Things to Read This Week (8/4)

Critique of Jud, critique of me, etc.

Things in my pile this week:

1. Bruen and the Founding-Era Conception of Rights, by Joel Alicea. I know several people who have been waiting for something like this to come along. I think this is the first major attempt to push back on the implications of Jud Campbell, Jamal Greene, and the other rights revisionists — though in places it is pushing back on Jud and in other places it is actually embracing Jud. Part of an important conversation.

2. The Oath Argument is Not Promising by Andrew Jordan. A philosophical critique of #OathTheory. I obviously don’t agree with the piece, but my correspondence with Jordan led to a thought-provoking and wide-ranging argument about several other adjacent questions, so I think it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of ground still to cover here on both sides.

3. What is Trump Immunity? by Carlos Vasquez. “Is the immunity enjoyed by former Presidents in criminal cases an immunity from the operation of the primary obligations imposed by the criminal laws in question? Or is it an immunity from being subjected to certain types of sanctions for having violated validly imposed legal obligations? Or is it an immunity from being subjected to the jurisdiction of judicial tribunals in suits seeking to impose validly prescribed legal sanctions? The implications of the Trump decision vary dramatically depending on the type of immunity the Court recognized.”