It might seem too early, as many of those who support the Alito draft opinion that would overrule Roe and Casey, needless to affirm the Mississippi law as falling within the permissible restrictions that do not unduly burden a penumbral right, would argue. After all, we’re told, this isn’t the end of abortion, but the return to where the decision ought to be made, state legislatures. It probably won’t change much of anything, it’s argued, so why get all crazy about it?

Of course, Louisiana voted out of committee this week a law making all abortions murder. Continue reading →

Among the many reactions to the leaked Alito Dobbs draft are protests at the Supreme Court, for which fences have been erected out of concern that “mostly peaceful” protests are not peaceful protests. To the extent that people feel the need to protest, that’s their right within the parameters of expressive communication that doesn’t impair the functioning of the Court.

Whether it’s effective, beyond being cathartic for protesters, is another matter. People struggle with the notion that the Supreme Court was not crafted to be a democratic body, a political body, whose rulings reflect the will of the people. Indeed, it was crafted to be immune from political whims by giving justices life tenure so they need not fear a backlash from their rulings if the public disapproves. Continue reading →

Sheriff Roy saw many odd occurrences during his time as a law enforcement officer. His years manning the helm of Mud Lick’s Sheriff’s Department opened his eyes to many wild cases of people breaking the law.

The call he’d gotten about a disabled vehicle straddling a median near the Wiggly Piggly? This was something out of a bad training video at the Academy.

The car was an old El Camino that somehow managed to strike a sign proclaiming “No U Turn” in the median near the Wiggly Piggly’s parking lot. Brown might have been the color, but it was now a mixture of Bond-O, rust colors, and some puke green. Continue reading →

It’s easy to dismiss the blight of student loan debt if you’re not someone crushed by it. It’s easy to see why “cancellation” of student loan debt is critical if you are. Addressing the issue, however, is anything but easy.

But pressure is building to enact some kind of dramatic giveaway before the midterms. And word from the White House is that Biden has magically found his legal authority.

Continue reading →

As a mother, Jessica Grose wants her fourth grader to be able to do math at grade level, something American schools have proven remarkably poor at achieving.

As a parent, I read this and felt completely exhausted. Partly because I don’t care all that much about whether textbooks explicitly address social and emotional learning. Good teachers, those who care about all of the students in their classes, incorporate these concepts whether they’re spelled out in a textbook. My fourth grader constantly tells me that “practice makes progress,” instead of “practice makes perfect,” because her school is teaching her to keep working at something even if she isn’t great at it right off the bat.

Continue reading →

I can’t remember who said it, but someone once challenged the universe to proffer one decent thing Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho has ever done. Challenge accepted.

Worthy civil rights claims are often never brought to trial. That’s because an unholy trinity of legal doctrines—qualified immunity, absolute prosecutorial immunity, and Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)—frequently conspires to turn winnable claims into losing ones. Continue reading →

My old buddy and fellow curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann, still writes for Above the Law once a week, as he has since it was readable and credible. Why is a mystery to me, as he’sf smart and funny, thus unrelatable to ATL’s readership these days. My best guess is that he’s still in the groove and, to the extent he’s able to offer any serious thoughts to a young lawyer, he wants to help. Mark’s that kind of guy.

So he wrote a post that was somewhat satirical, but with a point. Continue reading →

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned and executed the attack on Pearl Harbor, is famously reputed to have written in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” While the views of Americans vary about abortion, there is no doubt that only a significant minority want to ban abortion. The majority of Americans believe it is, and should be, a constitutional right.

But abortion is only the beginning of the conflagration caused by the leak of the draft opinion. It was obvious that this would strike a significant blow to the integrity of the Supreme Court, not because of the content of the draft but because it proved, in the minds of many, that the catastrophizers were right and the Court is now nothing but a machine honed to do the bidding of the radical right wing. Continue reading →

Some prawfs noted that there was a leaked decision in 1919 by a Supreme Court clerk given to some Wall Street speculators so they could use the advance information to make a killing in the market. But the idea of someone within the Supreme Court leaking a draft decision is shocking. This doesn’t happen. This is an exceptional violation of trust. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but that was before people assumed the duty to save humanity by violating rules and norms and becoming a hero.

Was the leaker a hero, or was the leaker a villain? Continue reading →

Some, most notably those who are either law nerds or untroubled by the substance, will raise the shock that a draft opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States was leaked to Politico. And it is, without a doubt, shocking. Because it violated the trust of chambers. Because it likely reflects someone’s view that leaking this draft was more important than the sanctity of confidence. Maybe a law clerk. Maybe staff. We may never know who did it, which is worthy of discussion.

But it was done, and now the draft has been made public. This changes everything. Continue reading →