It’s unclear whether the concept of due process is that difficult that non-lawyers, or perhaps just those disinterested, fail to grasp its significance, or people are just making up nonsense because it’s, well, inconvenient.

If you skipped the “due process” when you came into the country, you should be afforded no “due process” on your way out.

This view has gained some steam, even though it’s completely nonsensical. Due process has nothing to do with coming into the country and no one who understands the concept would twit something so absurd unless their point was to confuse and mislead the simpletons. Who would do such a thing? Why would any patriotic, Constitution-loving  American do such a thing? Continue reading →

If Interim and nominee for United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin’s bizarre overreach by sending a letter to Georgetown Law School was worthy of a Cleveland Brown’s response, at least Georgetown was within his district. His latest missive, however, not only shares the same bizarre overreach, but no longer reflects any grasp of American geography. This time, he sent a letter to a medical journal in Illinois.

Ed Martin, the Interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia, has sent out a letter to a rather obscure medical journal, “Chest” – a journal published in Illinois by the American College of Chest Physicians and focused on pulmonary and sleep-related medical research[*].  The letter, dated 4/14/2025, was first reported on the website “Medpage Today,” and was, apparently, one of at least three that Martin sent out to different medical journals.

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There are some reasons why people have lost faith in the competence of physicians. They don’t have all the answers. They can often be smug and dismissive toward patients. Medical malpractice has been a far greater problem than docs care to admit, with medical errors costing about 250,000 patients their lives per year according to a Johns Hopkins study. Then there’s the internet, where anybody can google their diagnosis and treatment with neither the benefit of a medical education nor the experience of treating ailments.

That occasionally ends with doctors being told by patients and their families that they want to be treated in a way that conflicts with the doctors’ advice. What’s a doc to do? Continue reading →

When shots rang out at the Galleria Mall in Birmingham, Alabama, two things happened at pretty much the same time. Two police officers went toward the sound of gunfire, and one Good Samaritan drew his legally carried handgun and went toward the sound of gunfire to help. That was the last thing the Good Samaritan, EJ Bradford, did.

On Thanksgiving night in 2018, David Alexander—a policeman with the City of Hoover—was on foot patrol with his partner in the Galleria Mall in Birmingham, Alabama. During a suspected active shooting situation, and within seconds after gunshots had been fired in the Mall, Officer Alexander saw Emantic “E.J.” Fitzgerald Bradford moving towards two men (who appeared to be shooting victims) with a gun in his hand and at his side. Without issuing a verbal warning, Officer Alexander shot and killed Mr. Bradford when he was about ten feet away from the two men. It turns out that Mr. Bradford was legally authorized to carry his gun pursuant to a permit issued under Alabama law and was going towards the sound of the shots in an attempt to provide assistance.

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It was after 1 am on a Saturday morning, well after scotch o’clock at the Supreme Court of the United States, when the order issued.

There is before the Court an application on behalf of a putative class of detainees seeking an injunction against their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The matter is currently pending before the Fifth Circuit. Upon action by the Fifth Circuit, the Solicitor General is invited to file a response to the application before this Court as soon as possible. The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court. See 28 U. S. C. §1651(a).

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Prefatory note: I fully intended to take this week off. It’s a rare weekend when both my in-laws visit and it’s Wrestlemania weekend so I wanted to thoroughly enjoy it. Then some unpleasantness happened late last week, and I had to say something.—CLS

Junior:

In the words of a man far wiser than I, “Sit down. I have something to tell you and it’s going to make you sad.” Continue reading →

They got a conservative judge in a conservative circuit, and still Trump got crushed when Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, joined by  Judges Robert King and Stephanie Thacker, unanimously denied the motion for an emergency stay of Judge Paula Xinis’ contempt hearing.

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

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There is a problem in higher education, and that problem was evident in Harvard Yard when tents were set up, students were harassed, classes were disrupted, and students were prevented from getting to class because of their religion. Harvard did not merely do a very poor job of addressing the problem, but was flagrantly hypocritical in that it would never have tolerated any of it had the target been black students or transgender students rather than Jewish students.

Harvard had a problem. It still does. And yet, it’s still Harvard, the premier university of America and third best engineering school on Mass Ave. It needs to deal with its problem, as well as penumbras which have prevented diversity of thought, ideas and beliefs from thriving in a setting theoretically dedicated to scholarly inquiry. Harvard was, and still remains, intolerant of heretics. Continue reading →

Between the non-responsive, if downright moronic, updates tendered by the government as to the status of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, and the show pony press conference with peculiarly attired Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, Trump has taken his stand.

The message from the meeting was clear: Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Bukele had any intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that he should come back to the United States. The case has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts and his willingness to deport people without due process.

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From the outside, it appeared that Paul Weiss’ capitulation to Trump was a shameful act of cowardice. Yet, others followed, even though there were no Executive Orders issued against them and, as far as can be known, no intention or reason to do so. Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, A&O Shearman, Simpson Thacher, and Cadwalader, all dropped to their knees before Trump, accepting his anti-DEI oversight and committing themselves to a hundred million plus in pro bono representation of Trump-supported causes.

Cowards? So it seems, but David Lat raised another possibility. A far darker possibility. Continue reading →