Julian Davis Mortenson Profile picture
Feb 24, 2023 9 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I tend to take claims like these with a grain of salt.

But I just went line-by-line through the DeSantis education bill. And you guys, it’s *bananas*. A road map for wrecking one of our great state systems of higher education. 🧵 1/
Breathtaking control of viewpoint and content throughout all academic activity in the entire Florida system. All colleges and universities are forbidden to spend any money to fund pedagogy, programming, or activities that “espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
No core class can present American history contrary to a founding narrative “based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” /3
All state colleges and universities must remove Women’s & Gender Studies from the list of available majors and minors. No major or minor can exist if it is deemed to be “derivative” from the “belief system” of “Critical Race Theory”—gee, wonder where that will go. 4/
All faculty hiring will be done by the university board or president—who *may not delegate* any aspect of any hiring decision or any hiring authority to any group of faculty however constituted. They are “not required to consider recommendations or opinions of faculty.” 5/
On the faculty hiring one, I keep thinking I must be misreading something or missing some other aspect of the administrative/governance workings of state education in Florida. But man the language seems unequivocal. 6/
The only thing that seems as less worrisome on the *face* of the bill is post-tenure review. Long convo, but if you’re gonna have post-tenure review, these considerations seem defensible. (Yes, given everything else, the as-applied potential is super troubling.) 7/
Not good times, guys!

So I thought I’d share this walk-through for those who, like me, sometimes wonder whether some seemingly nutbar thing is being fairly described. Based on the above, the answer here seems clearly to be “yes.” 8/8
POSTSCRIPT: With apologies, the notifications have become unmanageable--I literally can't refresh fast enough to keep up. So I'm muting this thread but will try to poke through it manually. Sorry if I don't answer you; there's a good chance I didn't even see what you wrote 😬

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More from @jdmortenson

Aug 24, 2024
For reasons best known to themselves, Sai Prakash + Aditya Bamzai have been selling false descriptions of my work on Art II. Most generous view: they've never read past the abstracts.

But now they've doubled down. And other responsibilities trump the obligation to be kind. 1/🧵
I'll start by copping to my views. Proximate issue: historical evidence for untrammeled Art II removal authority.

On that Q, in the clash btw Katz-Rosenblum & Shugerman (inter alia) on one side, and Prakash-Bamzai (inter alia) on the other side, imo PB look pretty bad. 2/
How should the courts review deeply embedded structural decisions about the federal separation of powers, including removal? My thoughts are complicated!

But Prakash and Bamzai's persistent misrepresentations of my work are uncomplicated. And deeply unbecoming. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Aug 27, 2023
Law peeps: have you ever found yourself changing your mind the right answer to a significant legal question? Which ones, and how did it happen? Especially curious w/r/t issues that code as political or ideological.
I'll throw out two, one big picture and one more a category.

1. I used to think Washington v. Davis was wrongly—or at least too flatly--decided.

2. With specific presidential power claims, I regularly find myself more persuaded by retail statutory arguments the closer I look.
flagging those bc they both cut *against* my abstract priors (equality good; rampant presidentialism bad)

interestingly, *all* aspects of my SOP research have led me down paths i never expected! but that's been toward *more* lib outcomes, so perhaps less interesting.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 1, 2023
Barrett's concurrence in Biden v Nebraska is interesting + has lots of good stuff. But I don't think her core move works. At all. Curious for others' thoughts...if anyone even sees this 🫠

Her goal is to defend Major Questions Doctrine against charges of judicial activism. 1/
So the whole point of Barrett's opinion is to rebut charges that Major Questions Doctrine is judicial activism--a concern she acknowledges to be serious. The central move in her defense of MQD on that score is to argue that it is NOT a substantive canon. 2/
Barrett agrees "strong-form substantive canons" let judges "strain statutory text to advance a particular value," such that "the BETTER interpretation of a statute will not necessarily prevail." This "loads the dice" + "poses a 'lot of trouble' for 'the honest textualist.'" 2/

Read 15 tweets
May 10, 2023
Strongly recommend this Andy Coan piece on Dobbs and moral pluralism in a shared constitutional polity. Per Coan, if we take the pro-life frame seriously, Dobbs was a “fundamentally ordinary” case. The key is what follows for a critical response. 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… Image
“Dobbs was wrongly decided, … gratuitously cruel, lacking in empathy, and poorly reasoned. But Dobbs is not illegitimate or lawless. It is a highly consequential, but fundamentally ordinary, example of the inextricable connections between morality and constitutional law.” 2/ ImageImage
In an intentionally unsettling invocation of Ely’s “Wages of Crying Wolf,” Coan urges liberal critics not to cheapen charged lawlessness at a time when “an existential struggle over constitutional democracy and the rule of law . . . is indeed underway.” 3/ ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Oct 11, 2022
I find myself in the unfortunate position of disagreeing w this essay from @WilliamBaude + Michael McConnell. And I want to explain why, more bc of what their Elections Clause arguments suggest about modern originalism than bc of anything distinctive I can add on the merits.

1/
Basically: North Carolina SCt struck down NC’s recent redistricting under the *NC* constitution. Challengers claim NC SCt can’t do this, bc *federal* constitution’s Elections Clause gives N.C. leg total power over elections except as limited by fed law 2/ brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
It's a super weird case for an Elections Clause argument. Afaict, the NC SCt literally step-by-step did precisely what THE LEGISLATURE expressly told them to do--not just on process (challenge; PI; interim plan) but even on substance (const'l standards)
3/
Read 17 tweets
Sep 6, 2022
Seeing lots of confident proclamations that Biden's loan forgiveness plan is executive branch lawlessness run amok. I don't get it--the confidence, that is. My current sense is that it'd likely be rejected by this Supreme Court, but that it's not an easy case on the merits. 1/
But don't forget: predicting what this (or, I suppose, any) court will do in an adjudicated case is not the same thing as asking "what's the best legal analysis?"
I'm offering this thread mainly to flag some resources I've found useful in trying to think all this through. 2/
I'd start off by reading the statute. (Crazy talk, I know.) It's short and structurally straightforward. Note especially these two passages:
Sec 2(a)(2)(A) authorizing waivers & modifications re student loans
Sec 5(2) defining "affected individuals" congress.gov/108/plaws/publ… ImageImage
Read 14 tweets

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