SCOTUS: "Business owners who dislike homosexuals can refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding." US DoJ: "Business owners who dislike Charlie Kirk cannot refuse to print materials memorializing him."
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SCOTUS: "Business owners who dislike homosexuals can refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding." US DoJ: "Business owners who dislike Charlie Kirk cannot refuse to print materials memorializing him."
The two dismissed murder charges required the prosecution to establish that Mangione committed "an act of terrorism," which the NY judge concluded the prosecution had failed to do. (Mangione still faces a NY second-degree murder charge and a federal prosecution.) www.nycourts.gov/legacypdfs/p...
Trump is literally threatening to have his Justice Department go after reporters who are asking him questions he doesn’t like
Second deadly US strike on a boat in the Caribbean. As with the first -nonthreatening target in an area the US military operates freely -no legal authority, nor attempt to cite statute -no evidence presented -no individuals identified -no articulated strategic goal, nor explanation how to achieve it
Why what is happening in the United States shows the need for the United Kingdom to repair its own constitution Our polity is there for the taking Substack emptycity.substack.com/p/the-pointl... Personal blog davidallengreen.com/2025/09/the-...
Were I the president or chancellor of any institution subject to these demands, my response would be "make me, you fascist fuck." And then I would sic university counsel on them and seek the support of the rest of the institutions in my university system to form a unified front against this shit.
www.cnbc.com/2025/09/16/t... Ill remind you the point isn't winning. Its settling and breaking the back of the media industry. And if you cheer that on, you need to grow up and stop being so short-sighted.
Release the Epstein files! Also, the Donald’s lawsuit against the New York Times for defamation is so thirsty and legally ignorant. The lawyers don’t even get the “actual malice” standard correct.
'It's difficult to overstate what a landmark moment this is' Liam Thorp, political editor of the Liverpool Echo, speaks to #BBCBreakfast about the introduction of the 'Hillsborough Law' bill will force public officials to tell the truth during investigations into major disasters
I think a First Amendment refresher course is in order for Ms. Bondi.
"I do not write these words as an adversary of Israel.... Our commission has documented the crimes by Hamas. But no crime, however grave, justifies genocide. To respond to atrocity with atrocity is to abandon the very values international law was created to protect."
I honestly thought there was a chance that I'd fallen asleep and was dreaming the most absurd, childlike, ego-maniac lawsuit when I tried to read this Trump defamation complaint against the Times, Penguin Random House, and individual journalists. Complaint: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Hot take incoming. Trump suing the NYT is a good sign because it shows he still thinks the best way to go after his enemies is with lawyers and not with armed goons
"Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds" The UN joins other experts including the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Holocaust historians, and multitudes of lawyers in concluding this is genocide. www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
who told law reviews that they should demand that prospective authors submit a *FULL MANUSCRIPT* to be *CONSIDERED* for participation in their symposium
"The president is demanding $15 billion...which exceeds the entire market cap of [NYT]. [This] is the latest example of what [1A] experts have described as a presidential strategy to silence critical news coverage and curb free speech by filing legally dubious lawsuits." www.cnn.com/2025/09/16/m...
This is a stunningly pathological lawsuit even by Trumpian standards. It reads as if he was holding a gun to the head of the child of the lawyer drafting it.
"Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs. That obligation requires action ... using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing. To do nothing is not neutrality. It is complicity."
So this Trump lawsuit is wacko for many, many reasons, but THIS IS NOT WHAT ACTUAL MALICE MEANS in the legal context. At all.
The insane thing is that I have zero confidence that the courts will actually follow the precedents from like a week ago in cases like masterpiece cakeshop and 303 creative. Because who cares about precedent when the only rule is "republicans win?"
imagine being reduced to this as the Attorney General: you run the biggest law firm in the world and you're trying to strongarm non-exempt employees three steps down the org chart at an individual Office Depot
ICYMI, this was yesterday's 🔥 news item among the law-type folks I know. See context at https://icymilaw.org/archive/2025-09-16.html#news (daily news digest). Article here 👇
The US President has zero business seizing control of our universities one by one, eviscerating their financing, and hobbling America’s innovation capacity for a generation. A flagrant violation of our laws. Those entrusted to enforce our laws choose to look away, abandoning us, and their duty.
