The Volokh Conspiracy Archive

11/29/2004: Randy Barnett argues Gonzales v. Raich.

From the Joint Pre-Trial Memorandum in McQuade v. UMass Memorial Health Care, Inc., the plaintiff's position:

In the summer of 2020, a position at UMass Memorial's Heart Vascular Interventional Lab commonly known as the Cath lab opened. Mr. McQuade and Andrews both applied for the Cath lab position. Ms. Andrews was awarded the Cath lab position. Once Mr. McQuade learned that Ms. Andrews was awarded the Cath lab position, he reached out to his union representatives for advice. Mr. McQuade's Massachusetts Nurses Association ("MNA") union representatives … both advised that Mr. McQuade should file a grievance because he had seniority over Andrews, and had the requisite experience to work in the Cath lab.

Ultimately, on September 11, 2020, Mr. McQuade was successful in his grievance and was awarded the Cath lab position. This, in turn, caused Andrews to leave the Cath lab position and return to her previous position in the float pool. Andrews was angry that she had to return to the float pool. Andrews desperately wanted to stay in the Cath lab and filed her own counter grievance that was eventually denied at the "step 3" stage by UMass Memorial. Therefore, the only way Andrews could be able to return to the Cath lab would be if a position opened by resignation or otherwise, including the resignation of Mr. McQuade….

The Nurse Defendants are all friends and would frequently socialize outside of work together. Mr. McQuade expects the evidence will show that, the Nurse Defendants did the unthinkable, and started a vile, and frankly evil slander campaign against Mr. McQuade, in an effort to have him resign from the Cath lab, so the Nurse Defendants could all work together again. Specifically, the Nurse Defendants began spreading defamatory rumors around UMass Memorial that stated Mr. McQuade abused his wife and child and had an open DCF investigation against him. Further, Clark stated that Mr. McQuade "created a farm in [his] back yard in order to lure in children as [his] prey."

From a Justice Department statement issued Nov. 7, but just posted on Westlaw:

Zimnako Salah, 46, of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced today in the Eastern District of California to six years in prison in connection with his plot targeting Christian churches.

In March 2025, a jury in Sacramento convicted Salah of strapping a backpack around the toilet of a Christian church in Roseville, with the intent to convey a hoax bomb threat and to obstruct the free exercise of religion of the congregants who worshipped there. The jury's verdict included a special finding that Salah targeted the church because of the religion of the people who worshipped there, making the offense a hate crime.

According to the evidence at trial, from September to November of 2023, Salah traveled to four Christian churches in Arizona, California, and Colorado, wearing black backpacks. At two of those churches, Salah planted those backpacks, placing congregants in fear that they contained bombs. At the other two churches, Salah was confronted by security before he got the chance to plant those backpacks.

While Salah had been making bomb threats by planting backpacks in Christian churches, he had been building a bomb capable of fitting in a backpack. During a search of his storage unit, an FBI Bomb Technician seized items that an FBI Bomb Expert testified at trial served as component parts of an improvised explosive device (IED).

A search of Salah's social media records revealed that he had consumed extremist propaganda online. Specifically, those records showed that Salah had searched for videos of "Infidels dying," and he had watched videos depicting ISIS terrorists murdering people. In a cellphone video taken days before the crimes of conviction, Defendant Salah declared, "America. We are going to destroy it." …

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.

Lawyers! IJ is hiring, including this exciting new gig: Assistant General Counsel. If you're an experienced attorney who thrives in a fast-paced environment, enjoys tackling a wide variety of legal questions, and wants your work to support a powerful mission, this could be the perfect fit.

New on the Short Circuit podcast: Did an Ohio man need a permit for people to come to his house and pray?

Who owns a rhinestone-adorned piano that was once the property of Liberace? The First Circuit sees no reason to disturb the jury's breach-of-bailment verdict: It belongs to the charitable foundation of the Gibson guitar company and not to the Rockland, Mass. piano retailer who says the foundation gave, rather than lent, it to him.
District court (w/o a hearing and via one-paragraph order): This California-based cannabis entrepreneur lacks standing to challenge Rhode Island's licensing rules requiring majority in-state ownership/control and reserving social-equity slots for businesses majority-owned by people with Rhode Island-specific ties. First Circuit: The claims are ripe, not moot, she has standing, and similar Maine and New York laws have been invalidated on dormant commerce clause grounds in the meantime. Reversed and remanded for further proceedings—with haste! Read More

The article is here; here's the Introduction:

The centennial of Gitlow v. New York is upon us. Gitlow is typically praised as an essential step in the development of modern First Amendment doctrine, so that it is said that "[f]ew individual stars shine as brightly in the constellation of American civil liberties cases." Yet, closely examined, Gitlow seems a puzzling choice for constitutional canonization.

