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Jay Willis Profile picture
Jay Willis
@jaywillis
I cover judges, laws, democracy, and the 3 raccoons who live in a tree behind my house. EIC @ballsstrikes, occasional writing elsewhere. signal: jaywillis.52
5 subscribers
Sep 29, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Fondly remembering my tenure as an unpaid intern in Dianne Feinstein’s office, when we were all like uhhh look I’m not a doctor but this person doesn’t seem like she’s in super great shape? To be one of 100 U.S. senators? Anyway this was 2010 Politicians are not your favorite athletes you root for on TV. They are stewards of power who are responsible for representing real people, and when they exercise that power carelessly, that’s as much a part of their legacy as anything they did in office. Sometimes even more so.
May 25, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
“Some say ‘wetlands’ are ‘waters’ because ‘water’ is ‘wet.’ However, this overlooks the critical distinction between ‘water’ and ‘waters,’” this is the stupidest shit I’ve ever read, do not let anyone ever tell you that law is real or coherent supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf… ImageImageImageImage Wild how much of Alito’s reasoning for rewriting “waters” to mean something different boils down to “this is simply too expensive for landowners, in my view” Image
May 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Legacy Supreme Court reporters have spent decades doing their jobs all wrong. Fortunately for them, I wrote a little how-to guide for my pals at @Slate that should fix everything slate.com/news-and-polit… I'll be talking with @ElieNYC and @Dahlialithwick and @mjs_DC about all this and lots more tonight in D.C., come through or at least come have a drink slate.com/live/amicus-li…
May 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The reason you know conservative media outlets don’t employ editors is that any editor is immediately returning this to the writer with a note that’s like “source??? you uhhh need evidence for statements like this and a little list of adjectives can’t do the work” Image Obviously the ideas at the National Review are dogshit but don’t let that distract you from the fact that the writing at the National Review is dogshit, too
May 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I love the Warriors and want them to win and am sad when they lose, and I am also very close to kinda just wanting this season’s team to be put out of its misery The season started with the team’s emotional leader punching one of its best young players in the face and somehow the vibes have gotten WORSE since then??
May 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Simply incredible that Dick Durbin, literally the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, keeps talking about Supreme Court corruption like he has as much power to do anything about it as I do “Chief Justice Roberts must act,” sir what would you say it is that you “do” around here
Apr 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Tucker Carlson is either running for president or he did something so heinous and awful that *Fox News* got rid of him without any kind of fanfare or send-off, and I can't decide which explanation is worse Eat shit forever, loser gq.com/story/tucker-c…
Apr 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Matt Kacsmaryk wrote a cartoonishly transphobic law review article, and then swapped out his name for two other lawyers because his judicial nomination was in the works and he was scared the article would make him uncomfirmable washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… ImageImage One thing I appreciate about Matt Kacsmaryk is he keeps finding ways to make clear that he’s a stone-cold right-wing freak, and no one in the Biden administration should respect him or take his opinions seriously Image
Mar 30, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Post whatever you want right now, no one cares. I tear up a little when Elle Woods finds out she got a 179 on the LSAT. Lmao the appeal that a movie like ‘Crash’ had to a white guy who grew up in suburbs and then majored in Social Welfare at Berkeley…that movie was made in a lab for 19-year-old to tell strangers at parties about how Important it was
Mar 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Kyle Duncan cranked out a thousand words for WSJ Opinion about how very rude the Stanford Woke Mob was to him, just in case ANYONE in his intended audience didn't already know who he was and get upset on his behalf wsj.com/articles/strug… Most of Duncan's essay reads like a recycled Ed Whelan blog so I'm not going to spend time on it, but just as a side note, it's extremely funny how hung up he is on snap-applause, which he called "creepy" in the moment and is still thinking about days later?
