The Volokh Conspiracy Archive

4/28/2015: Obergefell v. Hodges argued.

Claims that illegal immigration is causing a crime wave are ubiquitous on the political right, and likely helped Trump win the 2024 election. But social science studies consistently show that immigrants - including illegal ones - actually have much lower crimes than native-born Americans. A new analysis by my Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh and political scientist Michelangelo Landgrave is the most thorough and up-to-date assessment yet.

Alex summarizes their findings here:

Our consistent finding is that legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by illegal immigrants, and that native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants are half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans, and legal immigrants are 74 percent less likely to be incarcerated….

A persistent criticism of Cato's paper in this series is that the native-born incarceration rate is only higher because black native-born Americans have a high incarceration rate (see Table 1 from our paper). It's certainly true that black native-born Americans have the highest incarceration rates of any ethnic or racial group in any immigrant category. However, the high black American incarceration rate does not overturn our results. It merely narrows them. Immigrants have lower incarceration rates even without considering black native-born rates….

Excluding black native-born Americans and black immigrants reduces the native-born incarceration rate by 27 percent, from 1,221 to 891 per 100,000 in 2023 (see Table 1 for reference). Excluding black immigrants barely reduces the legal immigrant incarceration rate to 312 per 100,000, but increases the illegal immigrant incarceration rate to 626 per 100,000. Excluding blacks increases the illegal immigrant incarceration rates because their rate is below that of the rest of the population. The legal and illegal immigrant incarceration rate gap with natives also narrows to 65 percent and 30 percent lower, respectively. Excluding only black native-born Americans and keeping black immigrants in the sample, which doesn't make sense but critics have brought it up, produces almost identical results.

It's worth pointing out that legal and illegal immigrants have lower incarceration rates than their ethnic and racial counterparts in the native-born population in every case. Furthermore, black legal or illegal immigrants do not have the highest incarceration rates. Immigrants don't just have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans because black Americans have such a high rate, but because immigrants of every racial and ethnic group have lower incarceration rates than their native-born ethnic and racial counterparts.

Nowrasteh and Landgrave find that both legal and illegal immigrants of every racial/ethnic group (black, white, Asian, Hispanic) have lower crime rates than native-born Americans generally, and (with one exception) also much lower rates than native-born whites. The one exception is Hispanic illegal immigrants (incarceration rate of 879 per 100,000), which is modestly higher than native-born whites (741). But even that exception is likely driven by the fact that these figures don't fully control for the fact that illegal migrants are younger and have a higher percentage of males than native-born citizens (young people and men have much higher crime rates than older people and women). Moreover, some crime committed by illegal migrants is a consequence of their illegal status: difficulty finding legal employment likely incentivizes some to participate in illegal markets, where there is more violence than in the legal sector.

In sum, immigration - including the illegal kind - is actually reducing our crime rate, not raising it. There is no immigrant-driven crime wave. Much the contrary.

A common response to such data is to say that any immigrant-driven crime is intolerable, especially if committed illegal migrants. Even one additional murder or rape is one too many!

But this logic implies that any significant population increase is bad. After all, any large group of people inevitably includes at least a few violent criminals. That suggests increases in the birth rate (a high priority for many right-wing pro-natalists) are bad. After all, some of these children will grow up to be criminals! It also indicates the US was wrong to accept the ancestors of most native-born Americans. Some of them were criminals, too!

Claims that crimes committed by illegal migrants are in a different moral universe from those committed by other people are flawed for the same reasons that "I'm for legal immigration" arguments are generally defective. See my discussion of that fallacy here. A murder or rape committed by an illegal migrant is no worse (and no better) than one committed by anyone else.

Ultimately, we should focus on reducing crime rates, not absolute amounts of crime. The latter objective has the perverse implication that a larger population is generally worse than a smaller one, since, other things equal, more people means more crime.

