Top recent posts by Legal Academics on Bluesky

When the birthright citizenship decision comes out, people will say it could never have gone any other way, that the law was obvious. But the mere fact that SCOTUS took on the case is evidence enough that we are living in a time of democratic precarity.

As someone who studies politicization of democratic militaries this statement on X is a five- alarm fire. It creates an undeniable permission structure for overt partisan behavior by mil. It's part of a concerted effort by civilian leaders to turn the U.S. military into a partisan aligned force.

I paid $17 for this ticket, it’s a beautiful night, it’s bogo dogs, and I’m getting ice cream in about two innings. You can’t ruin this for me. Do your worst, Phils.

I mean, good, but it’s still a sign of profound dysfunction if this isn’t 9-0. A justice who will sign off on this is effectively announcing there’s nothing too flagrantly unconstitutional to get their blessing if a Republican president does it.

A report from Earth 2 where the US actually won the Vietnam War.

I have been thinking a lot about this article & the "BIDEN'S TOTAL FAILURE IN AFGHANISTAN!" coverage in 2021, & there's simply no comparison between the scope, scale, & tone of that coverage & the "just the facts, very measured" reporting of what's going on with Iran/NATO/Trump now.

If you were wondering how the class field trip went

BREAKING: Judge Richard Leon enjoins Trump ballroom construction in suit by National Trust for Historic Preservations. Order stayed for 14 days to allow for appeal. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Illiberal democracies often rely on formally democratic institutions like courts to maintain a false image of the state as protective of democratic freedoms.

Big Tech is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms, to make sure they go unregulated and they don't have to pay more taxes to deal with the consequences of the technology they create. My latest at Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/big-tech-i...

This is a massively underappreciated practical & logistical problem. There are at least hundreds of children found abandoned every year, but more importantly, TENS TO HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS who have no father listed at birth.

Before we jump to any conclusions...if the last part of this tweet is accurate, the penalty for not curtailing mail ballots is potential loss of funding. If it's election funding it's tiny, and this is a paper tiger.

My new one @slate.com on Trump's new mail balloting executive order: Sometimes it's the chaos, not the cruelty, that's the point. slate.com/news-and-pol...

A live look at Gorsuch

These guidelines reinforce the importance of whole grains and fruit and vegetables but clash with the government’s latest nutrition advice on red meat

Not sure whether this is apt or terrible timing but here’s the official cover of my book due out with @uncpress.bsky.social W. Hodding Carter III imprint this fall. 🎉

People make fun of Judge Leon's style, but I like his last ¶, about requiring Congress to approve his ballroom: "And the American people will benefit from the branches of Government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles. Not a bad outcome, that!"

In many/most normal democracies, the failure of the government to pass a budget brings down the government & triggers new elections. In American "democracy," you can control both houses of Congress & fail to pass a budget indefinitely. We are a very serious polity. Please clap.

Friends, again with respect because this is a complex issue: children born to citizens of tribal governments do not have constitutional birthright citizenship under many, if not most forms of constitutional argument and authority (incl. Supreme Court precedent relied upon in this case)./1

Huh, so international law is a thing. And this administration apparently has thoughts about illegal attacks on boats in particular.

Absolutely, and this is another data point for “Trump has no theory of mind.” Just congentially incapable of adopting anyone else’s perspective.

The Constitution gives Congress authority over federal land, so a President can't construct a new White House ballroom with private funds without Congress's ok, Judge Leon holds. Order to stop construction paused so DOJ can appeal. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Completely illegal. And at the rate cases have been moving, maybe the courts will do something about it 14 months from now

This is incredibly important. The Trump Administration's pullback from treating and preventing HIV at home and abroad is a travesty. So much needless suffering and death will result.

Make him wait in line.

Why indeed As a certified judge translator, “puzzled” is bad

Trump has appealed his ballroom injunction from 2 hrs ago. Note for comparison that govt still hasn't appealed Judge Lin's injunction from last Thursday against Trump's & Hegseth's designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, purportedly to protect our warfighters from risk of sabotage.

Well, that went badly for Sauer. Don’t expect the birthright citizenship side to get by without any hard questions, non-law-folks. But I have a hard time seeing Trump winning or even getting close after the questions i saw on here

Access Hollywood—Domestic Policy edition

🚀 🌔 NASA is planning to launch Artemis II to the moon in just seven hours! Here's your quick guide to the mission--read more at www.scientificamerican.com/report/nasa-...