That would be a neat trick given (a) there is no formal Antifa entity and (b) federal law doesn’t have a mechanism for designating domestic terror organizations.
Selective targeting of political opposition isn't something you can layer on top while otherwise still doing normal law enforcement. Nothing then is credible, the taint is inescapable. The government can't credibly represent any honest interest in enforcing the law. It destroys its own legitimacy.
I wonder how the lawyers at Fox News are feeling about some of their hosts' inflammatory comments this week.
Appeals court rules against Trump over his effort to immediately fire Fed member Lisa Cook. Trump appointee dissents.
This has been coming from the beginning. All major democracy-supporting NGOs and foundations have their legal complaints already drafted. And in time, perhaps not even much time, they will win their cases. What is needed most in the meantime is courage. Keep saying what you think, doing what you do.
I don’t know what to do with the fact that the chief executive is ordering people to commit what is likely murder or a war crime,¹ sharing video of same/snuff films, and it somehow isn’t a bigger deal. This is literally worse than shooting someone on 5th Avenue. ¹ See
Attn #legalhistory folks: it is publication day for Kevin Arlyck's anxiously awaited book, The Nation at Sea: The Federal Courts and American Sovereignty, 1789-1825 (Cambridge, 2025)! I was privileged to able to read early drafts and this is a field-changing book! www.cambridge.org/core/books/n...
Yep. 2d Cir affirmed that former Congressman George Santos, currently resident at FCI-Fairton, does not have valid copyright or other claims against Jimmy Kimmel et al for Kimmel's getting Santos to say stupid shit on Cameo videos and Kimmel's airing it on his show.
Now I'm not a NY Lawyer, but I'm pretty comfortable saying....AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! No! To this guy
And, "Oz also said the federal government can 'claw back' funding from states that 'don’t perform' and redistribute it, saying: “This is not punitive. This is a very clever decision by the crafters of the law.'" Not sure how states are supposed to feel confident allocating and spending these funds.
"C'mon, guys, plead facts, not evidence! It's not that hard." Me, extremely former former plaintiff's attorney, reading a complaint. "Do I plead the absence of shared officers, directors, employees, or is it enough to allege that...Fuck, this is hard." Me, when the shoe is on the other foot.
Yet again, I say this as someone who does arbitration for a living: it is WAY past time for the US to protect consumers and employees the way other countries do. This situation is partly SCOTUS's making, but it's mostly legislative, & Congress can and must fix it.
Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor who brought high profile criminal cases against the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, sued the DOJ alleging her abrupt firing came "solely or substantially" because she is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey.
See also: the Jordan/Trump/FTC position that advertisers are *obligated* to advertise on X, and that it is *illegal* to decide to stop doing so because you don’t want your ads to appear next to Nazi content.
Cool stuff, no recent precedent for this at all that might have helped pave the way
The origin story of the “shadow docket” is now in the paper of record. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...
Harvard sued Francesca Gino for defamation in August, alleging the former Harvard Business School professor modified a spreadsheet on her laptop, then backdating it to 2010, so it would appear that she had been sent false data by another researcher rather than altered it herself.
There’s nothing wrong with this Charlie Kirk post other than the firm’s ongoing litigation.
The Charlie Kirk Exception to the First Amendment is the new Major Questions Doctrine.
🚨 berkeley faculty association hits back against the "wholly unnecessary and legally improper" release of faculty, staff and student information. ucbfa.org/wp-content/u...
2d Cir. holds that Jimmy Kimmel's use of Cameo to get criminal ex-Rep. George Santos to say stupid shit in videos that Kimmel then used in "Will Santos Say It?" on-air segments was protected by the fair use doctrine under copyright law. ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/is...
