Dan Epps Profile picture
Professor of Law, @WUSTL. Con law 📜, crim law/pro 👮, SCOTUSology 🏛. Cohost 🎤@DividedArgument. A "smarter legal mind than mine." — @PeteButtigieg.
Aug 1, 2023 72 tweets 11 min read
Entry-level Law prof job seekers: AALS FAR submissions are due in 10 days. As my procrastination today, I thought I'd provide some tips as I come off of two years as hiring chair here at @WashULaw. Here, in no particular order, some advice and thoughts, big picture + small bore: The 1st big-picture thing I'll say: this process just... sucks for you. It's stressful. It's hugely consequential for your life. Some people you meet won't be very friendly. You'll have months uncertainty about what part of the country you'll live in, where you'll teach, etc.
May 8, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
NEW: @adamschilton @kyle_rozema @maya_sen and I have made *major* revisions to "The Endgame of Court-Packing," now up on SSRN. Lots of important new findings relevant to folks interested in Court reform, but I'll highlight just one below:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… Our paper uses simulations based on assumptions about the results of elections, justice retirement, etc to predict what might happen with the Supreme Court's composition for the next century.
May 3, 2022 22 tweets 3 min read
A quick thread with random thoughts as I process the apparently leaked Dobbs majority: My first question is who leaked this. Most immediately, I think people will suspect a law clerk liked it. But it’s not obvious that that is so for a few reasons.
Mar 15, 2022 13 tweets 5 min read
NEW ON @SSRN: My and @danielledonfro's "The Fourth Amendment and General Law," forthcoming in @YaleLJournal. We argue that private-law ideas like trespass and bailment are key to understanding the Fourth Amendment's limits on public power. Quick thread:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… Since 1967, the touchstone of Fourth Amendment protections has been the "reasonable expectations of privacy" test which comes from Justice Harlan's concurrence in Katz v. United States.
Jan 3, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
What I genuinely don’t understand: Hawley, Cruz, &c seem to think that whichever of them shows the most fealty to Trump can inherit the mantle of Trumpism. But Trump will never bless them as his successor; the point of Trumpism is that it’s about *Trump*. /1 If he’s ever going to pass the baton to anyone, it will be one of his children. And I’m not sure he’d even be willing to let them steal the limelight. Essentially every politician who has tried to make a devil’s bargain with Trump has ended up paying for it in the end. /2
Oct 1, 2018 45 tweets 7 min read
I've had some productive private conversations re Kavanaugh w/ conservative friends over the last couple days. We don't agree about everything by any means, but at times of intense partisan division, it's valuable to try to figure out what others are thinking. Thoughts below... First, there's a lot of anger at SJC Dems at how they played this timing-wise. We obviously don't know for sure how things got leaked, and Dr. Ford wasn't willing to come forward publicly until late. But I'm perfectly willing to believe committee Dems didn't act in good faith.