Decided at a time when there were virtually no First Amendment protections for speech, Gitlow held that government could punish mere abstract advocacy of violent revolution. Over the dissenting votes of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Louis Brandeis, Gitlow stood for the proposition that "a State in the exercise of its police power may punish those who abuse" freedom of speech "by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to incite to crime, disturb the public peace, or endanger the foundations of organized government and threaten its overthrow by unlawful means." It would not be too much of an exaggeration to characterize Gitlow as "the clearest expression of the Supreme Court's acceptance of seditious libel."

Modern First Amendment doctrine, by contrast, is founded on the fundamental axiom that the state may not punish seditious libel. If we now celebrate Gitlow, therefore, it is certainly not for its articulation of the substance of First Amendment protections. It must rather be because Gitlow construed the liberty interests protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which apply as against the States, to include free speech protections analogous to those protected by the First Amendment, which apply as against the federal government. "The precise question presented, and the only question which we can consider under this writ of error," Gitlow states, is "whether the statute, as construed and applied in this case, by the State courts, deprived the defendant of his liberty of expression in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

We are now apt to interpret this language through the lens of incorporation doctrine, which conceives the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as transparently reproducing the exact doctrines of the First Amendment "jot-for-jot and case-for-case." But any such conception of incorporation developed well after Gitlow, which understood itself instead to be explicating the specific nature of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The question in Gitlow was not what the First Amendment required; it was instead what was required by the liberty interests safeguarded by the Due Process Clause.

11/28/1872: Justice Samuel Nelson resigns.

A nice piece, which I enjoyed and thought I'd pass along. As with all such things, it can't capture the whole picture, but it captures an important part of it, I think. You can see it on Persuasion, or (under a slightly different title) on Kasparov's Next Move; an excerpt:

Democracy, freedom—politics, too. These are not ends in and of themselves. They are a vehicle for delivering human happiness and flourishing. That goal is what we're fighting for.

The notion of a free society is abstract. Thanksgiving celebrates abundance, and abundance is tangible. You can taste it. Smell it. Hear it. The turkey and mashed potatoes on your plate, the chatter with loved ones, whom you're free to visit—these are the fruits of a free society….

Free societies deliver abundance.

These days, there is a lot of doom and gloom about the United States across the political spectrum. I am not talking about America's current democratic and institutional crisis, which is indeed deathly serious. I am referring to the short-sighted ideological decay that is increasingly popular with radicals of all stripes; on the right, the perception of America as sinful, deviant, and overly tolerant. On the left, it is the view that America is criminal, colonial, illegitimate….

Americans would do well to discard these self-destructive narratives. It may be hard to describe what lofty concepts like democracy and freedom really mean, but you can see the rewards of those concepts all around you if you're willing to open your eyes.

If Abraham Lincoln could find time for gratitude in the middle of a deadly Civil War, Americans today can too. If [Boris] Yeltsin [visiting the U.S. in 1989] could be so impressed by a grocery store many Americans might consider average, then you have something to be thankful for. I'll dispense with the caveat that America isn't perfect (what country is?). If you are thankful for something, then you have something you can fight for.

Afghan evacuees arrive at Dulles International Airport in Virginia — Afghan evacuees arrive at Dulles International Airport in September 2021 (Rod Lamkey - CNP/Polaris/Newscom)

Yesterday, Afghan migrant Rahmanullah Lakanwal shot and seriously wounded two National Guard members in Washington, DC. In response, the Trump Administration has "indefinitely" suspended processing of all immigration-related applications by Afghans, including those legally in the US already. The Trump Administration has already been trying to deport many recent Afghan migrants, and this attack may serve a convenient excuse for further actions along these lines.