![But Santos’s complaint contradicts any claim of a purpose on the Defendants’ part to “supplant” Santos’s “commercially valuable right” in the videos. Swatch Grp. Mgmt. Servs. Ltd. v. Bloomberg L.P., 756 F.3d 73, 83 (2d Cir. 2014) (quotation marks omitted). To the contrary, the complaint paints a portrait of defendants motivated by (sarcastic) criticism and commentary. See Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202, 215–16 (2d Cir. 2015). We thus agree with the District Court that the first factor strongly supports a finding of fair use. We are equally unpersuaded by Santos’s challenges to the District Court’s analysis of the remaining factors. Among other things, the relevant copyright registrations establish that the videos were published on the same day they were created. See App’x 160–69; 17 U.S.C. § 101. And it is clear on the face of Santos’s complaint that Santos has not suffered market harm within the meaning of the fourth fair use factor because “[w]e ask not whether the second work would damage the market for the first (by, for example, devaluing it through parody or](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:24vva42nxim6zbcmnozegoef/bafkreid6rbotqjzttvxwfdr3yhyil36oleug3donyynll5aa3ikna76nxi@jpeg "Click to view full size")
DOJ has moved to drop the charges against still another person accused of assaulting law police during Trump's D.C. surge. This case involved a man who allegedly tried to flee from ICE agents, causing one of them to scrape his knee. (The normal number of cases DOJ drops like this is near zero.)
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/n...
I’m sure they’ll try stuff against civil-society groups and people if they find an opening, but the VP telling folks to call people’s bosses is sort of a tell that the fed govt. can’t lawfully or semi-lawfully do much here.
Yet another killing seemingly without any legal authorization. The previous boat was heading to Trinidad and Tobago and there has yet to be ANY evidence of imminent danger requiring a lethal strike. Virtually no fentanyl or opioids travel by this route.
Very blunt legal rationale for Justice Department's firing of Maurene Comey from her career prosecutor job at SDNY. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... www.politico.com/news/2025/09...
Trump has ordered a 20-foot painting of racist Confederate general Robert E. Lee (with his “slave”) be installed at the US Military Academy at West Point, in violation of a federal law that required Confederate monuments to be removed from the academy. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/u...
This is your periodic reminder that there is a new 501(c)(3) the purpose of which is to hold lawyers like Martin to account, and to make sure no one ever forgets the role of lawyers in United States' decent to authoritarianism. If you are a lawyer/law student - we need your help. DM me.
we have another dismissed case in DC: Paul Nguyen, who was hit with a felony charge after tussling with two HSI agents trying to break up a fight www.courtlistener.com/docket/71197...
Epstein and Maxwell's ex-prosecutor Maurene Comey sued over being fired without "any explanation whatsoever," seeking her job back with backpay. An exhibit says her removal was based on "Art II Constitution," with no other rationale.
I just got the most unintentionally funny legal threat from a guy who sent me a harassing message on LINKEDIN (Lolol) and when I screencapped it and told his employer to “come get your guy” he sent me an email threatening to take me to court for tortious interference
The Dept of Education is now accepting comments on a proposed rule that would overhaul Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and make it too expensive for students to go into work that threatens the Trump administration Folks have til *Sept. 17* to oppose the changes ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...
Maurene Comey, former FBI Dir Jim Comey’s daughter, has filed a lawsuit alleging her firing from DOJwith no notice, following outstanding performance ratings violates the law. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/n...
“Kattan rapped twice on the heavy knocker on the prime minister’s front door. The loud thud reverberated up the otherwise silent street, as the petitioners announced their arrival to ask for what they see as justice.” #Balfour #Palestine #reparations www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/202...
Comedy is legal again!
This post focuses mainly on the PTAB standing issue but also provides an interesting overview of some of the issues that can arise with the U.S. system of overlapping plant protection: patentlyo.com/patent/2025/...
TL;DR: The rise of AI tools and hybrid law firms is challenging traditional Big Law, raising questions about the future viability of established legal practices.