Your regular reminder that abortion bans are, among all the other awful things, also a crystal clear violation of the First Amendment, & we can either be a white evangelical Christian theocracy, or we can be an actual constitutional republic of laws & equal rights for everyone, including Jews.

Never mind that I died inside when I heard Gorsuch say in Trump v Barbara arguments that there weren't any immigration laws in the 1860s. Taps new book 👇 in which I document the over a century of first colonial then state-level international and domestic migration laws before federalization.

Livestreaming Bruce Springsteen in Minneapolis, where he opened with a call to reject authoritarianism and complacency and launched into “War.” Thanks, Boss. Bruuuuce!

Fed. judge holds that Penn must disclose to the Trump administration the contact information of employees in Jewish-related campus orgs. and the Jewish Studies Program and participants in antisemitism listening sessions. Here's the memorandum --> storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Groups like RDI realize what Trump seemingly does not: that the war in Ukraine is not a conflict between two equally culpable parties but a battle of good vs evil. The Ukrainians are the good guys, and they deserve all the support we can muster, for reasons both strategic and moral. bit.ly/4dheLLd

Did they find the “Mission Accomplished” banner for the event?

Sauer is pointing to Wurman's amicus brief. Game over. Just an extremely suspect source, and I think (most of) the justices know it.

Wow. Worse than Nixon in Watergate!

Imagine if we'd given them what they needed in 2022.

Congrats again to Ezra Klein: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Hegseth’s swift intervention in the case raised immediate questions about whether the military can hold its own accountable for actions that Hegseth may deem politically favorable. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

It's official -- Trump is trying to shut down the election, blocking ballots from being mailed. This is flatly illegal. It is also a straight-up fascist takeover of our democracy www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

Breaking: President Trump Signs New Executive Order on Elections: It is Underwhelming Compared to What Was Threatened. It’s Key Part is Likely Unconstitutional: Directing the Post Office to Reject Mail Ballots Except from Those on Federally Approved Voter Lists electionlawblog.org?p=155187

The American military is intensifying efforts to secure greater access to Greenland, a clear signal that President Trump’s interest in the enormous Arctic island has not waned. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/w...

Akhil Amar in July 2025, on impeachment and the right-wing assault on birthright citizenship klhn.co/legomsky-et-...

"The Birthright Con" Excellent @nytimes.com essay previewing today's birthright citizenship arguments by @jamellebouie.net (and not just for quoting the amicus brief from @evanbernick.bsky.social @brendanbenedict.bsky.social @mike-altebrando.bsky.social and me) www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/o...

Once again, I must state for the record that Alito is the worst.

Unlike with past presidents, the inflation we see now is entirely due to Trump's actions. That was not true with Biden, Carter, or any prior president. People are right to be pissed.

At this rate, Musk can afford to keep pumping out CSAM for roughly 20,000 years.

1. SCOTUS is going to have a hard time ruling for Trump on birthright. He did himself no favors today. 2. Our birthright citizenship rule is a universal one, designed to prevent Trump from doing what he's trying to do now -- deciding who's American and who isn't. 3. SCOTUS? Still a major problem.🧵

Trump is at 80 percent among Republicans. That may seem high. It is not, since they are his only consistent source of support.

Today in “neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarianism”

I’m completely horrified at being timely at all now

Your regular reminder that neither party in 🇺🇸 politics <actually> cares about debt or deficits, but this is <especially> true of the Republican Party.

Thirty-two days after the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran, President Trump will deliver a formal address to the nation about it:

Here’s a headline you’d never see in Europe

From the last time....

Let's praise the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Sure, lots of people are losing health insurance, disabled folks will be forced back into institutions, and state budgets will be devastated, but at least Deloitte, Accenture, and Optum can laugh all the way to the bank. www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-m...

True story: Sometimes I’ll stay up late playing on my phone, and regret it the next morning. Then I’ll do it again that night.

There is a certain sad kismetic irony to birthright citizenship being heard in the Supreme Court on April Fools' Day, because if you had told me if ever in my lifetime we would be litigating birth right citizenship, I would have thought you were joking.

Some SCOTUS drama that is not about birthright citizenship: the very important Monsanto case is coming up. Basically, can you sue about Roundup? /1

In his second term inaugural address, "Donald Trump promised to 'bring back free speech to America'." Clay Calvert of AEI surveys the "dispiriting reality" of what he has done instead in one area of speech freedom after another.

