Dorf on Law

by Neil H. Buchanan One particularly frustrating aspect of the all-purpose, empty complaints about so-called political correctness is that they are actually bipartisan.  That is, right-wingers -- prominently including Donald Trump -- constantly whine that all of our problems are caused by being too politically correct ("We can't even shoot immigrants at the border, ya know?" "Why can't police rough up suspects?" "People shouldn't feel bad about saying 'Merry Christmas!"), and everyone else rejects those particular examples but then says, "Even so, PC culture can get out of hand." Let us leave aside the ongoing reality that no one can actually define the key term here in a way that does not boil down to "being sensitive to things that I don't care about, even though I'm outraged when people are insensitive to what I do care about."  In fact, most of the time, the complaint is really about being expected to car...

by Neil H. Buchanan Because this column discusses populist movements, some of which are related to taxes, I will start with a reminder: The Boston Tea Party was absolutely, positively not a revolt against taxes.  It was , instead, a revolt against taxation without representation and against a regressive sweetheart deal for a politically connected corporation. I bring up this bit of history in light of two relatively recent populist phenomena: the Occupy movement, which began in a park near Wall Street in 2011, and the Yellow Vests movement, which began last year in France in response to a proposed gasoline tax increase by the Macron government. In the case of Occupy, the movement quickly became identified with clear leftist inclinations, whereas the Yellow Vests have been disparaged for the "vagueness of their demands and the lack of a leadership to negotiate with."  The Yellow Vests spawned some violent protests, but no one is quite sure what they really are (or wer...

by Michael C. Dorf In a per curiam opinion in   Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky , the Supreme Court: (a) reversed the Seventh Circuit opinion that had found Indiana's fetal remains disposal law unconstitutional under the rational basis test; and (b) denied review of that same court's invalidation of Indiana's law forbidding abortions based on the race, sex, or disability of the fetus. The big-picture takeaway here should be that the Court as a whole is not eager to dive into abortion jurisprudence. That means that the wave of restrictive state abortion laws we are seeing will not likely force the Roberts Court's hand. The Chief Justice apparently has enough allies among the other conservative justices who will be willing to let stand lower court rulings striking down such laws under existing precedents. To be sure, "not likely" does not mean impossible. In denying cert with respect to the selective abortion provision, the Court specifical...

by Michael C. Dorf At least some of the counts of the superseding indictment filed last week against Julian Assange appear to apply to activities that conventional reporters routinely undertake. Does that mean the indictment violates the First Amendment? Not necessarily. As I'll explain briefly below, it's not even clear that a responsible national security reporter for a bona fide news organization would be protected by the First Amendment for doing what Assange stands accused of doing, even though such reporters do so regularly. I'll then pivot to problematizing an issue that has consumed many non-lawyers (and even some lawyers who don't know better): whether Assange is a journalist. As I'll explain, so far as the First Amendment as construed by the SCOTUS is concerned, there's no such thing as a journalist.

by Michael C. Dorf Per my usual custom, I am posting the exam I administered to my Federal Courts students. It was an 8-hour open-book take-home. Blog readers should feel free to spend more (or less) time on it. Submit answers (which I won't grade) in Comments. I apologize that this exam isn't as funny as some of my others (though it does contain the obligatory Trump tweet, complete with misspellings).

by Michael C. Dorf On Monday, in Herrera v. Wyoming , the Supreme Court ruled that an 1868 treaty between the Crow tribe and the US entitled a tribe member to hunt elk in violation of state law. The case divided the Court on mostly ideological grounds, with Justice Gorsuch breaking ranks to join the liberal wing in a 5-4 majority opinion authored by Justice Sotomayor. However, the actual substance of the disagreement was not ideological. Justice Alito and the remaining conservatives dissented on the ground that a 1995 Tenth Circuit case involving the Crow had definitively resolved the issue, so that Herrera was bound under the doctrine of issue preclusion. Other than an aside deeming the majority's construction of the treaty "debatable," the dissent did not address the core issue. Meanwhile, the majority opinion is curious in a number of respects and raises an important question about general rules and exceptions.