I wrote about the Trump administration’s political prosecution and imprisonment of Kilmar Ábrego García for @newyorker.com. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
Fitchburg State has Constitution Day events all week (on the slightly timely topic of due process), & I've had good recent convos with our General Counsel (a new position in the last year) about supporting our students & faculty. Might seem like baselines, but in Fall 2025, I appreciate them deeply.
🚨 Awesome job alert 🚨 RCFP is hiring a new staff attorney for our national practice! Litigate press freedom cases. Work with dedicated and amazing colleagues. Groan as I talk about octopuses again. Apply by October 15: jobs.smartrecruiters.com/ReportersCom... #law #appellate
In “The Law of Racial Resentment,” I critique how SCOTUS validated racial resentment in SFFA v. Harvard and argue we need stronger legal/structural responses to counter resentment—not appease it. Now in @uclalawreview.bsky.social papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
7 years ago, Yvette Russell & I embarked on a life-changing teaching journey, examining the relationship between law & race with students. This is the essay I wrote at the start of it all. folukeafrica.com/why-we-are-t...
At a talk by a Court of Appeals Judge last week, he used, in quick succession, the labels, "Emergency Docket," "Motions Docket," and "Interim Docket" and didn't even acknowledge the existence of the term, "Shadow Docket." I chuckled! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...
“A measure that would allow nearly any private citizen to sue out-of-state prescribers and others who send abortion pills into Texas has won first-round approval in the state House. It would be the first law of its kind in the country” 8/29/25 apnews.com/article/abor...
How do venture capitalists respond to startups in the adult, alcohol, gambling, cannabis, weapons, and other sin industries? My article "Vice Capital" (w/ @kimkrawiec.bsky.social) is now published in UC Irvine Law Review! scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/faculty-arti... 1/2
In DC: “[H]onesty is basic to the practice of law” and dishonesty is “plainly intolerable.” Don't lie folks. Don't. Lie.
The desecration of critical thinking and research skills by AI is genuinely alarming. Law departments need to warn students of the serious consequences of this kind of failure of professional standards, not encourage them to use these tools that frequently produce manifestly misleading answers.
The lethal U.S. strike in the Caribbean that killed 11 people doesn’t fit the counterterrorism justification, writes @bcfinucane.bsky.social. The lack of legal basis suggests the Trump administration may be asserting a prerogative to kill outside the law:
With a terrific team, I just published a large study looking at all court cases involving the Trump administration. Shows basis for courts no longer giving a so-called "presumption of regularity" (a legal doctrine involving a strong benefit of the doubt) to the administration. 🧵
I personally love getting told my attorney ID isn't enough and I need to provide my driver's license too because of added security for trans people in light of the Kirk shooting, very cool
Communication to the public is about to shape the future of AI copyright We are probably squarely in the middle of the AI copyright regulatory cycle, judging by previous technological inflexion points. The first half of this cycle has been dominated rightly by copyright input cases, that is, cases…
www.dw.com/en/legacy-of...
Penske's lawsuit accuses Google of abusing its monopoly power in search to force publishers to support AI summaries.
Hammad Sarfraz: When the Trump administration tries to impose an Israel exception to international law, we should not blame international institutions, which continue to do important work despite US opposition. We should blame Washington. tribune.com.pk/story/256666...
Never forget the Supreme Court of the United States officially made being non-white a valid ground to be arrested, detained, and even deported regardless of citizenship status. bsky.app/profile/lati...
📘 Come to my inaugural lecture "Democratic socialism and the law", 6.30pm, 15 October: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/inaugural-... 🌹 What role does the law play in democratic socialism? It rewires the defects of contract, property, corporate law + residual ‘capitalist’ elements of our law, and more... 👇
I am speaking at the Statute Law Society in London next month about audiences and interpreting legislation. Currently workshopping some jokes.
