Dorf on Law

N.B.  As readers may recall, I currently serve on the steering committee of the Reconstructing Free Expression initiative of the Knight Institute. As part of our work, we are holding a number of day-long meetings with people from diverse relevant backgrounds to brainstorm both diagnosis and treatment. For these meetings, participants, including steering committee members, produce short think-pieces to jump-start our conversation. My salvo for the first convening appeared on the Knight Institute website and was cross-posted on this blog in February. Below you will find my essay for the second day-long meeting, which occurred two weeks ago. It can also be found on the Knight Institute website (with the title below). ------- Support Local Journalism, Expand the Definition of Fraud, and Guard Against Boomerang Effects Two broad categories of problems plague the information ecosystem of the United States: (1) long-term problems occasioned by technological changes over the last three...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a brief order extending its stay of the Fifth Circuit decision that invalidated FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone for prescription via telemedicine and delivery via the mail (or other courier). Some reporting indicated that the vote was 7-2. It probably was. We know that two Justices published dissents, but it’s the Court’s custom not to provide the vote on per curiam orders. Dissenters can, if they choose, say they are dissenting, but they don't always do so. So we know that Justices Thomas and Alito dissented because they wrote to tell us so, but we don’t know whether zero, one, or two other Justices also dissented. We do know the reasons that Justices Thomas and Alito gave--and they are doozies. Let's start with Justice Thomas. He writes that the makers of mifepristone are not entitled to seek relief from the Court because they are engaged in a "criminal enterprise." He claims that the notorious Comstock Act, enacte...

When I come across a particularly inane news article, I save the link and jot down a few words to remind myself what I was thinking when I flagged it.  For this column, the offending piece is from  The New York Times  (of course) on April 25, 2026: "New Taxes Helped Cool London’s Housing Market. Could That Happen in New York?"  And here is my "note to self": "Unbelievable BS re NYC taxes."  In my  Dorf on Law   column last weekend, I wrote that the editors at The Times  "often ... push anti-progressive-tax narratives, as I will discuss in a column in the next week or so."  This is that column. Before picking apart that particular example of bad economic journalism, it is important to remember that the wealthiest people in the world have used sheer repetition to convince far too many of us that taxes are the root of all evil.  You know that taxes always destroy everything, right?  Every time we tax anything, anything at a...

My new Verdict column addresses the question of what can and should be done to mitigate the damage from the Supreme Court's further destruction of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in Louisiana v. Callais . The column is aspirational in that it proposes federal legislation that could not be enacted unless and until Democrats hold a majority in both houses of Congress and there is a Democratic president. Even then, enacting such legislation would almost surely require ending the filibuster. In today's essay, I consider where such legislation should fit in a legislative agenda for 2029 or, in the event that Democrats don't control Congress and the presidency in 2029 but a constitutional republic still survives into the further future, 2033, 2037, or whenever. The column discusses two bills that passed the House but died in the Senate during the Biden administration. One, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act  (JRLVRAA), would amend the VRA. Because it strengthens mechani...

Should professors reflect on their successes and failures, taking the proverbial hard look into a mirror to ask how we could do better?  Of course we should.  In fact, everyone should do that, no matter what kind of work they do -- or even if they do not engage in paid work at all.  Being a decent human being involves self-doubt, commitment to doing better, and a fundamental humility that should always guide us, even when we are being brash or assertive.  Too many people do not do that, however, and the world is seeing the kind of havoc a presidential administration staffed entirely by such people is capable of wreaking. I focused on professors in my opening sentence, however, because my field is rife with people who are committed to telling the rest of us that we are being insufficiently introspective.  In a column last week, " Reasoning With Zealots While Under Attack by Those Same Zealots ," I responded to a particularly clever bit of misdirection o...

On Friday, Professor David Marcus penned a guest blog here about the recent dust-up at UCLA Law School concerning a Federalist Society event featuring James Percival, the General Counsel for the United States Department of Homeland Security. This incident has been blown way out of proportion by the usual suspects, so I urge readers to read Professor Marcus's post and watch the video .  Speaking of out of proportion, Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho, a former law clerk for Justice Thomas, flew, in his own words, "halfway around the country," to moderate a Federalist Society event talking about free speech on campus. Judge Ho did not play the role as disinterested moderator and said his peace during the panel. He then allowed Professor Josh Blackman to reprint his remarks over at the Volokh Conspiracy. Judge Ho's inflammatory, partisan, and paranoid reactions to the UCLA incident reveal a lot about him and our current judicial politics. He began by saying that the ...

If you are one of the people who makes important decisions at  The New York Times  -- a newspaper whose publisher actually had the nerve to  write  in 2024 that he has " no interest in wading into politics" -- you make sure that you wade into politics whenever possible, and the more you can do it from the right, the better.  You also pretend not to be doing what you are clearly doing.  My most recent primal scream about this NYT verity was " We're Doing Horse-Race Political Analysis? Now?! Really?!! " published on February 27 of this year. And if there is one policy area in which  Times  editors cannot resist mucking around in political issues, it is economics.  They often, for example, push anti-progressive-tax narratives, as I will discuss in a column in the next week or so.  Their go-to move, however, is to partner with " deficit scold " organizations to push a narrative about the evils of public borrowing.  Hence, the lead st...