by Michael C. Dorf On Monday, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued a thorough and persuasive opinion rejecting the arguments by President Trump's personal lawyers for an order invalidating a congressional subpoena for financial records that was issued to an accounting firm that has worked for Trump and his businesses. The next stop for the litigation will be the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and thence the Supreme Court. As I'll explain, Judge Mehta's opinion makes clear that the law clearly favors Congress (really the House) in this dispute. That does not guarantee that Trump will ultimately lose. However, Trump can only prevail in the SCOTUS if the conservative majority engage in hypocritical partisan hackery.

by Neil H. Buchanan There is a worrisome and puzzling trend, not merely among the punditocracy and politicians but even among journalists who purport to be neutral arbiters of the facts, to treat Donald Trump's reelection chances as not only strong but perhaps even insurmountable for Democrats.  Last week, I wrote a column decrying that trend, arguing that Trump's deep unpopularity -- and his unwillingness to do anything but feed the blood lust of his base -- all but guarantees that he will lose in 2020, probably by a large margin. To be clear, even if my prediction is correct, I still believe that we will then face an existential constitutional struggle, because it is inconceivable that Trump will accept losing -- by any margin.  We might already be in the end stages of our constitutional democracy with no way to save it, even as we naively think that there is still a way back.  (Whatever else I might think about Joe Biden, I do admire his willingness to build a cam...

by Michael C. Dorf Yesterday, President Trump tweeted : "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.  Never threaten the United States again!" The saber rattling seems calculated to undercut the emerging view of Trump as the dovish good cop to National Security Adviser John Bolton's bad cop. After all, just a few days earlier, the Washington Post reported that Trump has been frustrated by the hawkish views of Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of whom seem to be itching for a war with Iran. Despite yesterday's tweet and Trump's denial of any "infighting," the WaPo  report rings true. After all, Pompeo and especially Bolton have long been hawks on Iran, whereas Trump came to office exaggerating his past opposition to the Iraq War but genuinely seeming to disdain further commitments of US troops to war in the Middle East. It was one area where he seemed to outflank Hillary Clinton to her left, and sensibly so, even if Tr...

By Eric Segall In Roe v. Wade , seven Supreme Court Justices signed on to an opinion detailing the substantial burdens on women and their families of abortion bans and balanced those harms against the states’ interest in the health of the mother and life of the fetus. They came up with the famous or infamous trimester approach which in practice resulted in a bifurcated regulation of state abortion laws. Prior to viability, states had little authority to regulate abortion while after viability states could ban all abortions subject to exceptions for the health and life of the mother.  Eventually, Planned Parenthood v. Casey modified the law to allow regulations on abortion that do not amount to an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose, but complete bans were still unconstitutional until after viability. There is a myth propounded by legal scholars, commentators, pundits, and even Supreme Court Justices that Roe as initially decided, and later Casey, are constitutiona...

by Neil H. Buchanan A bit more than two months ago, the title of one of my columns asked: "Is the 2020 Election Going to Be An Easy Win for Anyone the Democrats Nominate?"  There, I made the case that Trump simply will not be able to break above his pathetic job approval numbers, if for no other reason than that he is not even trying to appeal to anyone but the forty percent of the country that has already quaffed his Kool-Aid. It would, of course, be foolish for Democrats to take a win in 2020 for granted.  Setting aside my oft-stated belief that Trump will not peacefully leave the White House no matter how convincingly he loses next November 3, it is essential that Democrats not take anything for granted.  Republicans will continue to suppress the votes of young and nonwhite people, and Trump is even more shameless than the Republicans about sliming his opponents (which is quite an achievement). Moreover, Democrats should have learned from 2016 that turnout is e...