In May 2025, Trump ended federal oversight of the Memphis police department to stop "handcuffing local leaders." Four months later, Trump is sending the National Guard into Memphis to "fix" the "troubled city." I can't keep track. Does Memphis need the feds to oversee law enforcement, or not?
The Edinburgh Legal Theory group is delighted to share with you the line-up for our Autumn semester. We have lots of exciting events coming up, so make sure to save the dates in your calendar and to come along for what we can guarantee will be lively and inspiring discussions. See you there! 🏴
Really happy to share my new article "Investigative Jurisdiction: The Evolving Limits of Extraterritoriality in Transnational Digital Investigations" now published online with the International & Comparative Law Quarterly. It's open access and free to read here: doi.org/10.1017/S002...
I ask this with 100% sincerity: How does a journo hear Trump (1) essentially admit he plans to commit war crimes while (2) making up a WILDLY wrong number, and then ... ... just keep moving on? Not: "I'm sorry, 300 million?!" "Do you know killing traffickers violates international law?"
🇩🇪🇪🇺⚖️ An absolutely packed room at Berlin's WZB for our re:constitution programme conference on the rule of law in Europe! Fellows, alumni, civil society, diplomats, European institutions and academia all here to discuss where do we go with the rule of law in increasingly dangerous times.
On the blog, I summarize and link to my new essay in the UC Davis Law Review online: "Play in the Joints Beyond the Religion Clauses." It critiques recent SCOTUS cases that shrink the zone between what Free Exercise requires and Establishment forbids. It also praises buffer zones more broadly. 👇
So eager to feed the First Amendment into the shredder www.texastribune.org/2025/09/12/t...
“In 1905, the Supreme Court upheld the right to mandate vaccination for public safety. None of that history earned a mention when Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, announced last week that Florida would end vaccine mandates.” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social
this is unbelievably stupid. It’s the shadow docket. A *conservative* law prof originally called it that. That’s what it is. Let’s talk about the substance of what is being done with it.
The people behind "Charlie Kirk's murderers" have rebranded to the "Charlie Kirk Data Foundation." The original site is no longer up. I think they realized the massive legal liability they were incurring libeling tens of thousands of people as "murderers."
ICYMI, this was yesterday's 🔥 news item among the law-type folks I know. See context at https://icymilaw.org/archive/2025-09-15.html#news (daily news digest). Article here 👇
28 U.S. Code § 535(b) If I had been informed of the proposal to attack that boat in the Caribbean, I would have reported it to DOJ. (And yes, I am well aware of the current state of DOJ and the possibility of an OLC memo blessing the operation.) Make a record.
these places are entirely beyond the law, as are the usual concentration camps by design.
The publisher of Rolling Stone has sued Google, alleging that the AI summaries which appear atop search results are illegally using its reporting and depressing online traffic.
Kind of buried in an avalanche of news, but a Florida appellate court found the state's law criminalizing "open carry" unconstitutional under Bruen. The state's sheriffs say they will no long arrest people for open carry. 1dca.flcourts.gov/content/down...
Sort of feel that asking for the death penalty in non-judicial contexts should itself be an indictable offence.
"Shut the fuck up" has long been the correct default advice on talking to the police but now it applies 100x if it's federal law enforcement or if the info might get to them. It's not just that what you say will be used against you; you will also instantly be burned for political expedience.
We are at the point in the honoring-Charlie-Kirk's-memory cycle when faculty are being fired for posting, without comment, Charlie Kirk's words. At the behest of politicians sworn to uphold the first amendment, and in public institutions covered by first amendment protections.
Reminds me of the time, in 1939, that Supreme Court of Canada chastised Mr Christie for persisting in complaining about being denied a beer because he was black. After all, the servers were polite in their racism, so what’s the problem. The SCC ruled the bar could be racist. canlii.ca/t/fsmgg
TL;DR: Elon Musk, addressing a far-right rally in London via video link, called for the dissolution of the UK parliament and warned of impending violence, urging the crowd to 'fight back or die' against the 'woke mind virus.'