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John Hart Ely.

The Liberal Giant Who Doomed Roe

His works underpins the Dobbs decision. His legacy matters enormously to what's next for constitutional law.
by Caitlin B. Tully via Slate on June 25, 2023
Scale, with pile of U.S. states weighing down one end, and the U.S. on the other.

How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy

Lawyers tried to use the independent-state-legislature theory to sway the outcomes of the 2000 and 2020 elections. What if it were to become the law of the land?
by Andrew Marantz via The New Yorker on June 5, 2023
Supreme Court justices with their heads in boxes made from the Constitution.

Originalism Is Bunk. Liberal Lawyers Shouldn’t Fall For It.

The more liberals present originalist arguments, the more they legitimate originalism.
by Ruth Marcus via Washington Post on December 1, 2022
Photograph of Felix Frankfurter opening a briefcase.

A Prisoner of His Own Restraint

Felix Frankfurter was renowned as a liberal lawyer and advocate. Why did he turn out to be such a conservative Supreme Court justice?
by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on October 13, 2022
Image of Martin Luther King Jr. within a jail cell.

What Makes Laws Unjust

King could not accomplish what philosophers and theologians also failed to—distinguishing moral from immoral law in a polarized society.
by Randall Kennedy via Boston Review on April 11, 2022

The Revolutionary Idea That Remade the New World

Birthright citizenship is distinctly American—but not in the way Trump thinks.
by Greg Grandin via The Atlantic on June 10, 2025
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: A Vote for Cutting Off Your Nose

To reduce Virginia’s use of the death penalty, Thomas Jefferson proposed using permanent disfigurement as a punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy.
by Matthew Wills, Emily Cock via JSTOR Daily on June 4, 2025
Scroll and quill pen

Brutality and Opacity

Birthright citizenship under attack.
by Elisa Gonzalez via The Drift on May 29, 2025
A playing card King superimposed over Trump's face.

The Dangerous Legal Theory Behind Trump’s Power Grabs

There was no “unitary executive” until some dudes made the idea up to save Nixon.
by Pema Levy via Mother Jones on May 5, 2025
Poster reading "Basta Buitres," or "Enough Vultures," calling for Argentina to unite against the United States.

How the US Courts Rewrote the Rules of International Trade

How the American legal system created an economic environment that subordinated the entire world to domestic business interests.
by Brett Christophers via The Nation on March 3, 2025
Donald Trump with a crown on his head.

Donald Trump Is Trying to Take American Law Back to 1641

Understand that if Trump succeeds the result will not be the harmless resurrection of a quaint jurisprudential artifact.
by Frank O. Bowman III via Slate on February 26, 2025
Supreme court passing from the robing room to the court chambers, 1881.
partner

Lacking a Demonstrable Source of Authority

On the case that provoked the courts to decide if the federal government had jurisdiction to exercise American criminal law over Native peoples on Native lands.
by Keith Richotte Jr. via HNN on February 19, 2025
Silhouettes of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, President Donald Trump, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the Oval Office in the dark.

The Making of Emergencies

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.
by Caroline Elkins via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2025
Title page to Ida B. Wells's book about lynching.

Is It Legal?

Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.
by William Horne via In Case Of Emergency on February 7, 2025

The Case Against New York Times v. Sullivan

The malice test is the result of judicial activism and should be rejected by a Court that understands its task as the discovery, not the invention of law.
by Carson Holloway via Law & Liberty on November 1, 2024
Supreme Court building.

Lifetime Tenure for Supreme Court Justices Has Outlived Its Usefulness

While letting justices serve during “good behavior” was designed to encourage impartiality, it now tends to promote the opposite effect.
by Jack Rakove via Brennan Center For Justice on October 15, 2024
Illustration of the Constitution, with the hand of a Founder writing with a feather, and the other side a 21st century hand writing with a pen.

The Supreme Court’s Originalists Are Fundamentally Wrong About History

The Founders didn’t believe the Constitution had a fixed meaning. So why do so many of the justices?
by Andrew Lanham via The New Republic on October 7, 2024
U.S. Constitution

This Book Could Change the Way Conservatives Read the Constitution

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.
by Cass R. Sunstein via Washington Post on September 25, 2024
Antonin Scalia with Ronald Reagan, William Rehnquist, and Warren Burger at a press conference announcing Scalia's nomination to the Supreme Court.

The Return of the Common Law?

The originalist revolution will never be complete until we fully appreciate the natural law roots of the common law.
by Steven Hayward via Law & Liberty on September 9, 2024
Political cartoon showing Supreme Court Justice Sutherland handing a woman worker a decision on minimum wage.

The Most Conservative Branch

Stephen Breyer criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and argues for a more pragmatic jurisprudence.
by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2024
Photo of Supreme Court Justices posing in gowns.

The Origin of Specious

Originalism is not so much an idea as a legal-industrial complex divided into three parts—the academic, the jurisprudential, and the political.
by Garrett Epps via Washington Monthly on August 25, 2024
A judge's gavel and the Capitol building, edited to look like the top of the Capitol is the other side of the gavel.

America Has Too Many Laws

An excess of restrictions has taken a very real toll on the lives of everyday Americans. Their stories must be told.
by Neil Gorsuch, Janie Nitze via The Atlantic on August 5, 2024
Scale with hundred-dollar bills weighing down one side.

Markets and the Law

Neoliberalism isn’t just a set of economic precepts—it’s also an architecture of laws passed to reinforce those precepts. Those laws must be changed.
by Amy Kapczynski via Democracy Journal on June 24, 2024
Aziz Rana.

Aziz Rana Wants Us to Stop Worshipping the Constitution

A conversation with the legal scholar on why it is unusual that the Constitution is core to American national identity.
by Aziz Rana, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on June 3, 2024
Frozen truck on icy road

The Frozen Trucker and the Fugitive Slave

On the TransAm Trucking case, legal reasoning, and the Fugitive Slave Act.
by Barry Goldman via 3 Quarks Daily on May 27, 2024
Stanford Law School.

Why the Right’s Mythical Version of the Past Dominates When It Comes to Legal “History”

They’re invested in legal education, creating an originalist industrial complex with outsize influence.
by Saul Cornell via Slate on May 14, 2024
Side-by-side photographs of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

On Garrison, Douglass, and American Colonialism

Examining how William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass interpreted the nation's relationship with the Constitution.
by Maggie Blackhawk via LPE Project on April 22, 2024
Antonin Scalia speaking at a Federalist Society event.

How the Federalist Society Conquered the American Legal System

How the Federalist Society became the engine of the conservative legal movement—and where it might be headed next.
by Peter Shamshiri, Rhiannon Hamam, Michael Liroff, Amanda Hollis-Brusky via Balls And Strikes on February 13, 2024

Why the Long Shadow of Bush v. Gore Looms Over the Supreme Court’s Colorado Case

In the fight over keeping Trump’s name on the ballot, the 2000 decision is a warning but not a precedent.
by E. Tammy Kim via The New Yorker on February 7, 2024
A cartoon Trump is shooed away by a hand in a judge's robe

The Case for Disqualification

Three years later, amid another national election, the American public is still slow to understand the enormity of January 6, 2021.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on January 30, 2024
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