about Ohioans supporting Trump's tariffs & one of person interviewed said she's fine suffering the rest of her life with higher prices (she's 53) as a result of Trump's tariffs. Ohio went full-Trump years ago. Nothing Kamala Harris could have done to get them to change their minds.

If you know anyone affected by the cuts to HHS or are yourself affected, you may be interested in this survey. hhs-impacts.org

Anyone see good deep dives into yesterday's Canadian election? All recommendations welcome.

And think about what happened here...Trump complained to one of the richest men on earth, one of his biggest supporters, to keep secret from Trump's supporters & others the costs to them of Trump's tariff policy.

"The point of the administration's action against Ms. Öztürk is the chill-to scare the Nation's million-plus foreign students and tens of millions of lawful resident noncitizens from engaging in pro-Palestine advocacy (even though millions of citizens freely engage in the very same advocacy)."

Is this SNL or an actual briefing?

Totally serious patent law professor over here, focusing on the stuff that matters:

The Political Science dept at @brooklyncollege.bsky.social has a free library in which you can drop by, pick a bunch of books you like, and walk away with it, gratis. Today, the dept. hosted a presentation of one of our majors about his research on banned books, hence the tape over the library.

Interesting! I didn't know that they made this into a movie back then.

We need Greenland. Let's attack it.

On the plus side, Trump has laid an egg.

Tomorrow's SCOTUS arguments address whether the Constitution allows church-run charter schools and whether states can refuse them. The Court may also answer a vital Indian law question:whether it will use the US's treatment of Natives as "history and tradition" to set constitutional rules elsewhere.

Relatedly, admittedly self-servingly, Sept. 25, 2025 is Constitution Day, an annual event mandated by Congress. This past Fall and in 2025, no one has invited me to go to their uni to talk about the US Constitution. Just sayin...

Maybe indicting a judge an absurdly flimsy charges is not having the coercive impact that Trumpers hoped?

Yes, students, you should learn the 80s movies that served as source material for the fictional corporations included in your exam questions. This is an education I'm giving you.

Conservative: I have been discriminated against for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were discriminated against for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So...deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones

Accidentally ran over a copperhead on the lunchtime gravel bike ride. Exciting

In this inverted world Trump's "approval ratings" are "historically high" and every candy bar contains a golden ticket.

Meagan seems to have something about Kamala Harris that she doesn't like...

Ohio.

Matt, 54, a white mail service driver in the critically important swing state of Pennsylvania, thinks that Donald Trump is "the most transparent president ever."

We are currently living through an epidemic of jawboning. The GOP (aka "party of free speech") seems eager to use all tools at its disposal to coerce whoever it can to suppress speech it dislikes. This is obviously unconst'tl behavior.... but can the courts keep up when the norms fail?

Dems being overly reliant on advertising is going to hurt their capacity to inform voters of the GOP's extreme conservative agenda.

Meagan, 37, a white small-business owner in Texas thinks that the United States sells no products in any other country in the entire world. Seriously, tell me what Kamala Harris was supposed to do with a voter who is this incredibly uninformed despite being a grown adult?

"[A]ny comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door. 'I don’t know who they were,' she said. 'It was dark. All the lights were off.'"

The ICJ will deliver its provisional measures order in Sudan v. UAE on Monday (5 May 2025). The Court will probably say that the UAE's reservation to article 9 of the Genocide Convention deprives the Court of jurisdiction. But you never know.

Mark is a controller in, yep, Florida.

If you know real estate agents with good values, give them a heads-up (they deal with the title companies, who in turn deal with the insurers, but market pressure can work wonders)

John works in *information* technology in, yep, Ohio.

‪Please join us in signing the Press Freedom United open letter, today! pressfreedom.ac-page.com/home and celebrating World #PressFreedom Day on May 3! www.unesco.org/en/days/pres... Read our blog post about them, and more, here: mediaanddemocracyproject.substack.com/p/take-actio... #FreePress

These guys are about to kick millions of people off their health insurance and they don't have the faintest idea of how these programs work, just throwing out numbers in an incoherent jumble. It's like a football coach saying "We've got a 10-yard redzone in our offside flea flicker so we'll be good"

Biden copied Trump 1's flurry of initial exec action & next Dem likely to do same. But may be wrong lesson to learn: 1) Court record is bad, could be worse under Dem 2) Many will be unimplemented or overturned 3) Trump's interests (trade & immigration) align better w/ prez powers

How it started, how it's going for Daniel, who seems to be an easy mark.

The 32%-68% number among Republicans tells me they know things are not going well under Trump.