Mar 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Look, if you think Kyle Duncan is the "adult" in this exchange with a Stanford Law student, let alone a guy sincerely trying to have a civil dialogue with people with whom he disagrees, and definitely not trying to just get blurbed on Fox News primteime,🤷‍♂️ Here’s Dean Tierien Steinbach, whom Kyle Duncan demanded that Stanford *fire* after this event (and for whom @StanfordLaw formally apologized today), telling Duncan that he is “absolutely welcome” to speak, regardless of the content, and that the admin won’t censor him
Mar 11, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Alright, I’ve watched a bunch of clips of Kyle Duncan's event at Stanford Law beyond the hilariously clumsy edit that Jonathan Turley and Ed Whelan and company are sharing. Here's a little thread, none of which you'll find in the right-wing media outrage machine. As Mark's highlights suggest, it's genuinely weird how badly Duncan loses it. Calls a woman an "appalling idiot" and the event an "infantile spectacle." Yelling most of the time. When students snap-applaud, he goes, "What's with the creepy snapping" lmao
Mar 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Notice that none of these pearl-clutching dipshits are sharing any video of Kyle Duncan actually speaking, because that footage shows Kyle Duncan acting like a gigantic baby lmao A lot of old white guys filling their diapers over a clip that begins and ends with a woman of color speaking, and conspicuously omits everything their canceled hero actually said. Probably a coincidence though!
Jan 28, 2023 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Supreme Court justices of the last 30 years or so, ranked by how easily I could defeat them in mutual hand-to-hand combat Image Guy’s a high-strung brawler, I think this assumption is a big risk
Jan 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
“Verily, I and people like me are being canceled every day,” I say in my remarks at Harvard Law School, before heading back to my job as a life-tenured judge whose ideological movement controls the entire third branch of government reuters.com/legal/governme… Just jetting around the country filling my diaper in front of a new collection of eager-beaver conservative law students gunning for a clerkship
Jan 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I mean this seriously, after his "criminals have no place in our legal system" meltdown, I don't see how anyone takes anything Richard Bernstein says seriously ever again ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/… I kept waiting for Bernstein to say something like "my comments were taken out of context" or whatever but apparently no, he just really doesn't like people who've been convicted of crimes and isn't shy about it. Cool thing for a judge to say! ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/…
Nov 19, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
[tears streaming down Ed Whelan’s face as he realizes he’s been calling for the prosecution, imprisonment, and torture of his beloved Samuel Alito] Mr. Justice Hot Dog Suit Man Image
Oct 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
We are four months out from the Supreme Court’s conservatives stuffing a reviled liberal precedent in the garbage, and law professors are once again writing op-eds explaining why “authoritative legal considerations” will prevent them from doing it again nytimes.com/2022/10/26/opi… I can’t stress enough how howlingly wrong this casual assertion is. Grutter’s 25-year sunset for affirmative action CAN be easily discarded, because Supreme Court justices can do whatever the fuck they want, and somehow it is only fancy law professors who do not understand this.
Oct 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It fucking rules that these people got everything they’ve been fighting for for their entire legal careers, and have now pivoted to complaining that people aren’t sufficiently respectful of them as a result washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… [me after doing a wildly unpopular thing that everyone hates] why are people not praising me everywhere I go
Oct 17, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
What the fuck is going on with this @sltrib endorsement (?) of Mike Lee written in the third person by, uh, Mike Lee (???) sltrib.com/opinion/commen… So the answer is apparently that both he and Evan McMullin got to write one, which DOES explain why this reads like an advertorial but does NOT explain why Mike Lee decided to write it like a rough draft of his Wikipedia page sltrib.com/opinion/commen…
Oct 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
An all-white jury convicts a Black man of killing his white wife. Three jurors oppose interracial marriage because people should “stay with their Blood Line.” His lawyers don’t object. Jury sentences him to death. No problem, says the Supreme Court. supremecourt.gov/orders/courtor… Image The prosecutor asked members of the all-white jury if they were willing to “take the risk” that a Black defendant, if found not guilty, would “ask your daughter out, or your granddaughter out.” Again, his lawyers did not object. Again, totally fine, says the Supreme Court. ImageImage