Things to Read This Week (4/28)
Myths, injunctions, habeas, and the shadow docket
How Not to Teach Criminal Law, by Evan Bernick. A taste:
This is part of the Chicago-Kent Law Review’s symposium on Teaching Law in a Time of Change and Conflict (held in 2023, just published this month in 2025), which also contains my Teaching Law in a Crisis of Judicial Legitimacy.
Preliminary Injunction Realism, by co-blogger Sam Bray. Need I say more?
The General Law of Judicial Mercy, an interesting student note (by Caleb Fick) applying the general law 14th Amendment framework to today’s habeas controversies.
Life, The Universe, and the Judicial Power. Gary Lawson on universal injunctions.
I’m quoted extensively in Mark Walsh’s story, Politically Charged “Shadow Docket” Cases Taking Over Supreme Court During Its Busiest Time.
In your piece for the symposium you address “the perception that there is something different, something more challenging, about teaching constitutional law today because the Supreme Court has been doing so many things, so quickly, that are so hard to justify.” You then move to claim that perception is wrong. From what I understand your evidence for that claim is that Dobbs, Bruen, and Bush v. Gore are not “power grabs” to the degree of the cases lauded by liberals that you listed. I don’t think I understand this point. Does a greater “power grab” necessarily imply that the cases are just as hard (or harder) to justify? I think the entire point is that in those cases concerning fundamental rights protected by the Constitution, the Court should be engaging in a “power grab”, rather than abdicating authority to States to infringe on those rights. The major point being that those “power grabs” are actually easier to justify than it would be to justify the relinquishing of power in Dobbs, Bruen, and Bush v. Gore. Am I misunderstanding your argument?
Is "need I say more?" the new "self-recommending"?