But even if our goal is to reduce the absolute amount of crime rather than the rate, immigration restrictions are the wrong approach to achieving that objective. Resources devoted to deporting people with a low crime rate can be more profitably devoted to targeting actual criminals, thereby by deterring and otherwise preventing many more crimes. In Chapter 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, I estimate that transferring the tens of billions of dollars currently spent on immigration enforcement to ordinary law enforcement would enable us to put tens of thousands of additional police officers on the streets; social science evidence indicates that can greatly lower crime rates, thereby preventing vastly more crime than enforcement of immigration restrictions does.

Moreover, immigration restrictions - like other laws that create a black market, such as that in alcohol during Prohibition - actually increase violent crime, by creating opportunities or organized criminals. Reducing or eliminating restrictions can reducs that problem, just like the end of Prohibition reduced violent crime associated with Al Capone and other participants in the illegal alcohol industry.

In addition, increased immigration creates vast new wealth, and improves the government's fiscal position (reducing budget deficits). If necessary, some of that extra wealth can be invested in expanding law enforcement budgets.

In sum, if crime is your concern, immigration restrictions are part of the problem, not part of the solution. It would be better to make legal migration easier, and transfer resources from immigration enforcement to ordinary police.

4/27/1822: President Ulysses S. Grant's birthday. He would appoint four Justices to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Waite, Justice Strong, Justice Bradley, and Justice Hunt.

From WMTW:

A federal judge has denied a motion from a Maine lawyer asking for a special counsel to investigate the attorney representing the federal government in its Title IX lawsuit against the Maine Department Education.

{On April 16, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Department of Justice was suing the Maine DOE for violating Title IX by allowing transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth to compete in girls' sports.}

Randy Creswell … filed a motion in federal court Thursday that accuses U.S. Department of Justice attorney Matthew Donnelly of discriminating against Maine students on the basis of gender identity by continuing to pursue the case.

No, said Judge Stacey Neumann (D. Me.):

ORDER re 9 NOTICE to Appoint Special Counsel to Investigate and Prosecute, as Necessary, Formal Disciplinary Proceedings Against Matthew J. Donnelly, Esq. for Professional Misconduct …. I conclude the appointment of special counsel is not warranted, and no further action on this filing is necessary.

You can read Creswell's motion here, and here's the relevant professional conduct rule:

4/26/1995: U.S. v. Lopez decided.

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

New on the Bound By Oath podcast: In 1974, Congress added the law-enforcement proviso to the Federal Tort Claims Act to ensure that the victims of wrong-door raids by federal officers would have a legal remedy. On this episode, we talk with some folks who had a hand in getting the proviso passed into law, and we talk about the case of Martin v. United States, the wrong-door raid case that the Supreme Court will hear next week.

[Post was originally posted April 24, 2025, at 8:14 pm.]

From yesterday's decision by Judge Nina Wang in Coomer v. Lindell (D. Colo.):

As discussed extensively on the record, after confirming with Mr. Kachouroff that he signed the Opposition consistent with his obligations under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Court identified nearly thirty defective citations in the Opposition. These defects include but are not limited to misquotes of cited cases; misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases, including discussions of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions; misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; misattributions of case law to this District; and most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist.

Despite having every opportunity to do so, Mr. Kachouroff declined to explain to the Court how the Opposition became replete with such fundamental errors. For example, when confronted with the first misquotation in a parenthetical appearing on page 3 of the Opposition—purportedly drawn from Mata v. City of Farmington, 798 F. Supp. 2d 1215, 1227 (D.N.M. 2011)—Mr. Kachouroff stated to the Court:

Your Honor I may have made a mistake and I may have paraphrased and put quotes by mistake. I wasn't intending to mislead the Court. I don't think the quote is far off from what you read to me.

When asked how a case from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky became attributable to the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, Mr. Kachouroff indicated that he "had given the cite checking to another person," later identified as Ms. DeMaster. When asked whether he would be surprised to find out that the citation Perkins v. Fed. Fruit & Produce Co., 945 F.3d 1242, 1251 (10th Cir. 2019) appearing on page 6 of Defendants' Opposition did not exist as an actual case, Mr. Kachouroff indicated that he would be surprised.

An exposé at the Washington Free Beacon reveals thorough DEI corruption at the Harvard Law Review. As summarized by author Aaron Sibarium, "the Harvard Law Review has made DEI the 'first priority' of its admissions process. It routinely kills or advances pieces based on the author's race. It even vets articles for racially diverse citations."

