David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Founding Chair, @AFA_Alliance. Visiting Fellow, @HooverInst. All opinions are mine alone.
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Dec 3 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Devastated to hear news of the untimely passing of my friend and former colleague Ken Kersch of @BostonCollege He was a scholarly and political maverick in the best sense of the term and his voice will be sorely missed. Full if insights into 20th American constitutional history
His first book on how "civil liberties" were reimagined in the Progressive and New Deal era was a revelation amazon.com/Constructing-C…
Jan 28 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
The House Comm of Homeland Security has now released articles of impeachment against Sec of Homeland Sec Mayorkas. The two articles of impeachment can be found at
1/homeland.house.gov/wp-content/upl…
The DHS has released a brief response to the articles of impeachment at
2/dhs.gov/xlibrary/opa/2…
Jul 6, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
today's 4th Circuit opinion limits the scope of 1st Amendment protection for speech by state university professors in the course of their job duties
opinion at
1/drive.google.com/file/d/1Fufu7E…
It holds that faculty speech as part of shared governance or departmental deliberations gets no constitutional protection & does not even reach Pickering balancing
2/
May 7, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
An interesting development, but the House should reject this amended version as well. 1/
This amended SB 18 would keep in place a system of tenure in Texas state universities, unlike the earlier versions endorsed in the Texas state senate. But still some dreadful features in this version. To wit, 2/
Feb 2, 2023 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
I think this is quite wrong, but it is wrong for interesting reasons. I'm very predisposed to liking this kind of argument, but I think the analytical concern plays out differently in this situation. 1/
For me a very important argument against censorship regimes is that you should not trust the censors or assume that they will always agree with you. If you set up a speech code, you better think carefully about whether you'd be ok w/ your enemies implementing it. 2/
Jan 31, 2023 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
Interesting @GovRonDeSantis press conference today on higher ed reform in Florida. Will need to see the details of the policy proposals, but bullet points still notable 1/
Video of the DeSantis press conference on higher ed reform can be found at 2/ mysuncoast.com/2023/01/31/gov…
Dec 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This bill is not as badly written as some but would still have real chilling effects on college-level teaching and academic programming. It interferes with academic freedom & raises real constitutional issues. The Wisconsin legislature should take a step back.
The @uiowa provost has decreed that professors shall not share their personal value judgments about vaccines and masks in the classroom. That's an academic freedom problem & potentially a First Amendment problem 1/
The Iowa directive to faculty is at provost.uiowa.edu/fall-2021-faq-…. A lot of talk about power differentials & making sure everyone feels respected. Familiar rhetoric for trying to shut down controversial speech on campuses. 2/
Feb 13, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
McConnell's speech sets a model that I hope most of the GOP senators will be willing to follow. He does not just use the jurisdictional argument as a cover that allows him to avoid having to level any criticisms at the president. He does not shy away from the merits 1/
He is firm and clear that the president engaged in egregious misconduct while in office that is fully worthy of public condemnation. He appropriately suggests that Trump's behavior was a high crime (though I would have preferred that he had said so more clearly). 2/
Jan 5, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I think this is a bit overstated but worth thinking about the 1787 context in which this system was designed.
The “Electoral College” vote really consists of votes by electors assembled in each state so as to minimize collusion, corruption, etc. if the voting is distributed nationwide, the votes will have to be carried by horse somewhere & someone has to tally all those votes up.
Jan 3, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
An impeachment necessarily involves a judgment about future behavior as well as an assessment of past behavior. I would hope that some senators are reflecting on what lessons they should have learned from the Ukraine episode
washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
The simple fact is that the president is doing anything in his power to try to steal the election and to continue himself as president after he decisively lost an election. It is the extraordinarily corrupt and dangerous behavior of someone unfit to hold any public office
Aug 16, 2020 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
Many things to be said about why the Eastman essay on whether Kamala Harris is a natural-born citizen is wrong but let must just introduce you to case of Julia Lynch, who was born in NYC in 1819 while her Irish parents were visiting her uncle. Julia was a natural-born American 1/
The question of Julia's citizenship gave rise to one of the earliest cases in the US trying to determine the meaning of natural-born citizenship. The New York court in 1844 gave what it thought & all subsequent courts have thought was the obvious answer. 2/
Jan 24, 2020 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
Another addition to my impeachment thread.
“the American constitutional system is not reducible to presidential plebiscites.” 35/n reason.com/2020/01/23/doe…
“The chief justice's job in a Senate impeachment trial is simply to administer the rules that the majority of the senators have themselves put in place.” 36/n reason.com/2020/01/22/the…
Dec 3, 2019 • 25 tweets • 8 min read
As we gird our loins for the start of the actual, honest-to-goodness impeachment hearings, a thread of some of the short impeachment-related stuff I’ve written over the last couple of years 1/n
Before the 2016 election, I joined with Neil Kinkopf for a commentary on the impeachment clause for @ConstitutionCtr 2/n constitutioncenter.org/interactive-co…