Friends, Native people are, indeed, Native to this land. But they were not Native to the United States. We all need to, somehow, collectively unpack the presumption that the U.S. is (and has ever been) the only instantiation of "this land." There were, and are, many other governments here.

Disdainful Gorsuch is fun when he’s on your side.

Here’s @lawfaremedia.org 's exclamation mark density™ analysis for Judge Leon’s White House Ballroom injunction, with historical comparisons. WH Ballroom case: 0.51 EM/page Kelly v Hegseth: 0.48 EM/page WilmerHale v. EOP: 0.37 EM/page I.e., a new record since we've been tracking. (!)

This is just made up? Granted with eight million people out I’m sure some idiot somewhere is flying one, but I haven’t seen it anything like that. Indeed, I think they’re nervous at how wholesomely American these things are. Signs quote the Constitution, not Kapital.

Courts have gone completely off the rails.

Watch live with us as NASA prepares to launch the Artemis II mission around the moon 🚀

So, no joke: - On Friday, I posted the working draft of my newest article. - Yesterday, it got cited in a motion seeking, inter alia, sanctions against Deckers and its attorneys. See Deckers v. bei duo et al, Docket No. 1:26-cv-00540, ECF 31

To be fair, Wurman would not argue the 22nd Amendment is unconstitutional. He would argue that it means that a President cannot run for three *consecutive* terms.

NASA is launching four astronauts on a moon mission in less than nine hours! Take a look back at how we got to the Artemis II mission and catch up on all our coverage here: www.scientificamerican.com/report/nasa-...

This is what's known in the biz as "complete military defeat"

Eliot Cohen: Never has the United States had a secretary of defense less capable, more egregiously belligerent, or less suited to provide civilian direction of a war than Pete Hegseth. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

🎼 The Finding Out is the Har...dest...Part... 🎶

If missed from me at The Dispatch: the Trump administration's deportation campaign, like its Caribbean boat strike campaign, fits into a pattern of extrajudicial violence encouraged and abetted from the very top.

Amid the insanity of American politics, it’s highly inspiring to visit a country united in defense of an embattled democracy. maxboot.substack.com/p/why-ukrain...

Yet again we see how originalism is disingenuous bad-faith bullshit from top to bottom, start to finish. The whole method is to cherry-pick some obscure quote that seems to support the outcome conservatives seek, then shout "Case closed!" It should never be greeted with anything but utter contempt.

I wrote this three years ago, watching the Next Twitter come online, and I am feeling it erinkissane.com/tomorrow-and...

One of the dumbest times to be alive.

This is a damn shame.

Trump v Barbara. 1) There's a dispute over what original public meaning of the birthright clause was. ACLU has more evidence. 2) Alito had bizarre textual questions that do not bear on holding of Wong Kim Ark. 3) Legal + policy arguments in play. Hope policy ones win. 4) This was all unnecessary.

Let’s put that right in the opinion

My book Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States hits shelves this month! It is available for preorder with @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org www.cambridge.org/core/books/c... and the various other sites. It's been a labor of love that I hope improves health care.

x is now part of spacex, so i'm guessing some of this is deck-clearing for the ipo

Honestly, the more time he spends irritating John Roberts, who totally deserves the irritation from this person in particular, the less time he has committing us to another illegal war of choice.

So very tired, we, the Jews of the world, are

To all the beautiful trans people in my life and beyond, you are loved and respected and treasured. Always. Not just on Trans Day of Visibility. May we create a world deserving of you.

Contrary to what right-wing media tell you, the $20 an hour minimum wage in California's fast-food industry is raising incomes, without costing jobs. The effect on prices is minimal irle.berkeley.edu/publications...

Yeah, we’re not even getting out of the group stage of a 48-team World Cup for which we got a trophy Pot 1 seed. Better for us if everyone doesn’t show up in the end.

One of Europe’s foremost Trump whisperers tries to talk him off the ledge.

“Judge Blocks Deal Allowing Churches to Endorse Political Candidates” electionlawblog.org?p=155200

Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties

trans folks in my life and feeds, I feel privileged when you allow me to perceive you <3

POTUS is bored of his war and pivoting back to the "beautification" of DC.

Counterpoint: Congress should not vote to authorize this unnecessary war. Nor should Congress appropriate any funds for it. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/o...

Especially where there’s a perfectly obvious set of historical reasons why we’d have birthright and they wouldn’t

👇🎯 Today in "Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party"

Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties

Irrational exuberance. The war ain’t over.

Yep, it is indeed not even a Catholic church on the cover of Vance’s book! The man has always been a total fraud.