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Dilan Esper Profile picture
@dilanesper
Jul 5, 2025 • 5 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
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Prediction: there will not be an autocratic takeover of the American state in the next 3 years, and when it doesn't happen the academics like Skocpol who predicted it will face no loss of standing in elite discourse, just like foreign policy pundits who supported the Iraq War.
There's a whole Cry Wolf Caucus in academia who are constantly telling us we meet, e.g., 16 of the 17 signs of Hitler taking over. In an ideal society this sort of thing-- which is CLEARLY politically motivated and careerist-- would cost people credibility when it doesn't happen.
At any rate we have very strong institutions against any sort of Hitler-style takeover. There's a lot of stuff the Trump Administration is doing that I think is very bad, including, for instance, the Medicaid cuts he just signed or the immigration policies.
But American democracy will survive. There will be free elections in 2026 and 2028 and most likely the Republicans will not do well in them.
And while President Trump will have a lot of power to do damage in the area of immigration, Presidents have always had lots of power over immigration (Joe Biden did too) and it is inaccurate to label that an autocratic takeover and destruction of federalism.

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More from @dilanesper

Dilan Esper Profile picture
May 27
I think I have made this point before, but the Quillette piece on Jackson makes it relevant again. People don't understand how independent probability works with respect to evidence in criminal cases.

Let's suppose you have 2 WEAK pieces of evidence in a criminal case.
One of them is a witness you don't really trust, who says she saw the defendant leaving the bank with a gun in his hand.

The other is that the defendant owned a relatively uncommon gun that is identical to the one that was used in the robbery.
Neither of those two facts by itself could get you anywhere near guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Let's say they each create a 30 percent chance the defendant is guilty, 70 percent not guilty.

The two facts TOGETHER make it FIFTY-ONE percent likely that the defendant is GUILTY.
Read 15 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
May 22
Non-lawyers and many lawyers with strident political views hate stare decisis, the doctrine that says that courts are supposed to follow precedents.

But stare decisis is both essential for a functioning legal system and mandated by the Constitution.
Let's start with a famous Onion headline, "Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be".

Think about WHY this is so funny.

theonion.com/area-man-passi…
The basic point is that all of us have opinions about what we think the Constitution means, consider those opinions to be the "right" interpretation, and get mad when they are not followed. But no legal system works on "however anyone subjectively interprets the law is the law".
Read 43 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
May 20
I missed the debate because my tech betrayed me last night. But I will link to it below.

I should share my thoughts on court packing, for what they are worth. Court packing will make things worse, not better.
Here's the link to the WhickTV debate.

The basic problem with court packing is the way it will actually play out will not only not restore the status quo that people imagine we had, but will make things worse than they are now.

Here's what will actually happen with court packing. President AOC gets elected with a Democratic Congress in 2028 and she makes abolishing the filibuster and packing the Court a priority. She adds and appoints 4 more Justices.
Read 34 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
May 17
Let's talk about FDR and Japanese internment.

People really want to rate FDR a great President because of the New Deal, World War II, and the post-war ostensibly liberal international order, so they treat it as an asterisk. It isn't. It says very dark things about Roosevelt.
Franklin Roosevelt was ALWAYS an anti-Japanese bigot. He was an Easterner who likely met very few Japanese people in his life and knew little of California. He also, notably, did not share his cousin Theodore's relatively progressive views on Japanese people.
(Theodore Roosevelt actually worked very hard to undermine an effort by unions and racist San Franciscans to kick Japanese students out of the San Francisco schools after the 1906 Earthquake. FDR did not share his cousin's enlightened views on the Japanese race.)
Read 31 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
May 11
I'm not an expert on employment discrimination law so I am not really your source on what will happen in the NY Times reverse discrimination lawsuit.

But I can tell you about a broader more "cultural" trend about this issue, which is a lot of people don't realize this is illegal
Discrimination against white people because of their race has been illegal ever since the civil rights statutes were passed (and was illegal before that under the Constitution with respect to state actors).

TBC, there were exceptions for very specific types of affirmative action
But those exceptions, even when they existed (and it is unclear any of them still do after Students for Fair Admission), were very narrow. E.g., even many college affirmative action programs were illegal and SCOTUS struck a bunch of them down.
Read 9 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
May 3
(a is Justice Thomas' argument in his concurrence. And it's a TERRIBLE argument. Exactly the sort of "gotcha' textualism that gives lawyers a bad name.

The 1982 amendments to the VRA were literally passed to address districting. Everyone thought that was what they were doing.
The only reason they were even changing the VRA in 1982 was to address the holding of a case called Mobile v Bolden from 1980. Bolden involved a challenge to an at large districting system. SCOTUS applied a discriminatory intent test Congress thought too strict.
So, they passed the amendment you see quoted in Callais. Yes I know it doesn't use the word "districting". But that's a totally silly and un-legal argument-- things can be about a topic without using the word.
Read 8 tweets

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