I had to chuckle at this one: "In a section titled 'Why should they write the foreword?', one 2024 spreadsheet stated that Shirin Sinnar, a professor at Stanford Law School, would be 'the first hijabi, Muslim woman to write the Foreword.'" I mean… lots of tiny American religious demographics, including ones that have faced significant discrimination, have never had a member of their group write the Foreword, and I don't see why that matters. I doubt HLR has had an Elder of the Mormon Church, a Hasidic Jew, a Jehovah's Witness, a Turban-wearing and sword-wielding Sikh, an Assyrian Christian, a member of an Amish community, a Pentecostal snake-handler, and so on, write the prestigious annual Foreword. The lack of self-awareness about confusing the current obsessions of the woke left with something akin to "diversity" is both shocking and not surprising.

President Donald Trump signs two executive orders on April 2 instituting tariffs — President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on April 2 instituting tariffs on a wide range of countries. ( Andrew Leyden/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

I recently did an interview with KQED NPR radio covering some of the legal challenges to Trump's egregious immigration and tariff policies, and considering the broader issues they raise (including the risk of a "constitutional crisis"). The interview was conducted on April 22, and therefore predates the two most recent challenges to Trump's IEEPA tariffs (those filed by twelve states led by Oregon, and the Pacific Legal Foundation). But we nonetheless covered a lot of important ground, and I think this is one of my better recent interviews.

The interview is about 26 minutes long and is available here and here.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (major libertarian public interest law firm) has filed a case challenging Trump's awful IEEPA tariffs, with the awesome name of Princess Awesome v. CBP. Their case is similar to the one filed earlier by Liberty Justice Center and myself.

I welcome PLF to the fight. They are a long-established public interest law firm that has won numerous cases, including before the Supreme Court [full disclosure: they are also my wife's employer, though she is not one of the attorneys on this case].

Like us, PLF is filing in the US Court of International Trade, representing US businesses that import goods from the countries hit by Trump's massive tariffs. Like us, they argue that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) doesn't authorize tariffs at all, that the trade deficits that supposedly justify the "Liberation Day" tariffs are not an "unusual and extraordinary threat" (which IEEPA says must be present to allow use of the law), and that Trump administration's position runs afoul of constitutional nondelegation rules. Their complaint, unlike ours, does not make use of the "major questions doctrine." But I suspect they might raise it eventually.

I cover these and other reasons why the Trump IEEPA tariffs are illegal in more detail in my Lawfare article, "The Constitutional Case Against Trump's Trade War."

PLF's clients are an interesting group, including Stonemaier, LLC, which produces the popular boardgame Wingspan. Also, Princess Awesome v. CBP is probably the greatest - and most awesome - case name ever!

As detailed in PLF's complaint, Princess Awesome is "a Maryland limited liability company that makes children['s] and adult clothing with the intention that all individual human beings deserve to be seen as their true selves and honored for their own unique set of interests." The clothes they make are produced abroad, in countries subject to the tariffs.

While our lawsuit is limited to the massive "Liberation Day" tariffs, PLF is also challenging earlier IEEPA tariffs imposed on China, supposedly justified by the threat of fentanyl smuggling.

There are also other lawsuits challenging some or all of the IEEPA tariffs, filed by twelve states led by Oregon (challenging all IEEPA tariffs, filed in the CIT), the state of California (ditto, but filed in federal district court), the New Civil Liberties Alliance (challenging tariffs against China on behalf of an importer, filed in district court), and one brought by members of the Blackfeet Nation Native American tribe (challenging tariffs against Canada, filed in district court). See links embedded in the previous sentence for my thoughts on these cases and how they relate to ours.

From yesterday's decision by Judge Gary Brown (E.D.N.Y.) in Ferlito v. Harbor Freight Tools USA, Inc.:

Plaintiff purchased a splitting maul (an axe specially designed for splitting wood) from defendant in 2017. Several months later, while plaintiff was hanging the maul to store it, the head of the tool detached and struck plaintiff, causing injuries to his nose and left eye. Plaintiff initiated this lawsuit in 2020, alleging that the head detached due to a design defect; defendant asserts the product failed due to plaintiff's misuse, which it contends is evidenced by a large crack in the handle….