by Michael C. Dorf Recently, Donald Trump retweeted a suggestion by Jerry Falwell Jr. that he, Trump, ought to get two extra years added to his presidency, because the Russia investigation improperly robbed him of his opportunity to govern during the first two years of his term. According to the  Washington Post , White House officials said Trump was joking. Although Trump is not exactly renowned for his sense of humor, we can probably assume that he has no plans to seek two extra years. However, as Prof Buchanan has repeatedly warned (e.g., here with links to prior warnings) there are reasons to worry that Trump could refuse to accept an electoral defeat through bogus claims of voter fraud and similar shenanigans. Speaker Pelosi takes this prospect seriously enough to have said that the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate needs to win by such a large margin as to render any contest by Trump untenable. And as the WaPo  story linked above reminds readers, during ...

by Michael C. Dorf For a case that decided a relatively obscure question -- whether an implicit constitutional principle of sovereign immunity shields a state from lawsuits in the courts of other states -- Monday's SCOTUS ruling in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt -- garnered considerable media attention. The Washington Post ran two stories ( here and here ); so did the NY Times  ( here and here ), adding as a bonus an op-ed by Prof. Leah Litman; and NPR's Morning Edition  devoted a 3-and-a-half-minute segment to host Rachel Martin's interview of SCOTUSblog's Amy Howe about the case. Who knew the public cared so much about state sovereign immunity?! But of course the media coverage reflects something else entirely. Justice Breyer's dissent in Hyatt  criticized Justice Thomas's majority opinion for inadequately justifying the overruling of Nevada v. Hall , a 1979 case that had come out the other way. Most of the media coverage of Hyatt focused o...

by Neil H. Buchanan "[I]n some parts of secular, liberal America, there is a skepticism about religion that can veer into disrespect."  I pulled that quote from a short column today by New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, who was otherwise arguing that atheists are subject to discrimination in American public life.  Why the swipe at liberals?  And no matter the reason, is what he wrote true? I qualify as a denizen of secular, liberal America, and I certainly am skeptical of religion.  I am more than willing to say that my skepticism -- with very important caveats and in context -- does not merely "veer into disrespect."  I respect people's right to practice religion and to make personal decisions based on religious beliefs, but do I respect the substance of those decisions?  Not inasmuch as they are justified by simple reliance on religion.  Do I disrespect the people who make those arguments?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Let us ...

By Eric Segall ( Cross-posted @ TakeCare ) The United States Constitution places the initial power to fund the entire federal government squarely in the hands of the United States House of Representatives. Article I provides that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives….” Moreover, "no Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The Founding Fathers intentionally placed this spending authority in the “People’s House”  because   it, as opposed to the Senate, “was more immediately the representatives of the people, and it was a maxim that the people ought to hold the purse-strings.” Although the Senate may add amendments to bills suggesting government spending, the House has to agree before such a bill may become law.              Today, the Democrats, and the people they represent, hold these all-important purse strings, and...

by Neil H. Buchanan In my columns, I often address economists' substantive arguments, such as my recent columns ( here and here ) severely criticizing the "modern monetary theory" true believers who largely populate Bernie Sanders's and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's ranks of advisors.  Those critiques are not objections to economists' attempts to wade into territory where they do not belong but are instead simply about muddle-headed economics. One of the recurring themes of my columns over the years, however, has been to observe and comment on economists who, in the now-current phrase, do not stay in their lane .  Back in 2013, for example, I wrote ( here and here ) about economists who, as I phrased it, try to "commit politics."  The idea was that, whatever one might think about the skill set that is drummed into economists from Day One of their first undergraduate course -- and, to be clear, my thoughts about that brainwashing exercise are not...

by Michael C. Dorf Frustrated by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions's display of integrity in recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Donald Trump famously asked "Where's my Roy Cohn?". The question would be shocking if the public had any capacity left to be shocked. After all, thirty years before Trump's expression of longing for Cohn, the infamous red-baiter was disbarred for "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." The notion that such a character ought to be the country's chief law enforcement official is extraordinary. As House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff observed , in William Barr, Trump finally may have his Roy Cohn. I do not wish to suggest that Barr's massive spinning of the Mueller Report or his parroting of Trump's accusations of "spying" rises to the level of Cohn-esque sins, but I would hardly be alone in noting that in the sense that Trump cares about most, he appears to have found...

