Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Jon Hanson Profile picture
Jon Hanson
@TheSituationist
Professor and Director of Systemic Justice Project @Harvard_Law -- @Justice_Init; @HLSJusticeLab; @TheFlawMagazine; Section 6.
Dec 25, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1/9 In the spirit of the holiday, I appreciated Michelle Alexander's message of speaking from conscience:

hammerandhope.org/article/michel… 2/ "Deep within us we know — that [Dr. King] was right...about the corrupting forces of capitalism, militarism, and racism and how they lead inexorably toward war."
Sep 29, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/6 🧵
Sharing a few more insights on organizing from invaluable conversation with @DanielDenvir, @astradisastra, @alex_han, and @RaGilmer on @thedigradio
2/ "Organizing is bringing people together around something that is shared: something that is backward looking-about people's experience and history-or how they're experiencing things in the moment...or a vision of what things can look like in the future."-@alex__han
Aug 16, 2023 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
1/25 LONG THREAD! 🧵
Regarding this standard advice for law students, I want to be on record as someone who considers it, in several ways, wrongheaded (& sad) as general advice. This thread will highlight some of those ways.
2/ First, a point of agreement:
Although this is only implicit, @imillhiser’s advice is premised on the belief that the law, legal profession, and law school are the root of the problem--problems of quantity and quality. I agree with that much.
Jul 9, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
With all due respect: I hope Malia and her friends know to seek advice from others on this topic.

If I were Obama and my 24-year-old daughter or son came to me with that question, I might say something like: 🧵 1/13 2/ My generation of privileged and powerful people screwed up.

Among other things, we allowed ourselves, our institutions, and our entire system to be captured by corporate interests.

For some, this was intentional; for others, it was negligence and culpable ignorance.
Apr 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"By 2019, the faculty would include" Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Kavanaugh--"all deployed as strategic assets in a campaign to make Scalia Law, a public school in the DC suburbs , a Yale or Harvard of conservative legal scholarship and influence."
nytimes.com/2023/04/30/us/… "Scalia Law is now tied for 30th place in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, a big jump in a relatively short time. In the process, it has become something of a hub of conservative legal thought, and legal society, in the capital."
Feb 13, 2023 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
1/ Very long thread 🧵asking:
What does it say about elite legal education, particularly Harvard Law School . . . 2/ ...that critical race theory (CRT) emerged in elite law schools as a reaction to the white supremacy baked into elite legal education and law.

newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…
Jan 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
@briebriejoy on how "Republicans have shown how much power coalition politics can garner."
currentaffairs.org/2023/01/what-p… "Now, of course, both the left media and mainstream media are perfectly clear on how this all works. Now that there’s no pressure on progressives to actually be adversarial to the Democratic Party...now they get it."
Jan 14, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD 🧵Tonight, I'm re-reading the breathtakingly beautiful 2018 essay by @maximillian_alv here: currentaffairs.org/2018/12/can-th…. So much to contemplate in his prose--a very personal essay that speaks to the need for connection, solidarity, and collective struggle. A few excerpts: 1/11 "we do it everywhere. At our jobs, at the grocery store, on the subway, at the gym, on the street … we use each other. And we grow accustomed to being used." 2/
Dec 23, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Santa Thread 🧵1/
I've been thinking a lot about @santaclaus. And I have a gripe.
Most people focus on the “Santa” brand—red robe, jolly demeanor, twinkling eyes, and dense gray beard. I’m more interested in the contrast between what Santa says and what he actually does. 2/ According to lore, song, and conventional wisdom, Santa claims he decides how to distribute gifts around the globe by applying his "naughty or nice test."
Dec 21, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
1/ Another long thread🧵on the the shamelessness of Big Law corporate defenders and what it reveals about the legal profession and the law itself. 2/ Global oil companies--based upon the strategic advice of their lawyers--have increasingly used racketeering statutes (originally intended to be used against mob bosses) as a club to destroy and deter plaintiffs' lawyers who challenge them. See
Nov 26, 2022 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
LONGISH THREAD: 🧵1/16 on climate change, law, legal profession, & legal education.
My students are becoming increasingly alarmed about the climate change crisis. Among my 1st-year students, 50% ranked climate change as “the most urgent problem.” That’s up from 30% two in 2020. 2/ Consequently, we devoted all of this year’s Tort Reports to climate change. youtube.com/playlist?list=…. I’ll return to this below.
Oct 22, 2022 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
THREAD 🧵
1/ 2 years ago, in a widely read Atlantic article, one of my colleagues, Adrian Vermeule, called for "a robust, substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation" b/c, he argued . . . 👇 2/ originalism has fulfilled its role of "help[ing] legal conservatives survive and even flourish in a hostile environment" of the 1970s, and "enabled conservatives to oppose constitutional innovations by the Warren and Burger Courts," and because . . .
Oct 10, 2022 • 44 tweets • 9 min read
🧵 1/ - VERY LONG THREAD ON IMPEDIMENTS TO ACTIVISM AND ORGANIZING AMONG LAW STUDENTS AND LAWYERS:
15 years ago, law students perceived the law as legitimate. Today, I'd say they're “all crits now.” #AllCritsNow 👇 2/ That is, many law students (and lawyers and law professors) today arrive as 1Ls with the strong presumption that our laws are deeply unjust. Specifically, that laws are . . .
Sep 24, 2022 • 56 tweets • 10 min read
1/ 🧵VERY LONG THREAD ON LAW SCHOOL STUDENT ORGANIZING: @dereckapurnell spoke at HLS last week. She emphasized that she is “terrified” about “the state of student organizing in the United States,” calling it “weak, very weak, . . . for a very long time.”
2/ She also pointed out that student organizing has historically been an integral engine of change, and student activism will again have to be robust if there is any hope of ever transforming our systems.
Aug 9, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
A THREAD on bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… 👇 1/ start with @jaywillis's thread.
Jul 6, 2022 • 51 tweets • 12 min read
THREAD: This is the fourth (& probably last) in a series of long threads written in response to this term’s egregious SCOTUS decisions. One goal of the threads is to shed light on the problematic system-legitimating relationship between elite law schools and the judiciary. 🧵1/ 2/ The threads illuminate that relationship by examining public-facing law school articles and press releases about grads and faculty on the U.S. Supreme Court. You can find the previous three threads here: .
Jun 30, 2022 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
THREAD: This is the third in a series of long threads about the institutional symbiosis between “elite” law schools and elite legal institutions, particularly the judiciary. It's a series I felt compelled to draft in light of recent events and SCOTUS decisions.
🧵1/25 For those interested, the first thread looked at a Harvard Law School article asserting that HLS alum, Neil Gorsuch, had the right judicial “temperament” and “made friends across the political spectrum.”
🧵2/25
Jun 28, 2022 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
THREAD: Here’s another long thread about the institutional symbiosis between “elite” law schools and elite legal institutions, particularly the judiciary.
1/21
Consider this YLS story from 2015 about Justices Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor receiving “Yale Law School Association’s Award of Merit for their contributions to the legal profession.”
law.yale.edu/yls-today/news…
ylr.law.yale.edu/pdfs/v62-1/W15…
2/21
Jun 27, 2022 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
THREAD. For decades, I’ve been teaching and writing about the role of legal education in producing unjust systems. Events this week have me thinking about the institutional symbiosis between “elite” law schools and elite legal institutions, particularly the judiciary. Law schools have long been dependent upon the prestige, influence, and wealth of their powerful graduates, routinely serving as apologists for whatever those alums do—recognizing that those benefits tend to transfer directly or by association.