Lakanwal's attack was a heinous crime, and he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But Trump's collective punishment of Afghan immigrants is both unjust and counterproductive. As a group, Afghan immigrants have a very low rate of terrorism. Moreover, many entered the United States precisely because they helped the US in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Barring or deporting such people will predictably undermine future efforts to combat terrorism.

My Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh, a leading expert on immigration and terrorism (author of the most comprehensive analysis of that subject), has a helpful post listing all Afghan migrants who committed or attempted to commit terrorist attacks in the US, from 1975 to 2024. There are a total of only six, none of whom caused any fatalities. If, as seems likely, Lakanwal's attack was motivated by terrorism, that would make seven. That's a very low rate (about one perpetrator every seven years) for an immigrant community that numbers some 200,000 people.

If Lakanwal's crime turns out to be a terrorist attack, it would be only the second attempted by one of the large number of Afghan migrants who entered since 2021, after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (the earlier case was this one). If, as the administration claims, the 2021 influx included large numbers of unvetted terrorists, we should be seeing a lot more incidents like these.

The overall rate of terrorism among Afghan migrants may well be lower than that among native-born Americans. Since 2020, domestic right-wing perpetrators of political violence (nearly all native-born whites) have killed 44 people, and likely committed many more non-fatal attacks, though the exact number is hard to pin down. Left-wing domestic terrorists accounted for another 18 deaths during the same period (they, too, probably committed many additional non-fatal attacks). That's likely a higher incidence of terrorism than Afghan migrants, even accounting for the latter's much smaller numbers. Exact comparisons are difficult because we don't have a comprehensive data base of non-fatal domestic terrorist incidents.

Conservatives rightly decry racial and ethnic discrimination by government in other contexts, for example when it comes to racial preferences in employment and education. These principles should apply to immigration, as well. There is no justification for collectively sanctioning all Afghan migrants for the aberrational acts of very small number of them. All the more so in a situation where deportation and exclusion would subject victims to the horrifically oppressive rule of the Taliban. That's far worse than, e.g., being unfairly denied admission to an elite college, and having to settle for a lower-ranking one.

In the case of the Afghans, deportation and exclusion may well actively undermine the struggle against terrorism, rather than further it. I explained why in an earlier post about Trump's efforts to deport Afghans who arrived since 2021:

The veterans' groups [opposing deportation of Afghans] are right. Afghans deported back to Afghanistan - especially those who worked with the US during the war - will indeed face harsh persecution by the Taliban. Deporting them would be profoundly unjust, and also a betrayal of wartime allies that will make it more difficult for the US to recruit local support in any future conflict. If we don't stand by our allies, why would anyone trust us?

I'm old enough to remember a time when Republicans saw themselves as fighters against radical Islamism. Now they seek to deport Afghan allies back to the tender mercies of the Taliban, under the ludicrous pretext that conditions in Afghanistan are improving under the Taliban's rule.

If we betray Afghans who helped us fight terrorism, based on indefensible ethnic prejudice, potential allies will be less likely to help us in future conflicts.

NOTE: To forestall misunderstandings, I will point out I am using the word "punishment" here in its colloquial sense, covering all retaliatory punitive actions, rather than in the technical legal sense, which only covers penal sanctions imposed after conviction for a crime. The administration's actions against Afghan migrants fit the former definition, even if not the latter.

11/27/1964: WGCB carried a 15-minute broadcast by the Reverend Billy James Hargis as part of the "Christian Crusade" series. This broadcast gave rise to Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission (1969).

From yesterday's Oregon Supreme Court decision in State v. Cortes, written by Justice Bronson James:

Defendant, who is houseless, is on probation and subject to the general conditions of probation provided for by Oregon law. Those conditions include the requirement that a probationer shall "[n]ot possess weapons, firearms or dangerous animals." Defendant's probation officer issued a probation violation report alleging that defendant had violated the general weapons condition when he reported to the probation office with a knife in his backpack. At the probation violation hearing, defendant claimed that, although it was a knife, it was a steak knife, and it was therefore not a weapon but a tool, an essential eating implement that defendant carried in his backpack by necessity because, being houseless, he carried all his worldly possessions upon his person. {The knife was nine inches long, and the blade was four-and-a-half inches in length and had a rounded tip.}

The trial court rejected defendant's argument that the knife—even if it was a steak knife—was not a weapon for purposes of the probation statute. The Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion.