To support his defective design claim, plaintiff seeks to offer expert testimony by Mark Lehnert, who identifies himself as a "consultant with products and liability history, extensive knowledge and experience in manufacturing and assembly, [and] mechanical and electrical engineering management." Lehnert holds no engineering degrees, yet reports extensive experience designing and manufacturing power tools, holds over a dozen patents, and has worked in management positions in engineering departments at several corporations over a period of decades.

Lehnert contends the maul used by plaintiff was defectively designed because the handle and head were weakly bound with adhesive, leading to the accident. He opines that good design requires securely attaching the head and handle by "drilling a small diameter hole through the side of the maul, into and through the handle" and placing an aluminum pin "through the head" to reduce the possibility of separation. Lehnert's report references several other mauls currently available for purchase that incorporate such a pin….

Defendant moves to preclude Lehnert's testimony, arguing that he is unqualified as an expert because he lacks engineering degrees, and his experience is limited to designing power tools rather than manual tools. Defendant further argues that Lehnert's opinion is unreliable because (i) he did not rely on any scientific, technical, or trade articles in preparing his report, and (ii) after completing the report, he entered a query into ChatGPT about the best way to secure a hammer head to a handle, which produced a response consistent with his expert opinion….

No problem, says the court:

4/25/1938: United States v. Carolene Products decided.

During Donald Trump's first term, federal courts repeatedly struck down his efforts to pressure immigration "sanctuary" jurisdictions by pulling federal grants, and other coercive measures. Last November, I predicted we would see a repeat of this pattern under Trump 2.0.

That prediction (which was not a hard one to make) began to be vindicated today, as federal district Judge William Orrick issued a ruling blocking the federal government from withholding federal funds from San Francisco and fifteen other sanctuary jurisdictions which had filed suit challenging a Trump executive order to that effect.

As Judge Orrick notes in his ruling, the new anti-sanctuary executive order is similar to an earlier 2017 Trump EO, and is unconstitutional for the same reasons:

In 2017, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13,768 ("EO 13,768"), titled
"Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," which was directed at so-called "sanctuary jurisdictions." The City and County of San Francisco and County of Santa Clara sued, arguing that Section 9 of EO 13,768 was unconstitutional. I found that they had pre-enforcement standing, that they were likely to succeed on the merits because Section 9(a) of EO 13,768 was unconstitutional, and that they faced irreparable harm absent an injunction. I enjoined Section 9(a) of EO 13,768. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Cnty. of Santa Clara v. Trump, et al., 250 F. Supp. 3d 497 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 25, 2017) (Preliminary Injunction Order), aff'd, 897 F.3d 1225 (9th Cir. 2018).

Here we are again. Shortly after taking office in 2025, President Trump issued Executive Orders 14,159 ("Protecting the American People Against Invasion") ("EO 14,159") and 14,218 ("Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders") ("EO 14,218") (together, the "2025 Executive Orders"), the language and purpose of which mirror EO 13,768. Like EO 13,768, EO 14,159 directs the United States Attorney General and the United States Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") Secretary to withhold federal funds from "sanctuary jurisdictions," cities and counties that limit the use of local resources to enforce federal immigration law. EO 14,218 directs every federal agency to ensure that "federal payments" to localities do not "by design or effect" "abet so-called 'sanctuary' policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation….

