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.
May 22 • 43 tweets • 8 min read
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".
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.
May 17 • 31 tweets • 5 min read
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.
May 11 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
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
May 3 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
(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.
May 1 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
By popular demand! Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of the Dobbs leak. Let's talk about what did and didn't happen after Dobbs.
Obviously lots of states passed or brought into effect abortion bans after Dobbs. But while pro-lifers won the battle, pro-choicers are winning the war.
First, a number of states with initiative processes have enacted or reinstated abortion rights.
For example, Ohio passed Issue 1 in 2023, creating a state constitutional right to an abortion before viability.
Apr 4 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
i am so angry at some of my fellow Americans. i am not even the biggest NATO booster but there's no way you can tear the thing apart while Russia is waging war for territory in Ukraine.
These people want to blow up NATO because WE were morons who attacked Iran.
A bunch of people on the Right are now committed to an absolutely idiotic war that caused a global oil shock and failed to change the Iranian regime because (1) President Trump ordered it and (2) they have an irrational love of wars.
Europe, hurt by the shock, is pissed at us.
Apr 3 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Thread: Justice Clarence Thomas has an incredible intellect, even though I often disagree with what he says.
My thesis is almost every member of an oppressed group who on the Court gets stereotyped, and the Justices of Color are specifically falsely accused of being dim.
First, a reading assignment. Read Thomas' dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger. It's a bit long. And I'm not expecting you to agree with it (or disagree with it). Just read it. Appreciate how tightly argued it is. See how he makes good point after good point.
This is just a really important lesson from the Iraq War (and some other things, like Katrina) that conservatives, with their massive media apparatus, never learned. They think they can BS and spin their way out of anything, but no, sometimes you just have to get the policy right
If the administration gets the Straits of Hormuz open and oil prices down and puts a stop to Iranian attacks on neighboring countries and forces political moderation in Iran (all things I hope happens), they can claim success. But if the bad stuff keeps happening....
Mar 1 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
General thoughts:
1. The people who support these sorts of actions are sick of hearing about how they violate international law, but they do. No matter how bad a government is, other states aren't supposed to just attack and overthrow the government.
2. Further, there's a REASON for that international law principle. If nobody is constrained from doing this, you'll almost certainly see more warfare in the long term, because there are all sorts of grievances among nation states.
Feb 23 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
SCOTUS nerd material: Gorsuch (cheered on online by the Right) ID's 4 opinions where he says liberals' positions were inconsistent with the position they took on tariffs-- greenhouse gases, vaccine mandates, student loans, and eviction moratoria.
He's wrong on 3 and right on 1.
The greenhouse gas, vaccine mandate, and student loan cases all involved statutory language that really did seem to authorize what the government was doing. So unless you thought the major questions doctrine should exist, the government should have won.
Feb 11 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
Let's continue our series on legal arguments that the public doesn't understand but are justifiable. Today we cover "substantive due process", the legal bogeyman that the Right blames for abortion and the Left blames for the Lochner era. It sounds terrible. But is it?
For those who don't know, the 5th and 14th Amendment basically provide that no governmental entity in America can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. "Due process" is not further defined.
Feb 9 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
I have decided to do an occasional series explaining legal doctrines I think the public does not understand and unfairly criticize.
So let's talk about corporate personhood and Citizens United!
Corporate personhood drives a lot of normies crazy. How can corporations be persons? It sounds totally contrary to common sense. And Citizens United is blamed by campaign finance reformers and a lot of folks on the Left for all rich people's influence on politics.
Feb 8 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
I have been thinking about the policy and politics of immigration a lot lately. And I think both parties are hemmed in by some really bad tendencies.
On the Right, it's performative cruelty.
On the Left, it's serving the Groups.
I will try and sketch out a third way here.
First, what's everyone doing wrong right now? Well, on the Right, the problem is very obvious. Too many right wingers have a cruel streak when it comes to immigration. They liked the ICE tactics and would have just as soon they continued unabated even after the two shootings.
Feb 6 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
Helen Andrews is indicative of something I am very worried about.
There's no significant constituency of what I would call "hard racists" (i.e., Klan types, people who want to restore Jim Crow) in the US. But the intellectual Right is incubating a "softer" form of racism.
What are the features of this "softer" form of open racism?
1. Massive racial generalizations and stereotyping. 2. Extensive arguments about culture and merit with whites just happening to always come out on top. 3. Unfounded claims about immigrant groups "destroying" America.
Jan 21 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
There's a kernel of truth in one of the right wing allegations about Hennepin County (Minneapolis) and immigration:
Since 2021, the county has not honored ICE detainers, which are requests to hold people who are arrested and subject to a final order of deportation.
Here's the thing: ICE detainers are just one of those things where the immigration Groups who support the Democrats want something that isn't politically tenable or morally justifiable.
To understand this issue, let's talk about what a detainer is.
Dec 15, 2025 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
If you want a "keeping it real" story of how the airline industry evolved to it's current state of tiered levels of service with discomfort at the bottom end, I'll walk you through it. It has no relationship to the things the industry's critics say.
1. 31 inches pitch in coach and 17 inches seat width has been basically standard among major airlines for over 40 years. If there is shrinkage in legroom it is a very slow process and mostly on budget carriers.
Dec 14, 2025 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
What I wish people would realize about anti-semitism is that it isn't enough to say "it's theoretically possible to harshly criticize Israel without being anti-semitic".
Yes it is. But lots of Palestinian Cause types traffic in anti-semitism and don't face sufficient opprobrium.
And again, hashtag "not all Palestinian Cause types". Absolutely right. Some strident advocates for Palestinians and even some one state solution types do express proper horror about October 7, Bondi Beach, etc.
But lots of others look immediately to justify and minimize.
Dec 14, 2025 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Folks, if the air travel market said "we're sick of the bad cramped seats" and refused to fly in them, instead filling up premium while economy went unsold, airlines would respond to that by adding room.
But that's NOT what most people do. They want cheap fares more than space!
The real objection is "I should get a high class product while paying a rock bottom fare", but, no, you actually shouldn't, and what actually happens is when the airlines give you the option of paying more for more space, most travelers prefer paying less for less space.
Nov 12, 2025 • 56 tweets • 9 min read
A lot of followers responded to my sex positive thread about the Internet and young women by asking "what about porn?".
It's a very good question. And I might as well say it-- I think the right wing and feminists have a point about porn as we stand in 2025.
To be clear, "as we stand in 2025" is crucial here. Part of the problem with critiques of pornography is there really was a "crying wolf" phenomenon. The religious right, after all, opposed Henry Miller novels and tried to ban the shipment of dildos under the Comstock Act.