We allowed review to consider whether defendant violated the weapons condition in ORS 137.540(1)(j). The debate in this case might appear ontological in nature: What makes a weapon a weapon? What characteristics give an object weaponness?

But, we need not resolve those deeper philosophical questions. Our task is more grounded; we are only called upon to decide what the Oregon legislature intended to be considered a weapon for purposes of ORS 137.540. Here, based on the text, context, and legislative history of ORS 137.540(1)(j), and considering maxims of constitutional avoidance, we hold that the legislature intended for the term "weapons," as used in that statute, to apply to instruments designed primarily for offensive or defensive combat or instruments that would reasonably be recognized as having substantially the same character, and not to tools or objects designed primarily for utility, even when those tools can be used as weapons under some circumstances.

From last week's Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decision in Smith v. State, written by Judge Scott Walker; the Court of Criminal Appeals is Texas's highest court for criminal cases (the Texas Supreme Court handles civil cases):

Appellant's Confrontation Clause rights were violated by the trial court's mask mandate….

In Romero v. State (Tex. Crim. App. 2005), … one of the State's key witnesses refused to testify without wearing a "disguise" consisting of "dark sunglasses, a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead, and a long-sleeved jacket with its collar turned up and fastened so as to obscure [his] mouth, jaw, and the lower half of his nose." This Court noted that "the presence requirement is motivated by the idea that a witness cannot 'hide behind the shadow' but will be compelled to 'look [the defendant] in the eye' while giving accusatory testimony."

[The court in Romero also reasoned that, "Although the physical presence element might appear, on a superficial level, to have been satisfied by Vasquez's taking the witness stand, it is clear that Vasquez believed the disguise would confer a degree of anonymity that would insulate him from the defendant. The physical presence element entails an accountability of the witness to the defendant…. In the present case, accountability was compromised because the witness was permitted to hide behind his disguise." -EV]

Although in Maryland v. Craig (1990), the Supreme Court [rejected a Confrontation Clause because it] determined that the testimony of a child through a one-way closed-circuit monitor was reliable even though the physical presence element was lacking, the facts in Craig are not analogous to Romero. "[U]nlike Craig, [Romero] also involve[d] a failure to respect a second element of confrontation: observation of the witness's demeanor." When more than two elements of confrontation are being compromised, this Court determined that the Confrontation Clause requirements can only be circumvented if the public policy interest being served is "truly compelling." We did not find the witness's fears compelling, noting differences between adults' fears and children's fears and the fact that the defendant already knew the witness's name and address….

The Confrontation Clause requires case-specific evidence showing an encroachment of the defendant's right to confrontation was necessary to further a public-policy interest for the encroachment to be allowed under the United States Constitution. Because a surgical mask affects the physical-presence element of the Confrontation Clause and the jury's ability to assess demeanor, the trial court was required to make case-specific showings of fact that the mask mandate was necessary to further a public-policy interest….

[T]he use of surgical masks in the case at bar … is a significant impediment to viewing facial expressions due to the coverage of both the nose and mouth …. A reversal of the conviction is warranted because (1) the trial court did not show case-specific evidence that the masks were necessary, and (2) the mask mandate was applied regardless of individual necessity….

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit largely upheld the district court's dismissal of Donald Trump's lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and others and affirmed the district court's award of sanctions against Trump and Alina Habba. Chief Judge William Pryor wrote for the panel, joined by Judges Brasher and Kidd.

Judge Pryor's opinion in Trump v. Clinton begins:

These four consolidated appeals concern five separate orders. In 2022, between his terms of office, President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against dozens of defendants, alleging several claims, including two under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and three under Florida law. The district court dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice for failure to state a claim. On the defendants' motions, the district court also entered sanctions against Trump and his attorneys, under Rule 11 and under its inherent authority. While those orders were on appeal, Trump and his attorneys moved the district court to reconsider each order in the light of a report by Special Counsel John Durham. They also moved to disqualify the district judge. The district court denied both motions. Two defendants ask us to sanction Trump for bringing a frivolous appeal.