Precedent in the Ninth Circuit and the orders of this court show why the Cities and
Counties have established that they are likely to prevail on the merits of at least their separation of powers, Spending Clause, and Fifth and Tenth Amendment claims. The challenged sections in the 2025 Executive Orders and the Bondi Directive that order executive agencies to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funding apportioned to localities by Congress, violate the Constitution's separation of powers principles and the Spending Clause, as explained by the Ninth Circuit in the earlier iteration of this case in 2018; they also violate the Fifth Amendment to the extent they are unconstitutionally vague and violate due process. See City & Cnty. of S.F. v. Trump, 897 F.3d 1225, 1234– 35 (9th Cir. 2018); Cnty. of Santa Clara v. Trump, et al., 250 F. Supp. 3d 497, 530–32, 534–36 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 25, 2017). The 2025 Executive Orders' directives to withhold or freeze federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions also violate the Tenth Amendment because they impose coercive condition intended to commandeer local officials into enforcing federal immigration practices and law. See Cnty. of Santa Clara, 250 F. Supp. 3d at 533. And as the order that will follow this one makes plain, the Cities and Counties have also shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") claim: the Bondi Directive's order to freeze all DOJ funds is likely arbitrary and capricious, contrary to the Constitution and an ultra vires final agency action under the APA. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2).

As explained in detail in my Texas Law Review article on litigation arising from Trump's first-term actions targeting sanctuary jurisdictions, executive orders like this one violating constitutional rules on both federalism and separation of powers, because they seek to "commandeer" state and local governments and impose conditions on federal grants that were not authorized by Congress. That article includes discussion of the rulings cited in Judge Orrick's opinion today (including his own earlier decisions).

This is just a ruling on a preliminary injunction. We don't yet have a final ruling on the merits, by Judge Orrick. And any such ruling is likely to be appealed. But the combination of today's decision and precedents from Trump's first term - issued by both liberal and conservative judges - make it highly likely that Trump's new anti-sanctuary executive orders will ultimately meet the same fate as the old ones.

For more on the constitutional issues involved, see my Texas Law Review article and this shorter 2018 article I wrote for The Hill. In a recent article for the NYU Brennan Center, I explained how sanctuary jurisdictions can help constrain Trump's efforts at mass deportation, but also noted possible ways Trump could try to circumvent them.

Last week, in Garcia v. Noem, Judge Wilkinson invoked President Eisenhower's decision to send federal troops to integrate Central High School in Little Rock. And yesterday, Jeff Toobin called on the Roberts Court to reaffirm Cooper v. Aaron to stop Trump. His piece was titled, "When the Supreme Court Spoke With One Voice." Toobin wrote:

The choice for the court is clear: Either the justices will reaffirm the holding of Cooper that the federal judiciary is "supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution" or they will cede that authority to Mr. Trump and his aides. Abdicating its role to the executive branch would not only demean the judicial function but also invite chaos, as the nation wonders, case by case, which branch of government has the last word.

To preserve their authority, as well as the rule of law, the justices must reclaim what their predecessors in 1958 knew to be the only honorable and lawful course. And when they do, it would be even better if all nine of them in 2025 also signed their names.

In Cooper, the Supreme Court may have spoken with one voice, but it was largely ignored.

The crisis in Little Rock, and the Supreme Court's resulting decision in Cooper v. Aaron, are poorly understood. In my post, I included an excerpt from our 100 Cases book which summarizes the case. I would also recommend my article in the Georgetown Law Journal, The Irrepressible Myth of Cooper v. Aaron.

Should Cooper provide a basis for the Supreme Court to reaffirm the principle of judicial supremacy against President Trump? No, it should not.

Yesterday, I blogged about the First Amendment Scholars' brief (filed by Chris Paolella of Reich & Paolella LLP) supporting the cert petition I filed in Georgia Ass'n of Club Executives v. Georgia. (For my blogging about the cert petition itself, see Parts 1 and 2 here, and see also the amicus brief supporting the cert petition filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the First Amendment Lawyers Ass'n. The state's brief is due in a month. See also this news article about the amicus briefs in Bloomberg Law.)

Today, I'll talk about the amicus brief filed by Secular Pro-Life, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, and five law professors (Helen Alvaré of George Mason, Teresa Stanton Collett of University of St. Thomas (MN), George Dent of Case Western, Stephen Gilles of Quinnipiac, and Robert Pushaw of Pepperdine).

