Every year before the court gets back to work in October, the justices do some press and they typically say some media-bashing stuff like this—arguing that legal realism is something deceitful reporters made up and foisted on the people. washingtonpost.com/politics/court…
But it’s not true. Legal realism is predictive in ways that all the jewel box ideologies the Justices like to invent and lecture about are not. And it’s practiced discreetly by the clerks and lawyers who are closest to the court. The best documented example: Brett Kavanaugh.
Before he was on the court, Kavanaugh was one of the Republican lawyers who worked in the Bush White House picking right wing judicial nominees and kibitzing about what the courts were going to do. We have his emails. And they’re shot through with the views Thomas denounces here.
The Justices themselves, of course, prove legal realism is the true religion on the court by only ever retiring when a President of the same party as the President who appointed them is in office. h/t @jaywillis

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More from @nycsouthpaw

16 Sep
The Michael Sussman indictment out of the Durham investigation, via the Washington Post. context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/def…
lol ok
To explain, the whole basis for this indictment is that (a) DOJ hazily contends that Sussman represented the Clinton campaign and (b) Jim Baker doesn't remember him saying that he did and this other guy's hearsay notes suggest he said he wasn't there on behalf of a client...
Read 5 tweets
15 Sep
As with other pre-indictment stories on federal investigations, I’ll caution this news likely comes via the defense lawyers and may reflect their particular lens on the case or their desire to position it a particular way in the public sphere. nytimes.com/2021/09/15/us/…
On the other hand, the Durham investigation has been pretty peculiar so maybe it is doing something outlandish.
So with that throat clearing out of the way, the allegation as presented in the story is that a Perkins lawyer went to the FBI to present the Alfa bank research and, in some prefatory remarks recalled by the FBI GC, misrepresented on whose behalf he was doing it.
Read 6 tweets
15 Sep
It’s apparently so little represented anywhere on the news that I guess I should spell out my own view of the recall election.
California is an idiosyncratic state. It has a truly massive Democratic supermajority in the electorate, a rump Republican party that’s given over to extremism, and a byzantine initiative and referendum system everyone responsible despises (but can’t manage to reform).
One feature of that referendum system is that it’s ridiculously easy to trigger a recall and, crucially, gain an outside chance of electing a fringe candidate. Because if the recall question succeeds, the top vote getter on the replacement question takes over the office.
Read 8 tweets
13 Sep
Sorry to nicki minaj’s cousin’s friend whose alibi for getting swollen nuts and having his wedding called off is about to fall apart under the intense scrutiny of the global media.
Trinidadian TV not impressed
Read 4 tweets
11 Sep
Attributing all these changes to 9/11 rather than price deregulation is a take.
I remember in like 2004-07 there were all these random startups flying 777s in an exclusively business-class configuration—silverjet, maxjet, EOS—and throwing in loads of other fancy perks. Every single one went bankrupt and liquidated, and not because of security requirements.
Also, the piece makes a big thing out of its lead anecdote about a TWA pilot ordering off-airport pizzas for stranded passengers, and how such a thing could never ever happen after 9/11. But it has.

This is not the only example from the past couple years. travelandleisure.com/travel-news/pi…
Read 6 tweets
11 Sep
The incredible weirdness of the solo cups really supersedes the horror
Also they put the water cooler right in front of the enormous picture window?
I just now realized this is not a trash receptacle of some sort but a pastry box with a drawing of a chocolate donut on its lid.
Read 4 tweets

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