Dilan Esper Profile picture
Jul 5, 2025 5 tweets 1 min read Read on X
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

Jul 1
Me: the 2nd amendment allows for gun regulations in its text

Gun rights types: "regulated" only meant "disciplined" and "trained" back then

Me: fine, we'll mandate discipline and training of gun owners

Them: we aren't the militia!

Me: everyone's in the militia

Them: silence
We're in this bizarro Bruen world where the Court strikes down whatever gun regulations it dislikes and upholds those it likes by manipulalting history, but the road not taken was to... actually implement the text of the Second Amendment

But the NRA hates preambles, or something
In the world we could have been in, we could have said:

1. The militia is basically everyone who owns a gun (as the framers thought).
2. The government can call gun owners into service to defend it (as the militia clauses say).
3. The government can regulate the militia.
Read 7 tweets
Jun 30
Justice Alito says "From 1776 until the eve of the Civil War, the status of the [citizenship] rule in this country was unsettled."

If this is true (it isn't, and note, even Thomas disagrees with this), then why was Dred Scott's citzenship holding wrong?
The story-- we had a citizenship rule, Dred Scott violated it to screw over slaves, and the 14th amendment restored the old rule-- is pretty important and obviously true as a matter of constitutional law.
The orthodox view is that the citzenship rule was jus soli, and Dred Scott ignored jus soli to deny citizenship to Black people, and then the 14th Amendment brought back jus soli. That's the truth, by the way.
Read 32 tweets
Jun 29
Part of the backstory to Cook is central banking is one of the great accomplishments of human societies and governments, but there persist some very ignorant critiques of it that appeal to the biases of ignorant political extremists, right and left.
And because central banking works on trust, and is fundamentally anti-democratic and not transparent, the Ignorance Caucuses on both the left and the right are able to make populist arguments against it and have dating back to Jefferson (who was profoundly ignorant on economics).
But if you put aside economic ignorance, basically every successful large economy in the world operates with some form of independent central banking. The details can differ; you can argue about dual mandates, how aggressive it should be, etc.

But the form's the same.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 20
I am going to start my education process about just how extreme Justice Thomas is today, with an examination of his views about the Commerce Clause

Before I discuss this, a prefatory note about why I am engaging in this. I think conservatives have promoted a false view of Thomas
Thomas, as many people know, dissents a lot. Indeed, he writes more solo dissents or concurrences than anyone else on the Court, and there are countless examples in varous areas of the law of the 8 Justices analyzing an issue one way and Thomas another.
The conservative view, promoted and repeated so often, is that Thomas is this generation's Justice Harlan, or Justice Holmes, or Justice Brandies, writing out the arguments that will become tomorrow's majority opinions. This connects with a romantic view people have of dissents.
Read 58 tweets
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
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

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