24 July 2026
Impeaching a Judge for Federalist Society Membership
On June 29 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Trump v. Slaughter. The ruling completed a forty-year project. Unitary executive theory is one part of it, the claim that the president alone controls the entire executive branch. The rest is a body of rulings that place a president beyond prosecution, leave the disqualification clause unenforceable and remove the independence Congress built into agencies. Judges credentialed through a single organization delivered all of it. In my view, membership in the Federalist Society is sufficient cause to impeach and remove a federal judge. Continue reading >>
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08 July 2026
(De)Valuing Citizenship
Last Tuesday, the US Supreme Court released its final merits opinion of its October 2025 term. In Trump v Barbara, a razor thin 5-4 majority deemed the President’s attempt to deny American citizenship to children born on U.S soil to immigrant parents who are undocumented or present on certain visas unconstitutional. The decision is a rare and important win for immigrants and American constitutional democracy. But Barbara should not be remembered as an example of principled judicial resistance against gross executive overreach. Continue reading >>
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13 May 2026
The Seduction of Constitutional Anti-Orthodoxy
American constitutional law treats “orthodoxy” as verboten. The concept has become a shorthand for the state imposition of belief that the First Amendment most centrally forbids. This anti-orthodoxy rhetoric is potent. It is also conceptually confused and increasingly destabilizing to contemporary First Amendment doctrine. This is especially acute in the undifferentiated and imprecise form it has assumed in cases like Chiles. Continue reading >>
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11 November 2025
A “One-Way Ratchet”?
On Wednesday, November 5, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court heard one of the most anticipated oral arguments in recent times. In Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., the Court is examining the legality of President Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs. The case lies at the intersection of two powerful, and potentially conflicting, trends in the Court’s recent jurisprudence: on the one hand, efforts to constrain delegations of power to the executive; on the other, a recurring embrace of expansive presidential authority. Each path carries significant risks for the broader balance of powers in the U.S. constitutional system. Continue reading >>
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10 September 2025
Whose Common Sense?
On September 8, 2025, in the case of Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court signaled its support for ICE’s continued use of racial profiling in immigration policing. By staying a lower court’s restraining order, the Court allowed agents once again to stop and arrest people based on how they look, the language they speak, where they live, and the kind of work they do. The closest the Court came to providing reasons for its intervention came in the form of a non-precedential concurrence authored by Justice Kavanaugh. In it, “common sense” is doing the heavy lifting, just as it has in the Court’s immigration policing jurisprudence for decades, at the expense of facts, evidence, and individual rights. Continue reading >>
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08 August 2025
Litigation v. Politics
The Trump Administration appears committed to crush any and all opposition by the aggressive use of national power. Given the constitutional status of federalism within the United States, these attempts at control from Washington are provoking a wave of litigation. However, it is also important to pay attention to the political means by which states can engage in resistance. A major issue of the moment is whether the Texas Legislature will adhere to the strong demand by Donald Trump that it redraw the legislative districts; and whether Democrats within the state will succeed in their defiance. Continue reading >>
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23 July 2025
Another Step in the Anti-Abortion Agenda
Trump’s recently passed “One Big, Beautiful Bill” bars Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood for one year. The provision is now temporarily blocked after Planned Parenthood filed suit. But it builds on, and must be read against, the backdrop of Medina v. Planned Parenthood, a recent and disastrous Supreme Court ruling initiated by South Carolina. The case starkly illustrates the Court’s continued alignment with an anti-abortion agenda advanced through state governments and forms part of a broader assault on civil rights. Not least, its entanglement with Medicaid signals a deeper campaign against the poor and access to healthcare. Continue reading >>
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21 July 2025
Stopping the Davids, Shielding the Goliaths
In Barbara v. Trump, an individual federal district court judge stopped the Administration’s birthright citizenship executive order nationwide. Just when the Supreme Court said this was not allowed in Trump v. CASA, a New Hampshire judge ordered universal relief, this time through a class action. There is a big difference between a nationwide injunction that benefits non-parties and a class action that benefits class members. But what they have in common is that they both empower the “little guy” to enforce the rule of law. The Supreme Court has eliminated the former and is now trying to kneecap the latter. Continue reading >>
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18 July 2025
Progressives and the Supreme Court
The Case for Disengagement Is Misguided Continue reading >>
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11 July 2025
Laboratories of Authoritarianism
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded the 1st Amendment Free Exercise Clause to grant conservative religious parents a constitutional right to remove their children from any classroom where a teacher includes LGBTQAI+ people in the curriculum. In effect, the Court has allowed public schools to discourage mutual tolerance, parents to opt out of Equal Protection, and fringe legal strategists to continue to use children’s constitutional rights as a test case for authoritarianism. In doing so, the erosion of children’s rights becomes the foundation upon which other rights are eroded. Continue reading >>
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