We affirm the orders with a caveat. Because the district court lacked jurisdiction over one defendant, it erred in dismissing the claims against that defendant with prejudice. So we vacate the dismissal of those claims and remand with instructions to dismiss them without prejudice. Because Trump's remaining claims are untimely and otherwise meritless, we affirm the dismissal of the amended complaint with prejudice for the other defendants. And because Trump and his attorneys committed sanctionable conduct and forfeited their procedural objections, we affirm both sanctions orders. The Durham Report does not change our conclusions, and the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider the disqualification motion. Yet, because the appeal of the dismissal order is not frivolous, we deny both motions for appellate sanctions.

Update: Here are some portions of the opinion discussing the sanctions:

In American Gas Association v. U.S. Department of Energy, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a legal challenge to a regulation adopting energy efficiency standards for natural gas-powered consumer furnaces and commercial water heaters that effectively bans non-condensing units from the market. This regulation had been adopted in 2023, and the court heard oral argument in November 2024, but only released its opinion in November of this year.

According to the panel opinion, written by Judge Wilkins and joined by Judge Pillard, the regulation did not exceed DOE's authority under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) and was not arbitrary and capricious. Judge Rao dissented (and, in my view, had the better of the argument).

Here is how Judge Rao describes the issues and why the DOE rule should have been held unlawful.

This case concerns Department of Energy regulations that effectively ban a class of common and affordable gas-powered appliances. Millions of homes and commercial buildings are equipped with traditional, "non-condensing" gas furnaces and water heaters. These reliable appliances vent their exhaust up a standard chimney. A more efficient "condensing" technology exists, but it is incompatible with traditional chimneys. Instead, it requires a different venting mechanism. In its quest for greater efficiency, the Department has issued new efficiency standards that effectively ban the sale of non-condensing appliances. As a result, any consumer seeking to replace a traditional gas furnace or commercial water heater will be forced to install a condensing model, a switch that often requires disruptive and expensive renovations to a building's venting and plumbing systems.

These standards run afoul of the careful balance Congress struck in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act ("EPCA") between improving energy efficiency and preserving consumer choice. While EPCA empowers the Department to set efficiency standards, the statute also imposes a critical limit on that authority. The agency is prohibited from imposing an efficiency standard that will result in the "unavailability" of a product with a "performance characteristic" that consumers value.

No one doubts that the challenged regulations make non-condensing appliances unavailable. The central question in this case is whether a non-condensing appliance's venting mechanism is a protected "performance characteristic." Because these appliances utilize a chimney common to many older homes and buildings, installing a condensing appliance will often require complex and costly renovations that may reduce a building's useable space. The ability to vent through a traditional chimney is exactly the kind of real-world feature Congress protected from elimination in the marketplace. The Department's efficiency standards, which make non-condensing appliances unavailable, are therefore contrary to law.

Independent of this legal error, the Department failed to demonstrate that the regulations are "economically justified," as mandated by EPCA, by showing their "benefits … exceed [their] burdens." 42 U.S.C. § 6295(o)(2)(B)(i); see also id. § 6313(a)(6)(B)(ii). The Department utilized an economic model that we have previously held to be irrational and inconsistent with EPCA's requirements. The flawed model fares no better here. Because the regulations are contrary to law and predicated on an arbitrary economic analysis, I respectfully dissent.

As Judge Rao's opinion indicates, it is difficult to square the majority's approach to the statute with Loper Bright. The statutory question in the case is what counts as a "performance characteristic." The majority thinks the statute is ambiguous on this point, and thus turns to legislative history and suggests the challengers face an evidentiary burden to prove that non-condensing appliances have such characteristics. Yet as Judge Rao notes, any such evidentiary burden "applies only to the factual question of whetehr a standard will cause a protected product to become available, not to the legal question of what qualifies as a 'performance characteristic.'" As she explains:

The central disagreement turns on the legal question of what counts as a "performance characteristic" under EPCA. The majority largely ducks this question by declaring that EPCA is ambiguous as to the meaning of "performance characteristic" and "utility." Majority Op. 16–18. The majority takes this ambiguity as a license to defer to the Department. But this Loper Bright avoidance is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's directive that a court must "use every tool at [its] disposal to determine the best reading of the statute and resolve the ambiguity." 144 S. Ct. at 2266.