by Michael C. Dorf Longtime readers of this blog know that I am a sometimes-critical fan of author Michael Lewis. (Here are links to my columns on The Big Short , Flash Boys , and Boomerang .   I have also occasionally made reference to Liar's Poker , Moneyball , and The Blind Side .) Lewis now has a podcast called Against the Rules  that is generally quite good, although, like some of his other work, a bit too taken with its framing metaphor. The basic idea Lewis explores is that neutral arbiters have increasingly come under fire in a wide variety of contexts, which is dangerous, because societies need neutral arbiters. Episode 5, The Neutral , begins with a story about how difficult it is to be a referee, before turning to the remarkable case of Ken Feinberg, who, over the last four decades, has become the country's go-to authority for divvying up victim compensation. Lewis rightly expresses amazement that one individual wields as much power as Feinberg does, eventually ...

by Neil H. Buchanan As one of the people who has been willing to state openly for years that Donald Trump will not leave the White House under any circumstances short of being dragged out by uniformed officers, I have been trying to imagine and then explain how what was once unthinkable will actually go down.  It now seems that I have left out a step: intramural mockery among anti-Trump politicians and commentators. Seeing the process in its beginning phases is both depressing and somehow seems entirely predictable (even though I never predicted it).  Understanding how it works is important and perversely fascinating.

by Michael C. Dorf In both a Verdict column and an accompanying essay here on DoL  last week, I argued that, if they remain true to their supposed textualist principles, conservatives will rule in favor of the plaintiffs in the LGBT Title VII cases next Term. That earned me scorn from both the right and the left. From the right,  Ed Whelan wrote in National Review that I, as a liberal, oughtn't to presume to tell conservatives what they ought to do, which is fair enough, I suppose, but he went on to say that I was wrong to criticize Judge Gerard Lynch's dissent in the Second Circuit case for distinguishing between dynamic implementation of a law and dynamic understandings of a law's purpose. "[T]he correct implementation of a law’s meaning can go beyond the drafters’ specific intentions," Whelan contended, but "claims about a law’s purpose can’t alter or supplement that meaning." I'm not sure that's right, but as I argued on Twitter (to th...

by Neil H. Buchanan Donald Trump's personal defense attorney Bill Barr -- currently masquerading as the Attorney General representing the people of the United States -- has had quite a month.  Now, faced with a shockingly evasive and dishonest series of statements and actions by Trump's man, Barr's allies are pointing to the time after Barr was nominated to his current job, when plenty of people said good things about his integrity, being a "lawyer's lawyer," and all that. None of that is actually relevant, of course.  Everyone had good reason, as they always do when a new person is hired, to hope for the best and to look for reasons to feel that such hope is justified.  Moreover, Barr was replacing an interim AG (Whittaker) who was a walking joke , who in turn had replaced the most nakedly partisan AG (Sessions) imaginable -- until now, of course.  Surely, having a former AG who had served a conservative (but not hyper-conservative) president in the previ...

By Eric Segall Today is “Law Day,” for which I have the pleasure of giving talks to the Savannah and Augusta Bar Associations on the assigned topic “Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society?” This blog post summarizes some of the ideas I shall express during those events. There is little doubt that America values free speech and a free press far more than any other democracy in the world, even at times at the expense of other important values. Here are some representative examples.

by Michael C. Dorf In my latest Verdict column , I discuss the textualist argument for finding that Title VII covers LGBT discrimination, an issue on which the SCOTUS granted cert last week. I more or less endorse the view expressed by Chief Judge Katzmann of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit: (1) The prohibition on discrimination based on sex encompasses a prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity because of the necessary connection between both of the latter and sex; and (2) the case law already forbids much sex-role stereotyping of precisely the sort that is ingredient in LGBT discrimination. I consider counter-arguments that purport to work within textualism and find them lacking. I conclude therefore that the only plausible basis for ruling against the plaintiffs would have to rely on the fact that in 1964 the Congress that enacted Title VII did not subjectively intend or expect to forbid LGBT discrimination. One could frame the ...