Dorf on Law

We are only a few weeks into the second Trump presidency, and it is already quite clear that the confluence of interests that has put the Silicon Valley Ideology in the White House is rapidly—and chaotically—dismantling the political, economic, legal, and social institutions and structures that have held this country together as a democratic republic. Our failure to recognize and take seriously the Silicon Valley Ideology has led us to this moment, and things will only get worse if we continue to ignore or, even worse, decide to accept it as our nation’s new guiding philosophy. In 1997, as a great wave of technological optimism was beginning to crest, Langdon Winner was invited to share his thoughts on our bright tech future at the Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Conference, hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery and held at Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam. Winner, a political theorist known for his critical studies of science, technology, and culture, was p...

As reported over the weekend in The Chronicle of Higher Education , University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson reached an agreement with Education Secretary Linda McMahon that would restore the $175 million in funding the Trump administration withheld on the ground that Penn was not excluding transgender female athletes from women's sports . Jameson has agreed "in principle" to rename the institution the University of Trumpsylvania. Trump then posted on Truth Social :  I AM HONORED THAT THE WARTHON SCHOOL, WHICH I GRADAUTED FROM AND IS THE BEAST IN THE WORLD, IS GOING TO BE PART OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TRUMPSYLVANIA. THE FEDERRAL $$$ WILL NOW START FOWLING TO THIS GREAT COLLAGE. Renaming the university founded by Benjamin Franklin to restore "only" $175 million in federal funds might seem like a bad deal for the University Formerly Known As Penn (UFKAP). After all, Penn renamed its medical school  upon receiving $225 million in 2011. Adjusted for inflati...

Last week, I teased yet another column about the Democrats' internal battles in the aftermath of Senator Chuck Schumer's wise refusal to give the Musk-Trump Administration the gift of a government shutdown, parenthetically offering this: "Side note: I will be returning again to the ongoing Schumer fallout on Monday."  Those waters are still roiling even at this very moment, but because I expect all of that unpleasantness (unfortunately) to continue into the indefinite future, I am going to put that column off until next Monday at the earliest. Instead, I want to start to think today about two massive budgetary battles that will soon threaten the country, either one of which could be cataclysmic in its effects on the US and global economies -- to say nothing of the now-expected constitutional crises that they could trigger.  Perhaps surprisingly, the reason to think about these potential blowups now is related to the Democrats' intramural fight about the anti-shu...

Social Security happens to be one of my primary areas of academic expertise, and it unfortunately has become a focus of attention in the Musk-Trump Administration.  Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk seems to have heard from some bro somewhere that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, which has excited him.  (I can easily imagine him yelling "Ponzi!!" in the same way that he bellowed "Chainsaw!!" at a conference last month.)  My latest column on Verdict , published in two parts yesterday and today , addresses the latest madness. The idea that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme is an especially absurd example of financial illiteracy, as I explain (again) in Part One of today's column.  Part Two explains why Social Security is essential to the country and then points out that the program is almost shockingly inexpensive to run.  That is why the title of the column is: "Social Security is Essential, Efficient ( Gasp! ), and Definitely NOT a Ponzi Scheme." F...

Last week, Columbia University capitulated to the Trump administration's illegal and unconstitutional demands in an effort to induce the administration to rescind its illegal and unconstitutional suspension of roughly $400 million in federal funding. Although I fervently hoped that Columbia would pursue litigation rather than appeasement , I cannot say I was especially surprised.  Individual scholars like me denounced the administration's treatment of Columbia, but for the most part other universities failed to band together to defend academia against this assertion of authoritarian control. Perceiving itself as largely on its own and facing an existential threat, the Columbia administration tried to save itself. But Columbia has not been abandoned by the broader academic community. On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sued various federal government agencies and officials on behalf of their members--in...

Last week, investor and Tesla shareholder Ross Gerber made a public plea for Elon Musk to step down as CEO of Tesla, citing two main reasons why, in Gerber's view, Musk is currently incapable of successfully leading the company. First, between his role leading other businesses ( X , SpaceX, Neuralink, and the Boring Company) and his seemingly full-time government position as de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk is unable to devote nearly enough of his time and energy to running Tesla. Second, through Musk's controversial statements on his own social media platform and elsewhere, and, even more so, through his controversial actions on behalf of DOGE and Donald Trump, Musk has seriously undercut Tesla's brand. Heeding Gerber's call would be: (1) good for Tesla (and thus its shareholders); (2) good for planet Earth;  and (3) even good for Musk. (1) Good for Tesla : As readers no doubt recall, Donald Trump recently hosted what was essenti...

Last month, in a press release that attracted little attention, Acting Chair of the EEOC Andrea Lucas stated that the EEOC would be vigilant about "anti-American bias" where employers were "illegally prefer[ring] non-American workers." Lucas stated, "The EEOC is here to protect all workers from unlawful national origin discrimination, including American workers." The press release went on to identify the following common "excuses" for employers preferring foreign labor (the bullets are a direct quote from the release): lower cost labor (whether due to payment under the table to illegal aliens, or exploiting rules around certain visa-holder wage requirements, etc.); a workforce that is perceived as more easily exploited, in terms of the group’s lack of knowledge, access, or use of wage and hour protections, antidiscrimination protections, and other legal protections; customer or client preference; biased perceptions that foreign workers are more ...

Last Thursday, I published two defenses of the genuine leadership that Senator Chuck Schumer showed in preventing the Democrats from giving Elon Musk and Donald Trump the gift of a government shutdown: " Schumer Was (Unfortunately) Right, But Either Way, the Infighting Must Stop ," on Verdict , and " Trashing Schumer is Wrong on the Merits and Is Self-Indulgent in the Extreme ," here on Dorf on Law .  Somehow, my arguments did not move the needle with the entirety of the anti-Trump majority in America (shocking, I know), and the pillorying of Schumer unfortunately continued over the weekend.  Those who are angry with him, however, continue to refuse to engage with the merits of his decision. Despite my defense of Schumer on those merits, I do understand that many people are unhappy about his leadership in some larger, hard to define sense.  And because (as I noted in the Verdict column), I have never been much of a fan of the now-Minority Leader in the US Senate, ...

For many years, some critics of international law (mostly but not exclusively on the political right) have argued that international law is not "real law" because rulings by international tribunals lack the kind of enforcement mechanisms that one sees within domestic legal systems. If a state or federal court orders defendant Jones to pay plaintiff Smith $100,000 in damages for negligence, Jones must comply. If Jones fails to comply, Smith can obtain a lien on property Jones owns and the government will use force if needed to ensure that Jones pays. By contrast, if Sovereign A is found to have violated an international law duty owed to Sovereign B, no supra-sovereign military or police force will enforce the judgment against a recalcitrant Sovereign A. Sovereign B can resort only to its diplomatic and political remedies. The foregoing critique is, in my view and in the view of most mainstream scholars of international law, misguided. As a theoretical matter, it appears to res...