Judge Rao further explains why the Department failed to provide an adequate justification for the rule, but this is a lesser concern that the question of statutory authority.

This rule would seem to have been a good candidate for quick rescission under the Trump Administration's directive that agencies identify and rescind regulations that lack adequate statutory warrant under the best interpretation of the applicable statute. Judge Rao's statutory arguments are more persuasive than those offered by the majority, particularly in a post-Chevron world in which the agency does not receive deference and the best reading of a given statute is supposed to govern. The problem now, however, is that the D.C. Circuit has upheld the regulation as consistent with the the statute.

Given this ruling, were the Department to rescind the rule on these grounds it would face a likely reversal (unless it were able to get further review in the Supreme Court). This means that we may be stuck with this rule. Failing to rescind the rule earlier, or even to ask the D.C. Circuit to delay issuing an opinion so the Administration could review the rule, seems to have been an oversight, and a costly one at that.

From Monday's decision by Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, joined by Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, in DeLanis v. Metro. Gov't of Nashville & Davidson County:

A Nashville city councilman threatened to withdraw business from a law firm, which served as the city's outside counsel, due to the position one of its attorneys took as the chair of the county election commission on a tax referendum. When the attorney declined the law firm's request that he oppose the referendum, the firm fired him. The attorney sued the council member and the law firm for retaliating against his federal free-speech rights, namely his support of the tax-repeal referendum in his capacity as the county election chair….

The law firm is eligible for qualified immunity in view of the government work it performed. And it did not violate any clearly established law. We know of no case in which the First Amendment prohibited a law firm from firing one of its lawyers when the business interests of the firm, including demands from one of its clients, triggered the firing. {The allegations against Baker Donelson present a unique situation not addressed by our cases to date. Whether Baker Donelson acted honorably or not in firing DeLanis, it did not have clear notice that a law firm (or private company) violates the First Amendment by firing an employee when a government client threatens to take its business elsewhere if the employee continues to act adversely to the government. Baker Donelson, for better or worse, sought to protect its client base, not to punish DeLanis for his speech. As DeLanis acknowledges in his complaint, Baker Donelson's business interests drove its conduct. The firm, in his words, "sought to maintain and increase the client revenue it generated" from Nashville at "all times relevant to the claims." We know of no free-speech case that covers this unusual setting, and DeLanis does not identify one himself.} …

{On the other hand, the council member's alleged actions violated clearly established law, and we affirm the district court's denial of his motion to dismiss.} When a public official warns a law firm that the city may pull business from it due to the public-office actions of one of its lawyers, that suffices to deter a person "of ordinary firmness" from exercising his First Amendment rights in that office…. [C]ausing an employee's firing due to his protected speech violates the First Amendment…. Mendes had ample notice that pressuring an employer to fire an employee in retaliation for his protected speech ran afoul of the Free Speech Clause…. DeLanis worked for a private firm, and Mendes caused him to be fired. The reality that DeLanis also served as a public officer does not transform a clearly adverse action into innocent conduct.

The Volokh Conspiracy

Today in Supreme Court History: November 29, 2004

Open Thread

Open Thread

$115K Defamation Verdict Over Workplace Accusations of Domestic Abuse

"Arizona Man Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for Plot Targeting Christian Churches"

Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal

Journal of Free Speech Law: "The Enigma of Gitlow: Positivism, Liberty, Democracy, and Freedom of Speech," by Robert Post

Today in Supreme Court History: November 28, 1872

Open Thread

Garry Kasparov, "What Thanksgiving Means to Me"

Trump's Unjust and Counterproductive Collective Punishment of Afghan Migrants

Today in Supreme Court History: November 27, 1964

Open Thread

Knife with 4½" Blade and Rounded Tip Wasn't "Weapon" Forbidden by Probation Condition, Oregon Court Holds

2023 Criminal Trial Where Witnesses Wore Surgical Masks Violated Confrontation Clause

Eleventh Circuit Upholds Dismissal of Trump v. Clinton and Affirms Sanctions Against Trump (Updated)

D.C. Circuit Upholds Energy Department Ban on Non-Condensing Furnaces and Water Heaters

Councilman's Threatening Outside Counsel Law Firm into Firing Attorney May Violate First Amendment

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