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There are at to the lowest degree 2 ways to empathise Vice President Pence’s argument that Joe Arpaio is a champion of the dominion of law.   One is obvious in addition to the other is subtle.   It’s non alone clear which reading ameliorate captures Pence's intentions.   They’re both bad, but the subtle i is considerably worse. To lay a slice of groundwork: Joe Arpaio is not, inwards fact, a champion of the dominion of law.   He is a persistent lawbreaker who systematically violated the Constitution in addition to was held inwards criminal contempt for courtroom for refusing to mend his ways.   So on the obvious reading of Pence’s statement, the Vice President was proverb something that’s evidently untrue, presumably amongst the intention of reaping to a greater extent than or less political advantage.   He was engaged inwards political gaslighting. But there’s too to a greater extent than or less other possibility—a to a greater extent than subtle in addition to to a g

The President of the U.S. is a liar, a bigot, a criminal, a sexual predator as well as a likely traitor.   That is how I began my utter at the New England Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting on the newspaper Sandy Levinson as well as I wrote that was only published yesteryear the Chapman Law Review: “The Constitutional Powers of Anti-Publian Presidents: Constitutional Interpretation inwards a Broken Constitutional Order.”   Let that sink inwards a bit.   The President of the U.S. is a liar, a bigot, a criminal, a sexual predator as well as a likely traitor.   We create non bespeak fancy psychiatric price to depict Donald Trump or experts to brand a diagnosis.   In layman’s terms, he is a liar, a bigot, a criminal, a sexual predator as well as a likely traitor. Other politicians enjoin lies as well as suspension laws.   We tin cause got partisan debates over whether Mitt Romney told to a greater extent than lies as well as to a greater extent than of import lies than B

Here is the video of my Apr 13, 2018 Mitchell Lecture at Buffalo Law School, entitled "The First Amendment inward the Second Gilded Age." This lecture describes the political economic scheme of gratuitous aspect inward our Second Gilded Age. It explains how nosotros pay for Earth sphere inward the digital age. I debate that the recent Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal typifies the primal work of securing liberty of aspect inward the Second Gilded Age. First, the key players who ready the basic rules of gratuitous aspect are non state states but powerful mortal actors similar Facebook who effectively deed equally the governors of digital spaces. Second, gratuitous spoken communication is non actually gratuitous at all. Freedom of spoken communication depends on an infrastructure of gratuitous expression, in addition to that infrastructure must hold upwards paid for inward 1 mode or another.  In the early on 21st century, people pay for gratuitous spoken communicatio

     On May 8, President Trump reportedly volition ship Congress a asking to rescind $15 billion inward funds appropriated for a diversity of non-defense programs.   Some sources both inward the White House together with inward Congress suggest that this may hold out the kickoff of several such requests that the President volition brand over the coming months.   These requests are made nether the Impoundment Control Act, on which fifty-fifty many budget physical care for experts notice themselves a fleck rusty.   Not surprisingly, media coverage of the possibility of rescissions has been confusing together with sometimes contradictory.   This ship service examines the procedural, substantive, together with political dimensions of these proposals.      Congress enacted the Impoundment Control Act inward 1974 amongst Title X of Pub. L. No. 93–344 inward reply to President Nixon’s repeated refusals to pass appropriated funds on programs he disliked.   The Act represents a truce bet

Yale Insights asks me three questions well-nigh Facebook, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, together with information fiduciaries.

While predicting what is probable to come upwards adjacent inwards the unfolding legal drama surrounding the President seems something of a fool’s errand, the prospect that Special Counsel Robert Mueller mightiness subpoena the President to compel him to prove earlier a federal grand jury right away seems at to the lowest degree plausible plenty to receive got prompted to a greater extent than than a piffling commentary on the constitutionality of such a move.  Most views cluster around the conclusion I tend to share: the interrogation whether the President tin hold out compelled to prove was formally left opened upwards yesteryear United States v. Nixon , but the considerations that led the Nixon Court to conclude that President could hold out compelled to plow over good tapes relevant to a federal criminal prosecution tend to favor the conclusion (as produce subsequent cases similar Clinton v. Jones ) that Trump could, modulo item claims of executive privilege most item lines of i

John Fabian Witt Gina Haspel, who testifies today earlier the Senate seeking confirmation every bit Director of Intelligence, is non the maiden off American official to expression upward a past times inward dark ops, torture, too humanitarian police pull violations.  To the contrary, she stands every bit the latest inward a long trouble of Americans.  How nosotros bargain alongside such people speaks volumes non only nearly them, but nearly us. The basic conundrum goes dorsum to the real beginnings of the republic.  The frontier reason of empire too Indian fighting regularly produced precipitous controversies over state of war tactics.  No 1 was to a greater extent than controversial than George Washington, who every bit a immature British officeholder was implicated inward a possible massacre of captured French soldiers inward the Seven Years War.  Washington himself, perchance inadvertently, seemed to acknowledge that something untoward had happened; the killings, he admitted, ha

I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, together with the get-go episode of this flavour is virtually the punctuation of the Constitution. More specifically, the episode discusses a paper  by Michael Stokes Paulsen together with Vasan Kesavan, which argues that the Texas Legislature has the ability to subdivide the country into upward to 4 novel states because Congress gave its consent to that activity when Texas was admitted to the Union inwards 1845. (Talk virtually the potential for partisan gerrymandering!) There are several other fascinating points inwards the podcast. One is that Gladwell spends a lot of fourth dimension talking virtually the punctuation inwards the Constitution without considering the possibility that the rules of grammer were dissimilar inwards the eighteenth century. I don't know if they were inwards a meaningful way, but the supposition inwards the episode is that nosotros should empathise the run of commas, semicolons, etc. equally they are us

The Oxford University Press has exactly published an interesting novel book, 51 Imperfect Solutions:  States too the Making of American Constitutional Law, past times Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton.  He is an extremely thoughtful conservative judge; alongside other things, his see upholding the Affordable Care Act is past times far the best of the judicial opinions that wrestled with the constitutional issues purportedly surrounding its passage.  It is a mensurate of the score of ideological polarization that this see almost sure accounts for his existence left off the lists compiled past times the Heritage Foundation too Federalist Society of desirable Supreme Court appointees. (And, of course, political liberals are presumably unhappy with his well-written see upholding Ohio’s constabulary barring same-sex marriage, based on judicial restraint arguments, which was overturned inwards Obergefell.)   Sutton had been Ohio’s solicitor full general prior to his

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this Wed on the proposed 2018 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), co-sponsored past times Senators Bob Corker (R.-Tenn.) together with Tim Kaine (D-VA), was inward many ways a model of how commonwealth should work.   The witnesses were skilful together with prepared, the Senators’ questions were thoughtful together with informed, together with everyone who participated was sober together with respectful.   Would that nosotros approached to a greater extent than of our national decision-making this way.    At the same time, it became apparent that senators’ views well-nigh whether this nib would hold upwards to a greater extent than or less effective than the existing 2001 AUMF inward constraining presidential powerfulness to job forcefulness are based on misapprehensions well-nigh where nosotros are nether electrical flow law.   (Recall  the electrical flow AUMF, passed precisely after the attacks of 9/11, has since been invo