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So the Senate Confirmed an Authoritarian Crony to Your Court

By Guha Krishnamurthi -
Last week, the GOP-led Senate confirmed Emil Bove to a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. This was despite credible allegations that he was involved in the rank corruption leading to the dismissal of the charges against Mayor Eric Adams, and despite reports by whistleblowers that he had plotted contemptuous disobedience of various court orders, with a colorful catchphrase. A federal judge’s tenure is for life, and Emil Bove is young. Moreover, impeachment and conviction are practical impossibilities for the foreseeable future. So what does one do? Most of us just have to grind our teeth. But if you’re a judge on the Third Circuit, and you agree that Bove is unqualified, then there is another option. That is to treat Bove’s actions on the Third Circuit as a complete nullity. How would that work? As background, on the federal appeals courts, most decisions are made by randomly selected three-judge panels. Those are then subject to potential en banc review—th...
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Practicing Law Institute SCOTUS Roundup Today: I Preview My Skrmetti Remarks

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Today, I'll be participating in the 27th annual  Practicing Law Institute Supreme Court Review --as I have done for each of the past 26 years. It is almost surely too late for anyone learning about this one-day event to hustle over to PLI headquarters in midtown Manhattan in time for the first panel (which starts at 9 am), but a recording the full program will be available afterwards on demand. This year, as always, there's a great lineup of speakers, with Master of Ceremonies Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and co-chair Professor Marty Schwartz running the show. It's a great way to catch up on your Continuing Legal Education obligations. Okay, that's enough advertising. Now onto some substantive thoughts. The format for the panels allocates presenter roles and commenter roles. I'll be commenting on most of the panels and presenting on  United States v. Skrmetti  during the second morning panel. As readers likely recall, in  Skrmetti  Chief Justice Roberts, ...
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Rhymes with ‘Joke’: A Word that Already Meant Nothing Now Means Even Less (A Dorf on Law Classic)

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Hello, Dorf on Law readers, In a recent column , Professor Dorf noted: “ As Professor Buchanan has argued repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere, conservative politicians and commentators have come to use the term ‘woke’ as an all-purpose signifier for things they don't like (such as calling transgender and non-binary persons by their preferred pronouns or acknowledging the persistence of systemic racism).” He is not wrong.  For reasons that I hope to make clear in an upcoming column or two, today I’m reprinting a Verdict column that I published a bit more than two years ago. There, I revisited the empty — but somehow inextinguishable — topic of wokeness/cancel culture/political correctness.  It is not quite right to say “Enjoy!” regarding an essay about such an annoying topic, but anyway, enjoy! - Neil H. Buchanan Rhymes with ‘Joke’: A Word that Already Meant Nothing Now Means Even Less 16 MAR 2023    NEIL H. BUCHANAN POSTED IN:   POLITICS The political right h...
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Will the Columbia and Brown Agreements Affect Student Body Diversity?

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In addition to agreeing to fork over, respectively, $200 million and $50 million, Columbia University and Brown University made a number of other commitments in their resolution agreements with the federal government. In earlier essays ( here and here ), I discussed the anti-trans provisions and some of the other provisions of those agreements. Today's essay will focus on the commitments regarding student admissions. Here's the key provision, which is identical in each  agreement: [Columbia/Brown] shall maintain merit-based admissions policies. [Columbia/Brown] may not, by any means, unlawfully preference applicants based on race, color, or national origin in admissions throughout its programs. No proxy for racial admission will be implemented or maintained. [Columbia/Brown] may not use personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination. Why did Columbia and Brown agree to these provision...
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Social Security Privatization Fantasies and Conservatives' Insanity

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How is it possible that Social Security was in the news again this week?  One answer is that the accumulated outrages of the past six-plus months are mostly already old news.  The United States military was deployed in Los Angeles.  Citizens and legal residents are hiding in their homes for fear of being swept off the streets.  At least 17 million people will soon lose access to health care.  The US bombed Iran.  University administrators are serially abetting the death of academic freedom.  Thousands of people have been sent -- most without even being able to prove that they are the victims of error or worse -- to gulags both inside and outside of the country. Also, the Supreme Court -- led by a Chief Justice whose pose as "the ultimate institutionalist" has finally been exposed as a sham -- is letting the Trump White House do anything it wants.  Attacks on trans people and other vulnerable groups continue.  Donald Trump is relentlessly thre...
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Down Goes Brown

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Yesterday, Brown University became the third Ivy League institution to sign a settlement agreement with the Trump administration. Its deal is quite similar to the one Columbia entered . Like Columbia's, Brown's agreement asserts that it does not permit the government to "dictate" the university's "curriculum or the content of academic speech." But also like the Columbia deal, the Brown deal commits to the Trump administration's extremely tendentious view of Title IX's requirements as they apply to transgender persons. In one respect, the Brown agreement goes further along the anti-trans dimension. It includes this paragraph that has no parallel in the Columbia agreement: The University will not perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child's appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex. One might think that the purpose of gender-affirming...
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Trump's Motion to Depose Rupert Murdoch Before He Dies

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I have written some of my own posts (e.g., here ,  here , and here ) and published others by my co-bloggers (e.g., here and here ) either delving into or obliquely referring to the sordid life and crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, but I have resisted commenting on the latest round of Epstein frenzy because I have thought it substantially less important than the major developments in the Trump administration's assault on the institutions of constitutional democracy (and its assault on life on Earth ). I still think that all things Epstein are a distraction, but today I feel like I need a distraction from the horrid other news.  Accordingly, today's essay focuses on the defamation lawsuit that Donald Trump has filed against The Wall Street Journal , News Corp. ( WSJ 's parent company), Robert Thomson (CEO of News. Corp.), Rupert Murdoch (Chairman Emeritus of News Corp.), and two WSJ reporters (Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo) who broke the story that Trump once gifted Epstei...
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No, Trump Is Not Winning Any Trade Wars

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There is exactly one bit of advice that I give young people regarding how to choose a writing topic: If you read or hear something and find yourself spontaneously shouting " What?! " then you almost certainly have found a good subject for your next piece.  That is especially true for longer-form projects like law review articles and books, because it takes quite a lot of energy to stick with a project for months or even years and see it through to the end.  Bringing a boatload of passion to a new project is essential, because there will be times when your energy will flag.  But even with shorter pieces, one can hardly go wrong by writing a response to something that makes one's blood boil.  (I am hardly the first person to have offered this advice, of course, although I express it more colorfully than most of my like-minded colleagues do.) This morning, as I was sorting through possible ideas for this column, I came across this headline in The New York Times : "Trum...
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