The face of authoritarianism kfor.com/news/local/w...

While the Trump administration is actually interested in continuing aggressive antitrust enforcement against Big Tech, Republicans in Congress are aiming to hobble antitrust, effectively wiping out the FTC and entire substantive areas of antitrust law www.thebignewsletter.com/p/house-gop-...

Mike Johnson doesn't believe in data. It's why he's a young Earth creationist.

To the person who decided to forward their email account to GitLab ensuring I get an error message whenever I send my newsletter: You’re on my enemies list

In what circumstances can the government regulate speech by imposing conditions on federal funding? Thanks to all of the scholars and litigators who've agreed to participate in this only-too-timely @knightcolumbia.org initiative. knightcolumbia.org/blog/knight-...

Bessent is not going to talk about Trump lying about talking.

This looks fun. I love the insanity of Xanadu! Let's have a musical about a Greek muse (totally normal), who comes from Mt. Olympus to Venice each in the 1980s (ok, weird, but I'll allow it) and the whole things is on roller skates! (whaat? why? just because we can, kids)

We now know what "moderate" means: cutting a mere $500 billion from Medicaid. www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

New research from @splitticketvoter.bsky.social suggests Trump made massive gains with naturalized citizens in 2024. Scaring legal immigrants and blowing up the economy seems like a formula for undoing them. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

If you missed @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com on liberal socialism, you really ought to rectify that

The utter bad faith of the Trump Regime (see its recent argument that a TRO against deporting migrants could be end run by transferring them from DHS to Defense for expulsion) leads to the necessity of absurdities like this.

www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

This is fascism. Truly.

Looks like the Trumpcession is here. It's very MAGA!

Amazingly you have not being paying attention. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/n...

This is a great contrast. Trump is hitting everyone with a huge tax increase (tariffs) to cover the cost of tax cuts for Elon Musk and his rich friends. The Democrats would raise taxes, mostly on the rich, to give everyone good healthcare.

The LBJ Oval Office decor and the Trump Oval Office decor. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/w...

The NYT has the riding-level vote shifts between the 2021 and 2025 Canadian elections for the three major national parties. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I'm from Ohio, the anti-immigrant capital of America, so I know that there's far too many people in this country who blame immigrants for the sorry state of their lives when their lives are what they are because they've made their own bad decisions in life.

This morning, I read an ancient Buddhist scripture about monks being assigned different sleeping quarters according to their temperaments. Scholars with scholars, teachers with teachers, etc. Gossips and body-building monks were housed together. For some reason, this seems totally appropriate.

Would very much appreciate prayers for a colleague who is in the ER right now! Thank you! ❤️🙏

Wake up, babe. New Articles of Impeachment just dropped.

I wrote so much stuff about color. It would saturate my heart if you read it

Canadian election analysis from Quico Toro: U.S. relations aside, the Liberals succeeded despite real Conservative gains in the Toronto suburbs because the NDP vote collapsed and voters on the left had only one plausible choice rather than two (or, in Quebec, three).

Play dumb games, win dumb prizes

oh my god grow a pair

Setting aside the merits of WPS, folks should be asking SecDef about the current WARFIGHTING in Yemen—specifically the reported US airstrike on a prison full of African migrants. Really curious to hear how bombing a bunch of migrants in Yemen contributes to US national security.

“Reframing international trade law as a way of scaling up capitalist sabotage helps us understand with some precision what is old and what is new in Trump’s tariff policies.” Brilliant critical reading of Trump’s tariff “policy”

Also, extensive political science research shows that Black & Hispanic respondents are much less supportive of tariffs than are white respondents. Democrats should use that issue as a way to help rebuild their diverse coalition.

Well, I guess Vance has found a company in SC that's willing to publicly support their tariffs. Also, 2028 politics at work with this visit to an early primary state? www.postandcourier.com/politics/tru...

Love this messaging, great job Mr. Speaker

Amazon is NOT actually doing this (of course they’re not), but it’d be a great idea for retailers. Not just on imported goods, but domestic producers who have to hike prices because their input costs have spiked.

CDT’s @matthewus.bsky.social in the @coloradosun.com on the recent revisions to the state’s #AI bill. coloradosun.com/2025...

Look, if the Khan calls, I will ride

Elvis had a much better fake badge collection. And he actually looked cool in shades.

Ohio State president didn't sign letter opposing Trump. He failed his students. www.dispatch.com/story/opinio...

Govt just filed a sealed motion in the Abrego Garcia case. Remember, discovery was stayed until tomorrow under a mysterious consent order Judge Xinis issued a week ago, after a sealed motion from the govt.