Thanks to Kelsey Hazzard of Secular Pro-Life and my Emory Law colleague Tom Arthur for writing and filing this brief. More generally, thanks to the organizations and people involved for recognizing that we're all in this together: pro-life people who oppose Hill v. Colorado should support this cert petition even if they have no interest in (or are even opposed to) adult entertainment, because high-level First Amendment doctrines (like the distinction between content discrimination vs. content neutrality) are rarely hermetically sealed to particular business models! Supporting Reed v. Town of Gilbert and making it extremely hard for the government to discriminate in regulation and taxation pays dividends across the board, whether you support nude dancing or anti-abortion counseling.

Here's the text of the (interesting parts of the) brief:

Interest of Amici Curiae

Secular Pro-Life is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to advance secular arguments against abortion; create space for atheists, agnostics, and other secularists interested in anti-abortion work; and build interfaith coalitions of people interested in advancing secular arguments. Secular Pro-Life envisions a world in which people of all faith traditions, political philosophies, socioeconomic statuses, sexualities, races, and age groups oppose abortion.

Financial precarity motivates nearly three-quarters of abortions. The pro-life movement offers practical resources to help families overcome financial barriers and choose life for their children—but these resources are only useful to the extent that pregnant mothers know about them before it is too late. Therefore, Secular Pro-Life strongly supports the practice of peaceful sidewalk outreach to prevent abortions. Sidewalk outreach is especially critical for religiously unaffiliated mothers, who are disproportionately at risk for abortion compared to the general population, and who may not otherwise learn about free pregnancy supports that are commonly advertised through faith-based channels.

Secular Pro-Life takes an interest in this case because Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000), inhibits life-saving sidewalk outreach and unconstitutionally censors the speech of Secular Pro-Life's members.

Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) is a single-issue non-profit organization committed to ending elective abortion, focusing on issues that land at the intersection of pregnancy and parenting. Non-violent direct action, including sidewalk advocacy, is at the core of PAAU's mission. Buffer zone laws of the type this Court upheld in Hill v. Colorado are designed to impede peaceful challenges to the oppressive status quo.

The following professors teach and/or research in the area of law and religion and are interested in the development of sound doctrine in this area, as well as the protection of free speech rights in Hill v. Colorado-type contexts. [List of professors and affiliations omitted because I gave their names above.]

Summary of Argument

Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000), was egregiously wrong on the day it was decided and remains so today. Relying on a line of cases that began with City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 (1986), this Court in Hill treated buffer zone laws as content-neutral time, place, and manner regulations subject to only intermediate First Amendment scrutiny. This Court should instead apply strict scrutiny because buffer zone laws are, in both theory and practice, content-based restrictions on disfavored anti-abortion speech.

"To be sure, this Court has not uttered the phrase 'we overrule Hill.'" Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, 145 S. Ct. 537, 540 (2025) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). But "Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded." Id. at 542.

Although this case does not involve a buffer zone, Petitioner's direct challenge to the mistaken reasoning of City of Renton and its progeny offers this Court an ideal vehicle to, at long last, utter the phrase "we overrule Hill" and restore freedom of speech to pro-life Americans.

4/24/1963: Sherbert v. Verner argued.

The Volokh Conspiracy

Today in Supreme Court History: April 28, 2015

Monday Open Thread

More Evidence that Immigrants - Including Illegal Ones - Have Much Lower Crime Rates than Natives

Today in Supreme Court History: April 27, 1822

Maine Lawyer Tries to Get Federal Government Lawyer Investigated for Litigating Government's Claim Related to Transgender Athletes

Today in Supreme Court History: April 26, 1995

Friday Open Thread

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

Apparent AI Hallucinations in Defense Filing in Coomer v. Lindell / My Pillow Election-Related Libel Suit

DEI Discrimination at the Harvard Law Review

KQED Interview on Legal Challenges to Trump's Immigration and Tariff Policies

Pacific Legal Foundation Files Case Challenging Trump's IEEPA Tariffs

No Problem with Expert's Using ChatGPT to Confirm His Work

Today in Supreme Court History: April 25, 1938

Federal Court Blocks Trump Executive Order Denying Federal Funds to Sanctuary Cities

"When the Supreme Court Spoke With One Voice" But Was Ignored By Everyone

Pro-Life Amicus Brief in Georgia Adult-Entertainment Case

Today in Supreme Court History: April 24, 1963

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